… Read the restYale professors who left the school and accepted positions at the University of Toronto are speaking out about the Trump administration’s attacks on post-secondary institutions, expressing their fears about authoritarianism rising south of the border.
Three Yale professors – all of them vocal critics of President Donald Trump – have recently taken up roles at the Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy.
Earlier this week, philosophy professor Jason Stanley, who has written about fascism and propaganda, announced that he would leave Yale for U of T.
He joins professors Marci Shore and Timothy Snyder, who specialize in Eastern European history. The two academics are married and arrived in Canada last August, on
All entries by this author
Authoritarianism rising
Mar 29th, 2025 2:59 am | By Ophelia BensonThe loudest yelps for liberty
Mar 28th, 2025 2:55 pm | By Ophelia BensonMicromanaging all the museums.
Trump on Thursday ordered that “improper, divisive or anti-American ideology” be removed from the Smithsonian Institution, the vast museum and research complex that is a premier exhibition space for U.S. history and culture.
That’s not his job. His power and authority are not infinite, and I really doubt they stretch to telling the Smithsonian what it can and can’t include in its museums.
According to Trump’s order, the Democratic Biden administration “pushed a divisive ideology that reconstrued America’s promotion of liberty as fundamentally flawed, inflecting revered institutions like the Smithsonian and national parks with false narratives.”
Is it divisive though? Which is more divisive: insisting that “America’s promotion of liberty” has been without flaw throughout … Read the rest
Hard slap
Mar 28th, 2025 9:36 am | By Ophelia BensonIt’s so fascinating when they do this.
At the lib dem conference last weekend where they made great efforts to be inclusive.
As a woman, however, I felt like misogyny had strolled up and slapped me hard across the face.@SexMattersOrg @WomensRightsNet @DingsdaleJ95299 @GBNEWS pic.twitter.com/z6rCQYr9Pr
— Nicmar17 (@Nicmar172) March 27, 2025
MEN get men-only toilets but WOMEN do not get women-only toilets.
Why?
Women perving on men in public toilets is not a thing.
Men perving on women in public toilets is most definitely a thing.
So WHY the FUCK do these imbeciles proudly make the men’s toilets exclusive to men while making the women’s toilets open to everyone?
Other than sheer deep-dyed loathing of women?… Read the rest
Punish the pro bono work
Mar 28th, 2025 9:21 am | By Ophelia BensonTwo major law firms are taking the Trump administration to court on Friday, seeking to block executive orders that the firms say target them for zealous representation of clients and their hearty pro bono work.
The lawsuit by the Jenner & Block firm, filed in federal district court in Washington, D.C., alleges violations of the First Amendment guarantees to free speech and free association. It also alleges the order violates the due process clause of the Fifth Amendment by hurting the firm’s ability to practice law; and violates the Sixth Amendment, for undermining the relationship between attorneys and their clients, and clients’ right to lawyers of their choosing.
And Amendment forty seventy leventy … Read the rest
Far from any town
Mar 28th, 2025 9:01 am | By Ophelia BensonI love it when people I don’t like show up on my doorstep demanding dinner.
… Read the restWhen he arrives in Greenland on Friday, Vice President JD Vance is not going to get much of a welcome from Greenlanders.
Mr. Vance will be the highest-ranking American official ever to visit the island.
But the government of Greenland never invited him and after all that President Trump has said about his desire to “get” the island, many Greenlanders don’t want Mr. Vance coming at all. Mr. Vance is scheduled to visit a remote American military base on the northern coast, far from any town.
Military base. Geddit? MILITARY BASE? They’re so subtle.
The White House’s original plan was more ambitious. Usha
Coverup
Mar 28th, 2025 4:47 am | By Ophelia BensonThe Smithsonian must present US history as one long list of Very Excellent Things.
Trump issued an executive order Thursday evening promising to eliminate “improper, divisive, or anti-American ideology” from the Smithsonian Institution’s museums and restore “monuments, memorials, statues, markers” that have been removed over the past five years.
There can’t be anything “divisive” in Smithy museums. Hmmm. That means Smithy museums have to be empty. Everything is “divisive” to someone. People aren’t clones of each other, so their thoughts can differ, so there is never any guarantee that not one single person will say No.
… Read the restThe institution, the official keeper of the American story, has operated independently as a public-private partnership created by an act of Congress in 1846.
