Frozen out: Academics seek refuge in Canada as Trump steps up attacks on US higher education

American expert in fascism takes position at University of Toronto as White House threatens federal funding and detains students amid pro-Palestine movement

The University of Toronto campus. Reuters

It’s a cold spring afternoon on Toronto’s bustling Bloor Street West, a 25km road that cuts through Canada’s most populous city, from the Don river in the east to neighbouring Mississauga.

At the intersection of Avenue Road, tourists queue for the city’s Royal Ontario Museum, while students pop in and out of a local franchise of Tim Hortons, a Canadian coffee staple in the city.

Tucked into the scene is the University of Toronto’s Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy, a relatively new addition to the centuries-old institution, established through a donation from the late Hungarian-Canadian philanthropist Peter Munk.

The school will next year welcome a new member to its faculty – the American philosopher Jason Stanley, who, worried the current US political climate is putting the country at risk of fascism, is relocating his spouse and children to Canada this summer.

Dr Stanley, who has been a professor at Yale University since 2013, has written extensively about authoritarian regimes and was the author of the 2018 book How Fascism Works: The Politics of Us and Them.

“I understand why Jason is as concerned as he is,” Dr Janice Stein, founding director of the Munk School, tells The National. “It’s very alarming.”

“We are seeing arrests of students, visas on campus that are expired with very little notice and unprecedented budget cuts to [US universities’] core science and research enterprise.”

Dr Janice Stein is the founding director of the Munk School of Global Affairs & Public Policy

On the hiring of Dr Stanley, Dr Stein says the university had a position open with a focus on the US. They advertised the role and reviewed applications, choosing the best candidate in the school’s view.

Writing to the Daily Nous, Dr Stanley said he accepted the job offer after US President Donald Trump’s treatment of New York’s Columbia University, which for months faced campus protests against Israel amid the war in Gaza.

Angered by the demonstrations, the Trump administration withheld $400 million in federal funding for Columbia until it submitted to a series of demands, which included banning face masks on campus and taking control of the department that offers courses on the Middle East from its faculty.

“When Columbia folded,” Dr Stanley said in an interview with PBS, “I thought, OK, I’m just going to look at the probabilities of our democratic institutions folding. I think the probabilities are not in favour of US democracy.”

Students from across New York City march outside Columbia's Morningside campus in March. Reuters

The Trump administration has defended its actions against Columbia and other universities by saying it is fighting anti-Semitism on campuses.

That argument has been rejected by Dr Stanley, who is Jewish and the son of Holocaust survivors – highlighting the Jewish groups and students that have joined the demonstrations.

Dr Stanley did not respond to a request to be interviewed for this story.

As part of the continuing clampdown, US immigration agents have targeted foreign-born students associated with pro-Palestine issues, at times grabbing them off the street in an effort to deport them.

The best-known case is that of Mahmoud Khalil, a Syrian-born Palestinian student at Columbia and legal US resident who was arrested in March in front of his pregnant wife in Manhattan, without being accused of any crime.

He has since been detained in Louisiana, as a legal battle ensues over the administration’s attempt to remove him from the US, sparking more unrest at the Ivy League school.

One senior academic fears the US could become an authoritarian state under President Donald Trump. Reuters

“This is a clear violation of the rule of law,” Dr Stein says. “Without the rule of law there is no protection, that’s when states become authoritarian … it is a threat against everybody.”

Also watching with concern is Dr Tyeshia Redden, a US academic who works as an assistant professor in the University of Toronto’s geography department, specialising in urban planning.

“I can’t imagine what it’s like to be walking home and a group of masked people encircle and restrain you,” she says. "It's horrifying ... but I can't say that I'm surprised, because I understand how tyranny works.

"I know how this story ends ... and I think there is a degree of helplessness that I feel."

Dr Redden, who has been living in Canada for about two years after receiving a doctorate in Mr Trump's home state of Florida, tells The National that attacks on education in the US predate the current administration.

She highlights Florida’s Stop Woke Act, a 2022 state law prohibiting professors from expressing certain viewpoints while teaching topics the government deems unfavourable, such as racial discrimination or injustice.

“We’ve been seeing the beginnings of this for quite some time and we are now seeing it under the auspices of an administration that is bragging about it”, she says. “I’ve been warned by professional organisations to limit my visits to the US … I’m not making leisure trips at this point."

The Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy seen from Toronto's Bloor Street West

Dr Stanley will not be alone in his new venture. The academic will be joined by historians Timothy Snyder and Marci Shore, who are also leaving Yale for the Munk School in the next academic year.

“This could be devastating for the academic community in the US,” Dr Stein says. “You can’t nurture that community if there isn’t confidence in the rule of law.”