Professor Studying Fascism Worries of US Shifting Toward 'Dictatorship' as He Leaves for Canada

An Ivy League professor studying fascism has opted to leave the US, which he believes could be headed for a "fascist dictatorship," choosing to move to Canada and work at a university there instead.

Yale Professor Jason Stanley aims to move out of the US so that he can "raise my kids in a country that is not tilting towards a fascist dictatorship," according to an interview with the Daily Nous.

Stanley wrote the 2018 book, "How Fascism Works: The Politics of Us and Them." He recently accepted employment at the University of Toronto's Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy.

The professor further stated that the recent developments with students and faculty members at Columbia University further encouraged him to make the move. The university recently agreed to cooperate with the Trump administration, accepting a list of demands in order to regain $400 million in federal funding, including demands calling for the repression of protests and "internal reviews" of certain academic departments such as the Middle Eastern studies department, among others.

"When I saw Columbia completely capitulate, and I saw this vocabulary of, well, we're going to work behind the scenes because we're not going to get targeted – that whole way of thinking pre-supposes that some universities will get targeted, and you don't want to be one of those universities, and that's just a losing strategy," Stanley told The Guardian.

Stanley said he "became very worried" when he did not see many other universities standing up for Columbia. In his mind, it was very possible that Yale could be targeted in the future.

"You've got to just band together and say an attack on one university is an attack on all universities. And maybe you lose that fight, but you're certainly going to lose this one if you give up before you fight," he continued.

In a statement to The Guardian, Yale reiterated its pride in the global community the institution has cultivated.

"Yale is proud of its global faculty community which includes faculty who may no longer work at the institution, or whose contributions to academia may continue at a different home institution," the university said. "Faculty members make decisions about their careers for a variety of reasons and the university respects all such decisions."