Three prominent Yale professors depart for Canadian university, citing Trump fears
Three prominent critics of President Donald Trump are leaving Yale’s faculty — and the United States — amid attacks on higher education to take up positions at the University of Toronto in fall 2025.
Philosophy professor Jason Stanley announced this week that he will leave Yale, while history professors Timothy Snyder and Marci Shore, who are married, decided to leave around the November elections. The three professors will work at Toronto’s Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy.
Snyder and Shore both specialize in Eastern European history and each has drawn parallels between the fascist regimes they have studied and the current Trump administration. Stanley, a philosopher, has also published books on fascism and propaganda, including the popular book “How Fascism Works.”
CNN: Pentagon Purging Articles on Holocaust Remembrance in Name of DEI
CNN:
Articles about the Holocaust, September 11, cancer awareness, sexual assault and suicide prevention are among the tens of thousands either removed or flagged for removal from Pentagon websites as the department has scrambled to comply with Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth’s order to scrub “diversity” content from all its platforms.
A database obtained by CNN shows that more than 24,000 articles could be purged, with many gone already. The scrub goes well beyond just the removal of images from the Pentagon’s visual database, known as DVIDS, and includes articles from across more than 1,000 websites hosted by the department.
At least half a dozen articles already removed are about the Holocaust and now have the word “DEI” in their URL.
Those include an article about Holocaust survivor Kitty Saks, which remembers the Holocaust as “the state-sponsored, systemic persecution and annihilation of European Jewry”; an article about Holocaust Remembrance Week; and an article titled “A Cadet’s Perspective: Holocaust Days of Remembrance.”
Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. Responds to Trump's Call for Impeachment of a Federal Judge
For more than two centuries, it has been established that impeachment is not an appropriate response to disagreement concerning a judicial decision. The normal appellate review process exists for that purpose.
See, The New York Times
Lessons of the Shoah
Laurie Winer writing on Substack:
Magical thinking is far from new. Adolf Hitler came to power amid similar lies and conspiracy theories. We should know where that leads. And, while MAGA may ignore the mountains of books written on fascism, the rest of us are not in the dark about what comes next.
As we brace for further actions from a cabinet catering to a serial fabulist, it is important to note that the president’s abstruse nonsense is** **not random. It has a history. A history that takes us in only one direction, to catastrophe.
Winer adds that unless we act “life will take on a surreal quality . . . our discussions will consist of merely repeating the latest horror.”
The debate about whether or not we should bring Hitler or Nazism or fascism into a contemporary political debate is obsolete. Now it is crucial that we take seriously the warnings gathered for us by survivors and writers. When you look at a photo of a Jew about to be arrested or shot and he or she is staring straight into the camera, remember that it is you they are looking at.
Timothy Snyder: ‘Antisemitism in the Oval Office’
Yale historian Timothy Snyder writing on Substack:
The attempt to humiliate Volodymyr Zelens’kyi in the Oval Office a week ago was an American strategic collapse. It heralded a new constellation of disorderly powers, obsessed with resources, seizing what they can. Inside that new disaster is something old and familiar that we might prefer not to see: antisemitism. The encounter in the White House was antisemitic.
Volodymyr Zelens’kyi, the Ukrainian president, is of Jewish origin. Members of his family fought in the Red Army against the Germans. Others were murdered in the Holocaust. Although his Jewishness is not very relevant in Ukrainian politics, it is highly salient to Russian (and other) antisemites.
Last Friday I happened to start watching the discussion at the White House between Zelens’kyi, Donald Trump, JD Vance and Brian Glenn towards the end, when Vance was already yelling at the Ukrainian president: “you’re wrong!” I took in the tone and the body language, and my first, reflexive reactions was: these are non-Jews trying to intimidate a Jew. Three against one. A roomful against one. An antisemitic scene.