Rumeysa Ozturk
Mar 27th, 2025 3:56 pm | By Ophelia Benson… Read the restWhile there is a lot of focus on the major scandals involving Donald Trump’s administration, it’s important we don’t lose sight of what’s happening inside this country, where we are witnessing the federal government snatch people right off the streets for their political speech. The latest, most chilling example of that happened Tuesday outside of Boston, when Rumeysa Ozturk, a Ph.D. student and Fulbright scholar at Tufts University, was taken off a residential street in Somerville, Massachusetts.
At 5:15 p.m., Ozturk, who came to the United States from Turkey on a student visa, had just left her apartment when, as video obtained by NBC News shows, she was approached by a man
The watchdog said
Mar 27th, 2025 3:28 pm | By Ophelia BensonAlso by the way the future fines will be much bigger.
… Read the restUniversities could face multi-million-pound fines for breaches of freedom of speech rules, the Office for Students (OfS) said.
The University of Sussex was fined £585,000 after the OfS said its equality policy – which included rules to “positively represent trans people” – could prevent staff and students voicing opposing views. Sussex was investigated after Prof Kathleen Stock left the university in 2021 accused of transphobia.
Arif Ahmed, OfS director for freedom of speech, said the fine could have been as high as £3.7m and there was “potential for higher fines in the future”.
…
The University of Sussex was the first to be fined under new powers given
Comerford’s damp fantasies
Mar 27th, 2025 2:46 pm | By Ophelia BensonThe Defenders of the Holy Genderfaith are vowing revenge.
Obviously, Sussex should challenge this ruling, and I hope they go hard on the line that "gender critical beliefs" is just a misnomer for transphobia, and get GC people under oath challenged on what their "gender critical beliefs" actually are.
— Aidan Comerford (@AidanCTweets) March 27, 2025
I wonder what he imagines that “get GC people under oath challenged” can mean. Get them under oath how, where, by what authority, under what circumstances? Is he fantasizing mass arrests, mass incarceration, mass grillings by a heroic prosecutor? For what? On what grounds? Under which dictator?
Stupid little twerp. … Read the rest
Oh who needs the CDC anyway
Mar 27th, 2025 11:33 am | By Ophelia BensonBaddy Kennedy is slashing health agencies, because of course he is.
Robert F Kennedy Jr said the nation’s health agencies will cut 10,000 jobs from their 82,000-person workforce – an enormous reduction the US health secretary characterized as streamlining federal bureaucracy amid internal resistance to the administration’s agenda.
The cuts announced on Thursday, along with previous restructuring and voluntary buy-outs, mean the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) will lose roughly 20,000 workers.
Kennedy said the department will also close half of its regional offices and create a new agency called the “administration for a healthy America”, or AHA.
Aha, Kennedy wants us all to rely on quack medicine instead of the real kind.
… Read the restHHS is among
Just fired
Mar 27th, 2025 11:13 am | By Ophelia BensonIn current (outrageous) news –
I was just fired by @VCHhealthcare after 13 years of employment as a registered nurse, with no severance, because I know that men are not women.
— Amy Eileen Hamm (@preta_6) March 27, 2025
So Vancouver Coastal Health wants nurses who don’t know that men are not women?
Doesn’t that sound like the very short route to medical malpractice? Doesn’t that sound like “First do all the harm you can”? Doesn’t that sound like the flat negation of any reasonable hiring/keeping criterion for medical professionals?
What next? Firing nurses and doctors who can’t can tell the difference between people and rabbits, cormorants, rattlesnakes, bowls of soup?… Read the rest
Now canceled
Mar 27th, 2025 6:39 am | By Ophelia BensonAw. Nobody wants her to knock on the door.
Representatives of the American government have been going door to door in Greenland’s capital, Nuuk, in recent days ahead of the now-canceled visit by the U.S. Second Lady, Usha Vance.
This is according to TV 2’s correspondent in Nuuk, Jesper Steinmetz.
“American…
— Orla Joelsen (@OJoelsen) March 26, 2025
“American representatives have been walking around, practically knocking on one door after another in the past few days to ask if people might be interested in a visit from the Vice President’s wife. Everywhere, the answer was the same: ‘No, thanks.’” Source; TV2.
My answer would have been “Hell no” at best.… Read the rest
You can’t get there from here
Mar 27th, 2025 5:24 am | By Ophelia BensonStill struggling mightily to square the circle:
The University of Edinburgh’s new trans policy could be illegal, leaving the cash-strapped institution open to legal challenge.
