The Fascism Expert at Yale Who’s Fleeing America.

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Jason Stanley has spent the last two decades writing about power, language, and the ways both are corruptible. He is an expert on authoritarian regimes and the author of seven books, including 2018’s How Fascism Works: The Politics of Us and Them and last year’s Erasing History: How Fascists Rewrite the Past to Control the Future, and has been a member of the Yale University faculty since 2013.

Last week, in what he calls an “impulsive” decision prompted by Columbia’s capitulation to Trump administration demands, he decided to leave—not just Yale, but the country altogether. This fall he’ll decamp to the University of Toronto’s Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy, where he was offered the position of Bissell Hyatt Chair in American Studies.

“Educational authoritarianism is frequently accompanied by more general restrictions on knowledge,” he writes in Erasing History, “and by attempts to push mythic representations in place of that knowledge.” In the book he likens conservative activist groups seeking book bans to Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels keeping lists of books to be censored, and outlines attacks on the rights of LGBTQ+ people by various fascist regimes throughout history (among which he counts the Trump administration). When I ask whether he sees warning signs in sectors outside of education, he responds, “Are you fricking with me?”

In a wide-ranging interview, Stanley explains why he believes campuses are becoming more dangerous, Canada’s role in all of this, and what he sees as the Trump administration’s most fascist move to date.

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But I had this offer, and when Columbia capitulated completely, just absolutely folded, and the Columbia president issued that statement—you know what that statement reminded me of? It reminded me of a hostage who’s been tortured and has to read a statement with their kidnappers behind them declaring that they’ve seen the light.

The Columbia president and other universities are active participants in the destruction of the rule of law, because this attack on the universities is a violation of the rule of law. This regime is taking down the rule of law and what the Columbia president did, and what Yale is doing, unfortunately, in certain of their statements—I mean, we haven’t done what Columbia did, but they’re acting like this is part of some legal framework, when it’s not. It’s an extra legal attack. And so when you do not call it out as an extra legal attack, you are actively contributing to destruction of the rule of law.

I have to say, another thing that is important to mention is that this is the most antisemitic moment of my life as an American, because this is an antisemitic attack on antisemitism. This regime is leaning into the stereotype that Jews control the institutions, and they’re exploiting that stereotype in order to attack the institutions.

Do you think these measures are making campuses safer for Jewish students?

They’re making campuses more dangerous because now everyone thinks that we [Stanley is Jewish] control everything. And also, Jewish students were central participants in the encampments last year, and it took months for the media to acknowledge that.

They’re claiming that leftism is antisemitism. And the Jewish community is precisely divided, especially the young Jewish communities. There are just as many Jewish kids out there protesting Israel’s actions as there are any other group. So it puts those students, those Jewish students, in direct peril. It’s making the campus very dangerous for them. And how horrible is it that so many of my Jewish students, so many of them who are progressive Jews, that the media is saying they’re not Jewish? Is this Nazi Germany, where the government decides who’s Jewish and who isn’t?

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