The man who asked him about his clothes, Brian Glenn, is a conspiracy-theorizing far-right journalist. It is not clear why he was in the Oval Office; but he does seem to know Marjorie Taylor-Greene, she of the Jewish space lasers and the determined defense of Russian propaganda. The man who demanded deference and spoke of “propaganda tours,” JD Vance, had just returned from Germany, where he made a point of publicly supporting the German far right. Vance presents Zelens’kyi as a corrupt liar, with no evidence beyond what was brought to him by an internet which has, apparently, found his vulnerabilities. The man who insisted that the Americans (and indeed he himself personally) were the real heroes, Donald Trump, told Jews last fall they would be held responsible if he lost the election – among many other things. And the man behind them all, Elon Musk, supports the extreme right in several countries, adapts his social media platform to support fascists, and is notorious around the world for his Hitlergrüß. Musk’s idea that Zelens’kyi is a grifter could hardly be more antisemitic.
Pierre Joris (1946-2025)
Pierre Joris, a poet and translator who tackled some of the 20th century’s most difficult verse, rendering into English the complex work of the German-Romanian poet Paul Celan, died on Feb. 27 at his home in Brooklyn. He was 78.
His wife, Nicole Peyraffite, said the cause was complications of cancer.
Mr. Joris was the author of dozens of volumes of his own poetry and prose. But much of his life’s work was spent grappling with the poetry of Celan, whom many critics considered, in the words of one scholar, “arguably the greatest European poet in the postwar period.”
That greatness comes with a hitch for readers, though: the fiendish difficulty of a writer whose lyrics were formed and deformed by the crucible of the Holocaust — “that which happened,” as Celan termed it. Both his parents were murdered by the Nazis in what is now Romania. Less than 30 years later, Celan put an end to his own life in France, jumping into the Seine river in 1970 at the age of 49.
Administration Continues to Weaken US Government
On Tuesday afternoon, the Trump administration announced that 443 federally owned properties were eligible to be sold, including such iconic buildings as the D.C. headquarters of the Justice Department and the Department of Housing and Urban Development.
But there was a problem: Many of the agencies affected were unaware that their buildings were going to be on the list because their directors had not been consulted, according to a General Services Administration employee briefed on internal deliberations, including a Wednesday meeting of top officials at the agency that oversees federal real estate.
The list was later pared down to exclude most D.C.-area buildings, then completely removed overnight, with the GSA webpage where it previously had been displayed featuring a new comment saying that the list will be “coming soon.”
A warning sign for democracy in the United States.
Deborah Lipstadt Explains Why She Won’t Teach at Columbia
Deborah Lipstadt explains why she won’t teach at Columbia:
My decision to withdraw my name from consideration for a teaching post at Columbia is based on three calculations.
First, I am not convinced that the university is serious about taking the necessary and difficult measures that would create an atmosphere that allows for true inquiry.
Second, I fear that my presence would be used as a sop to convince the outside world that “Yes, we in the Columbia/Barnard orbit are fighting antisemitism. We even brought in the former Special Envoy to Monitor and Combat Antisemitism.” I will not be used to provide cover for a completely unacceptable situation.
Third, I am not sure that I would be safe or even able to teach without being harassed. I do not flinch in the face of threats. But this is not a healthy or acceptable learning environment.
On too many university campuses, the inmates—and these may include administrators, student disrupters, and off-campus agitators as well as faculty members—are running the asylum. They are turning universities into parodies of true academic inquiry.
Lipstadt (born 1947) is an American historian and diplomat, best known as author of the books Denying the Holocaust (1993), History on Trial: My Day in Court with a Holocaust Denier (2005), The Eichmann Trial (2011), and Antisemitism: Here and Now (2019). She served as the United States Special Envoy for Monitoring and Combating Anti-Semitism from 2022 to 2025. Since 1993 she has been the Dorot Professor of Modern Jewish History and Holocaust Studies at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia.
NYT: ’The MAGA War on Speech’
The New York Times Editorial Board:
Government officials are supposed to use their considerable regulatory powers for the benefit of the public, not for personal or partisan goals. This administration, however, is mustering the arms of government to suppress speech it doesn’t like and compel words and ideas it prefers. It sees the press not as an institution with an explicit constitutional privilege but as a barrier to overcome, like an inspector general or a freethinking Republican senator. Members of Congress can be targeted for primaries, and inspectors general can be fired; under the same mentality, reporters need to be excluded and their bosses subjected to litigation.