The document — a copy of which has been obtained by The Herald — tells staff they can use “the toilet facilities that align with their gender identity” rather than their biological sex, even if they do not have a gender recognition certificate.
As I keep boringly repeating: they’re telling staff the impossible. If you make all the toilet facilities “whatever” then people can’t use the ones that align with their genner idenniny because there are no single genner toilets left. It’s a very simple point: wouldn’t you think people running universities would be … Read the rest
Their fight for inclusivity
Mar 26th, 2025 6:08 pm | By Ophelia BensonIt’s so touching to see men encouraging men to play hockey – one of the more dangerous sports available – against women. Their skulls and arms and legs will be fine, so who cares if the women’s will be smashed?
Ah yes. ‘Rachel’ insists it’s fair to play against women. His Nottingham Uni opponents may not agree.
— Halo (@Pluto_Freud_x) March 26, 2025
No thank you
Mar 26th, 2025 3:50 pm | By Ophelia BensonAw, really, not even one person?? That’s just sad.
https://twitter.com/VikingNAFOFella/status/1904962394142519774 Still, you can see their point of view. She’s married to the vice puppet of the guy who wants to grab Greenland the way he would grab a hamburger at a baseball game. It would be like expecting Londoners to welcome a visit from Goering’s wife in 1941.… Read the restUnapologetic
Mar 26th, 2025 10:28 am | By Ophelia Benson… Read the restDemocrat Jonah Wheeler stood alone before a capacity crowd in the Peterborough Town Hall as critics, leaders in his own party, and even some childhood friends railed against the 22-year-old state representative’s vote for legislation deemed “transphobic” by progressive activists.
Wheeler (D-Peterborough) was unapologetic during Tuesday night’s question and answer session sponsored by the Peterborough League of Women Voters as he explained why he broke with his party and voted for HB 148. The bill protects the right of local institutions to keep biological males out of women’s locker rooms and bathrooms.
“Nobody should be discriminated against because of who they are,” Wheeler said. “We can respect trans women, and we can respect the rights of women who object to
BBCphobia
Mar 26th, 2025 8:56 am | By Ophelia BensonBad BBC. Bad. Sit. SIT. You’re a very bad BBC.
University of Sussex fined £585k in transphobia free speech row
That’s on the main page. If you click on the link you get “University of Sussex fined £585k in transgender free speech row”
Spot the difference? Transphobia v transgender free speech.
Bad bad BBC.… Read the rest
Sorrows come not single spies but in battalions
Mar 26th, 2025 6:22 am | By Ophelia BensonBreaking news in Sussex rebuke drama – our good friend latsot has turned up one of those sinister Connections that can explain so much.
Given this reaction, it's interesting to note that Sasha Roseneil was Sally Hines' PhD supervisor. https://t.co/V2bk8HV78P
— latsot (@latsot) March 26, 2025
Oh of course she was. The only thing as of course would be Hines being Roseneil’s PhD supervisor. The professors of transology train each other to preach the gospel of transology wherever gullible students are found, and they link arms to bully Enemy Women out of academia altogether. … Read the rest
Certain groups
Mar 26th, 2025 5:51 am | By Ophelia BensonThe Financial Times on Sussex and Stock and all that:
An English university is set to be fined a record £585,000 over allegations it failed to uphold free speech and academic freedom, in a landmark ruling in the debate over student rights on campus.
England’s higher education regulator found “significant and serious breaches” of free speech and governance issues at the University of Sussex, according to a draft press release seen by the Financial Times.
The Office for Students press release, to be published on Wednesday, said a policy intended to prevent abuse or harassment of certain groups on campus had created “a chilling effect” that might cause staff and students to “self-censor”.
Well that’s the thing, isn’t … Read the rest
Sussex owes a LOT of money
Mar 25th, 2025 5:24 pm | By Ophelia BensonBig news!
BREAKING: Sussex university faces record £585,000 fine for failing to uphold free speech and academic freedom.
OfS found its on “trans and non-binary equality” created a “chilling effect” on campus. pic.twitter.com/Q5Azjux6cO
— Sex Matters (@SexMattersOrg) March 25, 2025
… Read the restAn English university is set to be fined a record £585,000 over allegations it failed to uphold free speech and academic freedom, in a landmark ruling in the debate over student rights on campus.
England’s higher education regulator found “significant and serious breaches” of free speech and governance issues at the University of Sussex, according to a draft press release seen by the Financial Times.
The Office for Students press release, to be published on Wednesday, said policies intended
