Since Donald Trump’s election and his repeated threats of a trade war, many Canadians have been carefully monitoring their purchases to avoid U.S. products. The Trump administration’s attacks on ethnic and sexual minorities, its blatant disregard for basic human rights, the extraordinary power granted to unelected billionaire Elon Musk, its rejection of truth and science in public health policies, and its support for Putin’s autocratic regime have consequences that extend far beyond the United States.
Since the United States is a global benchmark in many domains, the ripple effects of these actions are felt worldwide. It is up to all of us to stand firm in defending the social and geopolitical progress that Trump is working to dismantle.
We had planned to attend an academic conference this month in Niagara Falls, New York, organized by the State University of New York at Buffalo. However, the increasing number of aggressive border interrogations targeting minorities and individuals suspected of supporting diversity, along with Trump’s interventionist policies in universities — where institutions risk losing funding for allowing campus protests, while protesters face threats of imprisonment or deportation — signal a political instrumentalization of American universities that is incompatible with the principles of academic freedom.
To voice our opposition to the climate of fear taking hold in the United States, we have decided not to attend the Niagara Falls conference in person.
However, we are not advocating for a boycott of U.S. scholars. Quite the opposite: Canada must serve as an intellectual refuge in these dark times. Instead of avoiding engagement, we propose that Canadian universities should actively seek to host more cross-border academic activities.
In our case, we have proposed to participate in the conference remotely to explain our stance. We have also requested that our registration fees be donated to organizations supporting the revitalization of Indigenous languages in the United States.
In the 1930s, the international community’s complacency toward Nazi Germany — including from Canadian and Quebeҫois leadership — ultimately cost humanity tens of millions of lives. We urge the academic community not to repeat this mistake. We cannot continue to conduct academic activities in the United States as if nothing were amiss. We must take seriously the systematic contempt that Trump and his inner circle display toward their own people and others, and we urge a boycott of academic events in the United States.
Philippe Blouin is a doctoral candidate at McGill University in Montreal. René Lemieux is an assistant professor of translation studies at Concordia University in Montreal.
