Offer ‘academic refugees’ from U.S. a safe haven in Canada, profs urge party leaders

Hundreds of professors are asking Canadian federal party leaders to provide a safe sanctuary for “academic refugees” and safeguard academic freedoms on campuses, as American universities face mounting pressure from the United States government.

An open letter signed by more than 500 faculty members criticized President Donald Trump’s attacks on U.S. schools and called on the next government to provide more funding for Canada’s higher education system.

“Canadian academics and researchers are deeply concerned about the Trump administration’s unprecedented assault on American universities,” the letter reads.

“This crisis endangers not only U.S. academic freedom, technological leadership, and global soft power, but also the closely connected Canadian institutions that rely on shared funding, research residencies and collaborations.”

Jesse Greener, a chemistry professor at Laval University who signed the letter, said Canadian schools have been “chronically underfunded,” which has caused widespread problems such as program cuts, insolvencies and the deferral of important maintenance.

Now is the right time to bring some attention to the problem, he said.

“We want to make sure that very important issues that are outlined in the letter are understood as being important issues by the different federal parties,” he said, adding that Canadians haven’t heard enough about higher education during the election campaign.

Revitalizing Canadian universities is essential in the face of “rising anti-intellectualism” south of the border, Greener said.

He said allowing foreign scholars and researchers to settle in Canada and providing more financial resources to universities to recruit them could help address those challenges.

Signatories say a well-funded system in Canada should be a safe haven for students and professors fleeing the U.S.

Greener said it is also a “moral and ethical responsibility to promote academic freedom elsewhere, including the United States.”

“There are many academics that are informally reaching out to colleagues here in Canada looking for a lifeline to, you know, remove themselves from the system that is quickly crumbling,” he said.

The White House has been targeting American universities, using federal funding as a tool to exert influence on those institutions or force them to change policies the Trump administration has deemed inappropriate. The country’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency has also detained numerous student activists over their alleged involvement in pro-Palestinian protests on campuses.

In Canada, Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre has threatened to pull back federal funding from universities over their alleged ideological slant.

When the party released its Quebec platform last month, he said a Conservative government would “put an end to the imposition of woke ideology in the federal civil service and in the allocation of federal funds for university research.”

The Liberal party’s passing mentions of higher education in this campaign include a promise to accelerate Indigenous students’ access to post-secondary institutions and a pledge to establish a $20-million capital fund for colleges to create more training spaces.

Aimée Dawson, a Canadian-American professor who teaches dentistry at the University of Laval, said she worries that what’s happening in the U.S. might expand to academia in Canada.

“We have to always mobilize and fight for our freedoms,” she said, adding that professors and researchers in the United States are dealing with sweeping budget cuts, massive structural changes, and are afraid of getting in trouble for what they publish or discuss in meetings.

“It’s hard to watch what’s going on right now,” she said.

Dawson said she is in touch with academics south of the border who want to leave the United States and Canada could step in to give them a “safe haven.” By doing so, it could seize an opportunity to transform its higher education system, she said.

“If we were to fund faculty positions this could be a real game changer for Canada, for Canadian research,” she said in an interview. “This could be a transformative moment for Canadian universities, for knowledge really.”

Dawson, who also signed the open letter, hailed the recent move by Harvard University to sue the Trump administration over a funding freeze.

“It seems that under the current administration an appeasement is not going to work, you would need to fight back,” she said.

Whichever party wins next week’s federal election should also move to double faculty positions, remove caps on foreign student immigration, and ensure the protection of academic freedoms and the right to protest without fear of prosecution, the open letter says.

It also calls for protections of university governance and autonomy.

“These actions will position Canada as a global leader in knowledge, equity, and freedom,” it reads.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published April 22, 2025.

Sharif Hassan, The Canadian Press