Alexander Walk at Yale University campus in New Haven, Connecticut, U.S., on April 7, 2024.
Joe Buglewicz/Bloomberg via Getty Images
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Joe Buglewicz/Bloomberg via Getty Images
Philosophy professor Jason Stanley has been a faculty member of Yale University since 2013. But as the Trump administration targets university funding, he has decided to leave Yale, and the country altogether.
Stanley, an American Jewish man, will move his spouse and children to Canada soon, as he has secured a job at the University of Toronto.
Though the administration says they are pulling funding from universities to protect students from antisemitism, Stanley says the administration is using Jewish people as an “excuse to take down democracy.” Stanley is an expert on fascism and the author of several books on the topic, including Erasing History: How Fascists Rewrite the Past to Control the Future.
He made a quick and definitive decision to leave Yale and the U.S. when Columbia University agreed to restructure its student protest policies to get back $400 million in federal research funding that the Trump administration pulled from the university.
Harvard University is the latest school to be targeted for what the administration says is a failure to protect students from antisemitism. On Monday, the Trump administration said it is reviewing about $9 billion in funding for the university.
In his interview with NPR’s A Martínez, Stanley discussed his decision to leave America and what prompted it.
The following interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Interview highlights
Martínez: If Yale had told you maybe off the record that they were going to try and work behind the scenes maybe to protect academic freedom, but that it would be much more difficult to do without the federal funds. How would you have responded to that?
Stanley: I would respond by saying that’s the wrong tack. You need a very loud defense of democratic institutions. That response would not take seriously the point that this is a war.
If universities think they can work behind the scenes and make friends, they’re simply confused about the nature of the conflict. Yale University, like other leading universities, needs to take the lead, take a leadership role with and collectively work with other universities loudly to protect democracy.
Martínez: But what war can be won without funding?
Stanley: You might lose anyway. But you can’t win a war unless you recognize it’s a war. This way they’re going to pick us off one by one. And history is watching here. Our institutions will be written about. They’re being attacked for this entirely fake reason that’s furthermore fomenting antisemitism in the United States. It’s going to create mass popular anger against Jewish people.
So, if universities want to fight anti-Semitism, they need to stand up and say, ‘No, we are not threats to American Jews. You are threatening American Jews.’
Martínez: Wouldn’t it be more helpful in that fight, Professor, for you to stay at Yale, to fight that fight as opposed to being in Canada?
Stanley: I have Black Jewish children and the attacks on DEI are attacks on Black people. They’re attacking Black history. They’re targeting Black people in positions of power. And they’re creating mass popular anger against Jewish people by taking Jewish people, by setting us up and saying we’re the excuse for taking down democracy.
Personally, I’m not going to risk my kid’s safety for a political point.
Martínez: Political dynamics in Canada, how are they different? Because, as you are talking, you clearly see it as a place where you can work more freely.
Stanley: That’s right. I have the privilege and good fortune to get a job there. And they have a long term plan of creating a center that will be a refuge for politicians, journalists and professors from democratically backsliding or authoritarian countries like the United States or Russia. And my job will be to work with these people to jointly strategize about how to return our countries to democracy.
