Philosophy professor Jason Stanley, as well as historians Timothy Snyder and Marcy Shore (who are a married couple) are leaving Yale University and the United States to take up positions at the University of Toronto and teach at the Munk School starting in the fall of 2025. All due to the heightened political situation in the United States.
This is reported by Yale News.
Stanley attributed his decision to leaving the university to the political climate in the country. He decided to move after Columbia University responded to pressure from the Trump administration.
After the institution was threatened with deportation for two protesting students and $400 million in research funding was cut, Columbia University has agreed to give in to the Trump administration on a number of demands, including reviewing its protest policies and introducing external oversight of the schoolʼs Middle Eastern studies department.
Professor Stanley is concerned about how other universities will behave and respond under pressure. Yale, in particular, has not publicly responded to the situation with Columbia University. Dean Pericles Lewis said that changes to the universityʼs policy on free speech and protest are not expected.
Marcy Shore noted that the Munk School had been trying to recruit her and Snyder for a long time — after two years of consideration, they decided to accept the offer after the 2024 election. Snyderʼs press secretary said that his decision was due to personal reasons, including family circumstances, even before the US presidential election last November.
Snyder and Shore specialize in Eastern European history, drawing parallels between fascist regimes and contemporary US politics. Stanley studies fascism and propaganda. In 2021, they co-taught a course at Yale University called “Mass Incarceration in the Soviet Union and the United States”.
Stanley and Shore recently joined 3 000 Jewish educators in signing a letter condemning the arrest of a Columbia University student who was protesting and calling on educational institutions to oppose the Trump administrationʼs higher education policies.
Shore believes many of her colleagues are considering moving because of the current political climate, which she sees as "Americaʼs descent into fascism".
Shore is on leave from Yale this semester to finish her book manuscript—she has been living in Toronto since the start of the academic year. In the fall of 2025, she will begin teaching at the University of Toronto as Chair of European Intellectual History at the Munk School. Snyder will serve as the first Chair of Modern European History.
- Stanley has written about the war in Ukraine and taught a course at the Kyiv School of Economics in Ukraine in the summer of 2024.
- The Munk School of Global Affairs & Public Policy is a school at the University of Toronto, founded in 2010. It specializes in international relations, politics, and global studies, training professionals in the fields of diplomacy, public administration, and international security.
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