The administration and the broader MAGA movement are demonstrating that they lack the confidence to permit free thinking by the American people. But those people still have the powers granted to them more than 230 years ago by the Bill of Rights to make themselves heard.
Manton Reece: 'Something is wrong with Trump'
We can all see it. It is beyond political parties. Beyond ideology. Beyond whether he is corrupt or competent.
David Brooks, on the PBS NewsHour after the Trump and Zelenskyy meeting at the White House:
All my life, I’ve had a certain idea about America. That we’re a flawed country, but we’re fundamentally a force for good in the world. That we defeated Soviet Union, we defeated fascism, we did the Marshall Plan, we did PEPFAR to help people live in Africa. And we make mistakes. Iraq, Vietnam. But they’re usually mistakes out of stupidity, naivete, and arrogance. They’re not because we’re ill-intentioned.
What I have seen over the last six weeks is the United States behaving vilely. Vilely to our friends in Canada and Mexico, vilely to our friends in Europe. And today was the bottom of the barrel. Vilely to a man who is defending Western values, at great personal risk to him and his countrymen.
Folks are starting to speak out as democracy is under attack.
Purge at DC US Attorney’s Office
Spencer S. Hsu writing in The Washington Post:
Seven top leaders of the U.S. attorney’s office for Washington, D.C., were demoted to misdemeanor and entry-level intake positions Friday, according to people familiar with the matter, in the latest Trump administration purge of career Justice Department prosecutors who handled politically sensitive cases.
The prosecutors are among a larger group targeted for “retribution” by President Donald Trump and loyalists, including interim U.S. attorney Ed Martin, because of their roles in Jan. 6 Capitol seditious conspiracy and riot cases and others, including ones involving Trump allies such as advisers Stephen K. Bannon and Peter Navarro, according to eight people close to the office, speaking on the condition of anonymity for fear of reprisals.
Long-Time Washington Post Cartoonist Quits After Cartoon Criticizing Amazon Killed
Ann Telnaes writing on Substack:
I’ve worked for the Washington Post since 2008 as an editorial cartoonist. I have had editorial feedback and productive conversations—and some differences—about cartoons I have submitted for publication, but in all that time I’ve never had a cartoon killed because of who or what I chose to aim my pen at. Until now.
The cartoon that was killed criticizes the billionaire tech and media chief executives who have been doing their best to curry favor with incoming President-elect Trump. There have been multiple articles recently about these men with lucrative government contracts and an interest in eliminating regulations making their way to Mar-a-lago. The group in the cartoon included Mark Zuckerberg/Facebook & Meta founder and CEO, Sam Altman/AI CEO, Patrick Soon-Shiong/LA Times publisher, the Walt Disney Company/ABC News, and Jeff Bezos/Washington Post owner.
While it isn’t uncommon for editorial page editors to object to visual metaphors within a cartoon if it strikes that editor as unclear or isn’t correctly conveying the message intended by the cartoonist, such editorial criticism was not the case regarding this cartoon. To be clear, there have been instances where sketches have been rejected or revisions requested, but never because of the point of view inherent in the cartoon’s commentary. That’s a game changer…and dangerous for a free press._
The New York Times reports that David Shipley, the Washington Post’s opinions editor, responded that he rejected the cartoon because “we had just published a column on the same topic as the cartoon and had already scheduled another column.”
Shipley has since resigned after owner Jeff Bezos mandated the section prioritize two topics, personal liberties and free markets, and not publish dissenting views in those areas.
Yale Historian Timothy Snyder’s Dire Warning About Elon Musk and Donald Trump
Yale historian Timothy Snyder quoted in an interesting interview conduced by David Horowitz in The Times of Israel:
I don’t think either Musk or Trump is working within a framework of US national interest. I think they’re working within a much more 19th-century East India Company, colonial-style framework, where what really matters is the big company, and the government maybe gets dragged along. But the important thing is the big company.
Trump is very comfortable in the number two role. It’s a natural fit for him. Trump plays a strong man on TV. He’s an actor, but he’s not the director. He’s not the scriptwriter. That’s what Musk is.
