Professor Watchlist

Dr. Elisabeth Anker is an Associate Professor of American Studies and Political Science at  George Washington University in Washington DC. The author of “Ugly Freedoms,” Dr. Anker has described freedom as a “slippery concept” that upholds patriarchy, colonialism, ecological destruction, and white supremacy.

In an article for the Canadian Broadcasting Company (CBC), Dr. Anker vilifies right-wing and conservative groups who utilize “freedom” as their rallying cry to remove COVID-19 restrictions. Her comments were published just as the Canadian government began cracking down on the “Freedom Convoy” by using emergency police powers.

The Freedom Convoy was organized in the winter of 2022 to protest the Canadian government’s enforcement of a vaccination mandate for truckers. Participants parked their trucks in downtown Ottawa and halted traffic for weeks in front of the Canadian Parliament. Elsewhere, truck drivers blocked vital points of entry on the US-Canadian border.

After several weeks, the city police began seizing fuel and other supplies from the convoy. The crowdfunding site, “GoFundMe,” pulled a donation page from the truckers at the request of the Ottawa Police. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau authorized the use of the “Emergencies Act” which grants the Canadian government extrajudicial powers in breaking up the blockade.

The organizers of the protest were soon arrested and held without bail. Individuals who participated or donated to the convoy soon found their bank accounts frozen. As police moved to clear the site of the protest, footage emerged of mounted units trampling demonstrators, including an elderly woman in a mobility scooter. Additional footage shows police injuring reporters and threatening others with arrest for covering the protest.

In the days leading up to the crackdown, Dr. Anker described the protests as a “violent” form of freedom and accused the “far-right” of abusing liberties to oppose equity.

“On the far right, [individual freedom] is often translated into somebody who refuses to be bound by norms of equality, treating all people equally or norms to remedy inequality, whether that’s trying to remedy racial discrimination or gender discrimination.”

She further laments how Canadians take advantage of the concept of freedom as a “national entitlement,” just as Americans do.

“It’s been taking a lot of people by surprise to see people in Canada, who often seem so much more accepting of social interdependence, to start pushing back against it with the language of individual freedom.”

In a previous article for the New York Times—titled, “The Exploitation of ‘Freedom’ in America,”—Dr. Anker condemns Americans who cite their “ugly freedoms” to remove mask mandates and prohibit abortions.

“Each of these actions used the language of freedom to justify anti-democratic politics. These, then, are what I call “ugly freedoms”: used to block the teaching of certain ideas, diminish employees’ ability to have power in the workplace, and undermine public health.

“These are not merely misunderstood freedoms, or even just a cynical use of the language of freedom to frame bigoted policies. They manifest, instead, a particular interpretation of freedom that is not expansive, but exclusionary and coercive.”

She goes on to write that the “long history of ugly freedoms” includes justifications for slavery, marital abuse, and segregation; freedoms in America, she argues, have suppressed “nonwhites, women, and workers,” and have been used to justify white supremacy.

As of publication, the Canadian Parliament has just voted to extend the Emergencies Act. The Deputy Prime Minister of Canada, Chrystia Freeland, has indicated that certain emergency powers will remain permanent.

Trudeau’s deputy, Chrystia Freeland, who is also a director of Klaus Schwab’s World Economic Forum, says she plans to make her emergency powers permanent. pic.twitter.com/g8JTCwzmqX

— Ezra Levant 🍁🚛 (@ezralevant) February 19, 2022

Students and Parents contact the Department of American Studies at George Washington University at (202) 994-6070 or at amst@gwu.edu

Updated – February 22nd, 2022