Bob Schwartz

“We’re like people on the Titanic saying our ship can’t sink. And what you know as a historian is that there is no such thing as a ship that can’t sink.”
Professor Marci Shore

We Study Fascism, and We’re Leaving the U.S.
New York Times
By Marci Shore, Timothy Snyder and Jason Stanley

Marci Shore, Timothy Snyder and Jason Stanley, all professors at Yale and experts in authoritarianism, explain why America is especially vulnerable to a democratic backsliding — and why they are leaving the United States to take up positions at the University of Toronto.

Professor Stanley is leaving the United States as an act of protest against the Trump administration’s attacks on civil liberties. “I want Americans to realize that this is a democratic emergency,” he said.

Professor Shore, who has spent two decades writing about the history of authoritarianism in Central and Eastern Europe, is leaving because of what she sees as the sharp regression of American democracy. “We’re like people on the Titanic saying our ship can’t sink,” she said. “And what you know as a historian is that there is no such thing as a ship that can’t sink.”

Professor Snyder’s reasons are more complicated. Primarily, he’s leaving to support his wife, Professor Shore, and their children, and to teach at a large public university in Toronto, a place he says can host conversations about freedom. At the same time, he shares the concerns expressed by his colleagues and worries that those kinds of conversations will become ever harder to have in the United States.

I have written about Timothy Snyder a number of times before, starting here. As the piece says, he and his colleagues are experts on fascism.

If you are able to read and watch the extended New York Times piece and video, you will find over 1,000 comments to which the professors reply. The comments raise important questions, including the issue of whether it would be better for them to stay and fight the fight, rather than leaving the country. Another question is why they are doing this now, rather than protesting—if this is a protest—sooner.

That last matter is easily answered. They have been studying the issue for their careers, and have been highlighting it in America for a long time. If you were an expert on this and had been pleading for more people to pay attention and do something, how much longer would you be willing to stay and fight, when the foreseeable reality came to pass?

Just because they are in Toronto and not America, their work will continue to enlighten anyone anywhere who is listening. As in so many areas, and not for the last time, America’s loss is Canada’s gain. Again.