Trump is very comfortable showing his skills and his talents in public, and he’s very skillful. He’s very talented. But I think he’s essentially the frontman for what is, in fact, the Musk administration. I think that’s comfortable for him. People perceive Trump as being number one. Trump’s the one who gets all the adulation. Trump’s the one who has the popular movement. I think he sees Musk as the person who’s going to allow him to remain in power, or whatever you want to call it, in office, indefinitely.
There are a lot of people who think that Musk and Trump have to collide at some point, and I’m not among them, because I think the hierarchy is already structured, and I think it’s comfortable to both parties.
The Holocaust History Podcast
The Holocaust History Podcast, hosted by historian Waitman Wade Beorn, explores various aspects of the Holocaust through discussions with diverse guests.
500 Days of Captivity - Bring Them Home
Yechiel (Michael) Leiter, Israel’s new ambassador to the United States, speaking at Washington Hebrew Congregation and praying for the release of all hostages. It’s been 500 days.
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Hostages taken into Gaza: 251
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Hostages remaining in Gaza: 73, including 3 taken before Oct. 7, 2023
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Hostages in Gaza believed to be dead: 36, including one from before Oct. 7, 2023
The Diaries of Friedrich Kellner
The second and final volume of the biography of Adolf Hitler by German historian Volker Ullrich is entitled Hitler: Downfall: 1939-1945. Roger Abrams, writing in the New York Journal of Books, calls Ullrich’s work “a remarkable treatise on the malevolence of power in modern times.”
Early in the volume, Ullrich commends the diaries of Friedrich Kellner. Kellner was a court official in the western German town of Laubach who had no special access to wartime information. Kellner was repulsed by the Nazi regime and kept detailed diaries based on what he read in the German press and by talking to people. He hoped his diaries would be a warning to future generations about blind faith.
Ullrich explains1 that Kellner’s diaries “show that it was entirely possible for normal people in small-town Germany to see through the lies of Nazi propaganda and learn of things like the ‘euthanasia’ murders of patients in psychiatric institutions and the mass executions carried out in occupied parts of eastern Europe.”
The Kellner diaries were published in 2011 in German and now are available in English. The diaries are also the subject of a touching 2007 TV documentary on YouTube created by Kellner’s American grandson.
Understanding the Magnitude of the Holocaust
The emphasis on deportations to death camps, particularly from western Europe and particularly to Auschwitz, overshadows the benighted experience of Jews in Polish ghettos. Yet the number of Jews incarcerated in the ghettos of Warsaw and Lodz in 1940–1 exceeds the combined Jewish populations in France, Belgium and the Netherlands at the same time. More Jews died in Warsaw than were deported from France to the killing sites of eastern Europe. More Jews were shot within walking distance of their homes in Kiev on 29–30 September 1941 than were forced to endure the horrendous five-day journey in box-cars from transit camps in Belgium to death camps in Poland. Yet one of the most typical Holocaust memorials is a freight car mounted on a segment of rail track.
Cesarani, David (2016-11-07T22:58:59.000). Final Solution: The Fate of the Jews 1933-1949 . St. Martin’s Press. Kindle Edition (footnote omitted)
George Will: Holocaust Museum Showcases Lessons for Today
George Will writing in The Washington Post on the 25th anniversary of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington:
Nothing — nothing — is unthinkable, and political institutions by themselves provide no permanent safety from barbarism, which permanently lurks beneath civilization’s thin, brittle crust.
This is why the Holocaust is the dark sun into which this democracy should peer.
The Need for a Jewish State
Theodor Herzl wrote in 1896, more than 40 years before the Holocaust:
My happier co-religionists will not believe me till Jew-baiting teaches them the truth; for the longer Anti-Semitism lies in abeyance the more fiercely will it break out.
Herzl, Theodor, Der Judenstaat. English, Location 873. Kindle Edition.
Herzl envisioned the founding of a future independent Jewish state during the 20th century. He argued that the best way to avoid antisemitism in Europe was to create this independent Jewish state.