Northern Ontario academics say they worry for their U.S. colleagues in wake of Trump policies

A professor at Laurentian University in Sudbury says she is concerned about her American friends and colleagues who fear for their careers because of executive orders from United States President Donald Trump.

In a Feb. 14 letter to educators across the United States, Craig Trainor, the acting assistant secretary for civil rights with the United States Department of Education, threatened to cut federal funding to schools that continue to support diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) programs.

Any elementary, secondary and post secondary education institution that receives federal funding would be affected.

Watching from Canada as this scenario unfolds south of the border, Amanda Shweinbenz says many American academics fear that policy could end their careers.

"I have a chapter coming out about how white women need to… work with and coalesce with racialized women in order to decolonize academia and address those barriers," said Schweinbenz, whose research focuses primarily on marginalized people in sport.

"When that comes out, how will that publication — that's [co-authored by] a Black woman scholar from the United States — how will that impact her career?"

The letter from Trainor said American education institutions "have discriminated against students on the basis of race, including white and Asian students, many of whom come from disadvantaged backgrounds and low-income families."

Trainor painted DEI initiatives as the cause of that discrimination. 

But Schweinbenz counters that argument, saying DEI initiatives are about creating more accommodations and accessibility for students and staff.

"It's about people with physical disabilities, or cognitive disabilities, people who need additional support because of the barriers that we have in this ableist world," she said.

Schweinbenz adds that racialized academics, especially women, often help manage DEI initiatives at their institutions, and their careers could be at risk because of the time they dedicate to that work.

She says the political sea change in the U.S. has already started to affect Canadian academics as well.

University of New Brunswick sociology professor Nathan Kalman-Lamb says on Jan. 17, U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents stopped him from boarding a plane from Montreal to Washington, D.C.

"I have not received a single explanation for why I was stopped," Kalman-Lamb told CBC News.

He was headed to the U.S. to promote his new book, The End of College Football, which explores "how football is both predicated on a foundation of coercion and suffused with racialized harm and exploitation," according to the publisher.

Kalman-Lamb says about two weeks after he was stopped from boarding his flight, his co-author Derek Silva had his NEXUS card revoked. The card allows for expedited border crossings between Canada and the U.S.

Uncertainty for academics

Thomas Merritt, a professor at Laurentian's School of Natural Sciences, says policy changes in the U.S. have led to a lot of uncertainty for his colleagues south of the border.

"The biggest issue seems to be that contracts and commitments are not being honoured," he said.

"Grants are not being reviewed… The scientific system in any country is based essentially on writing grants, getting grants funded, and then pursuing that research. That process is sort of on hold in the U.S."

Merritt, who has dual Canadian and American citizenship, says he continues to maintain close ties to the country of his birth. That includes mentoring young researchers with the Genetic Society of America.

"Some people really feel personally threatened," he said. 

"I don't know anybody working in science right now that doesn't feel unease and uncertainty, whether it's because they're feeling personally attacked or because they're not sure whether the grant that they have is going to be reviewed."