A New Republic writer condemns as unpatriotic cowards the three Yale professors leaving Trumpian America for Canada. “[T]hey have decided to check out of their own communities long before they face actual state violence… [There is a difference between a person] who chooses to face down oppressors and one who ignores or betrays the call for solidarity in the face of oppression.”
Yet the author himself is here only because his father betrayed India, his native country. Does he also condemn his father’s preference to live in a freer, less corrupt, less tyrannical country? My grandfather hadn’t yet faced state violence when he left Cherkasy for the US. Should he have girded his loins and stayed?
Is the writer familiar with the excellent book, excellently titled Exit, Voice, and Loyalty? “In 1989, in the GDR it was the escalating dynamic of out-migration that led those who wanted to stay to take to the streets to demand change. Exit triggered voice, and both worked in tandem.” Many variants of exit and voice exist, and it’s quite possible that a powerful rejection by powerful intellectuals like the Yale Three will turn out to be far more galvanizing among protesters than their staying home.
The writer also overlooks the positive gesture toward Canada that their resettlement represents. Humiliated by the territorial rhetoric and economic targeting coming from the Trump administration, our far more democratic (at the moment) neighbor deserves as much support as we can give it, and few gestures of support are as powerful as actually going there and contributing, in this case, your prestige and institutional strength to a legitimate democracy under threat.
April 2nd, 2025 at 11:25AM
I’m with the New Republicans writer. They ran away.
April 2nd, 2025 at 11:25AM
*Republic
April 2nd, 2025 at 12:32PM
Not so, Dmitry. Historians who write for a large general audience about fascism matter like crazy.
What doesn’t matter is whether that writing (like the French-located writing of James Baldwin, a guy the NR guy gets badly wrong) originates in New Haven, Toronto, or Madagascar.
April 2nd, 2025 at 12:40PM
Nope. Hasn’t failed. But definitely undergoing one of our historic stress tests.
And those adjectives about America come from the writer’s Indian father, not from me.
April 2nd, 2025 at 1:01PM
Well, I adore all things Monty Python.