On February 28, the US and Israel launched a join airstrike attack on Iran, killing many high-ranking government officials including Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Iran quickly retaliated in a series of missile and drone strikes against Israel and US allies in the region. The war has since turned into a chaotic global conflict; political leaders stand divided, the energy market has stalled, the Gulf states suffer damage from the unprecedented attack, and Trump speaks exclusively in contradictory terms about his next move.

Meanwhile, the Iranian government maintains a near- total internet blackout throughout the country, which renders it difficult to determine how the war is affecting Iranians on the inside of the conflict. The Daily was able to get in contact with a factory manager in Iran, to recount his experiences and share his thoughts from the first week of the conflict.

“[On the morning of Monday March 2], a very, very loud sound – caused by a bomb or missile – jolted me out of bed, waking me up,” he writes. “I froze, and did not immediately go to check on the factory until about 15 minutes later. In the factory, about 80 per cent of the windows facing the explosion were broken…The factory yard was full of bomb or missile fragments, full of large metal pieces, full of various parts including vision cameras, full of crushed rubble…broken glass covered my desk.”

“I think if [the explosion] had happened during working hours, we would have had at least 10-20 people injured…the distance between the explosion and our factory was about 100 meters.”

In the following week, Saeed cancelled work for his employees, although he went to the factory every day.

“Every day and night – at 10 p.m. or 3 a.m. or 8 a.m. etc., generally at different times – I heard a sound like an airplane or a missile. With my previous knowledge, I tried to take shelter quickly, so that if something happened, I wouldn’t get hurt. It sounded about two to four times every day.”

Once work resumed for Saeed’s employees, the sentiment amid the factory was one of unrest and paranoia. “There was worry in their eyes. A few of them had turned their feelings of worry into anger or chaos. Inadvertently, their words disturbed their coworkers and caused them to grow anxious as well. Seeing the state of the situation, I decided to call off work until further notice and send everyone home.”

“Some people decided to stay, to help clean up the rubble…at 9 a.m. we started replacing the broken windows. At noon, there was another explosion and the windows broke again.”

Such destruction and paranoia is characteristic of war. As the conflict drags on, Iranians – both within the country and in the diaspora – become increasingly disillusioned with the foreign powers who came to their “aid.” Hope dwindles for regime change and improved conditions once the war is over.

On the other hand, the majority of Iranians express discontent with the current regime, and have grown desperate for an alternative. “The ordinary people have lived without any peace or prosperity for 47 years. They are tired; they are unhappy,” Saeed tells us. “But they have found that whenever they protest, they face severe crackdowns and bloodshed, while the government remains untouched. I think more than 85 per cent of the people are against the government.”

Time and time again, mass protests against the regime have been met with violent retaliation. The most recent wave of protests in January and February of this year have been recorded as the deadliest wave of crackdowns in Iran’s modern history, with many estimates of fatalities exceeding 30,000.

This is why the assassination of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei on February 28 had such a profound effect on Iranians: after decades of protests that rendered thousands dead while harbouring no real change, hope is in scarce supply. The sudden death of the regime’s most important figurehead gives a despairing population a tangible source of hope to latch on to. The overwhelming sentiment seemed to be that Khamenei’s death had freed the people of Iran, and put a definitive end to their suffering.

However, liberation did not immediately follow Khamenei’s death. In fact, what Iran saw instead of democracy was its antithesis: Ali Khamenei’s son, Mojtaba Khamenei, was appointed by Iran’s Assembly of Experts as his replacement; and the Islamic regime, although weakened, remains in power.

Weakened in terms of state apparatus, but not in spirit; since the beginning of “Operation Epic Fury,” the Iranian government has doubled down on its repressive measures and intimidation tactics. On state television, one presenter threatened that “every single” dissident will be pursued, and they will “make [their] mothers mourn.” The chief of police claimed that anyone who takes to the streets against the regime “[will not be seen] as a protester or something else; we will see them as the enemy and do with them what we do with the enemy.” Some Iranians profess that, in spite of the current airstrikes, they are still more afraid of their own government than outside forces.

Their fear is not unfounded; the Islamic regime has routinely imprisoned, tortured, and killed those who it deems a threat to its hegemony. Systemic violence is intrinsic to the government’s state apparatus.

It is true that the US-Israeli attack is an illegal one, and the continual erosion of international law is deeply concerning. It is also true that American intervention in the Middle East, such as the “war on terror” in Afghanistan and the 2003 Iraqi invasion, has an egregious track record. The US’ meddling has often resulted in lengthy, drawn-out conflicts that destabilize governments and devastate local populations. However, the present alternative for Iran – complete withdrawal of US and Israeli forces from the region, leaving the people’s fate in the hands of the Islamic regime – isn’t awfully alluring either. It is likely that as soon as foreign attacks cease to be a threat, the Iranian government will carry out mass imprisonments and executions of its internal “enemies.”

One option touted enthusiastically by the diaspora is the return of the exiled crowned prince, Reza Pahlavi. Although Pahlavi has a sizeable support base in the Iranian diaspora, and perhaps has some backing in Iran, his competency for the role is questionable. Saeed has his reservations regarding the exiled prince: “A person who has only talked and lived in luxury for 47 years wouldn’t be willing to come to Iran even if they give him the country with both hands. In my opinion, the percentage of people’s desire for Reza Pahlavi…is not even between 5 and 15 per cent.”

In Saeed’s view, Reza Pahlavi is a troublesome candidate; “Having a father as the Shah is not proof of sensibility and wisdom. If your father was wise and sensible, the events of 1979 would not have taken place. [The Shah] also had in his mind a great delusion, and wanted not only Iran, but the entire world under his feet; a delusional dream of power and global domination. Like Mohammad Reza Shah, [Reza Pahlavi] is our Trump who wants to rule the world.”

When the most viable “democratic” alternative Iran sees for itself is a relic of an archaic autocratic dynasty, it is clear that Iran is not dealt a fair hand when it comes to democracy. Grievances and suffering have compounded over decades of living under oppressive rule, resulting in progressively lower expectations and standards for change. Even when people continue fighting for a “democratic” alternative, what they come to accept as “democracy” becomes more lenient.

What results is a nation in which war sparks celebration, and the most viable form of democracy is the return of monarchy. After 47 years of violence and bloodshed, war is peace and freedom is slavery.

The post Iran is Not Dealt a Fair Hand When it Comes to Democracy appeared first on The McGill Daily.

Every year, March 8 serves as a benchmark to gauge the causes that women are fighting for, a moment to reflect on the progress of last year’s concerns, and on the wave of new ones that have since emerged. This year, indignation towards legislative amendments in the province dominated demonstrations in Montreal and Quebec City, with thousands of participants protesting recent changes including threats to religious freedoms, reductions in women’s access to healthcare services, and narrow immigration policies.

A notable point of contention is the government’s ongoing pursuit of secularism. While in 2019, Bill 21 initially banned public service workers, like teachers, from wearing religious symbols in the workplace, last October, Bill 94 went a step further, prohibiting school staff, volunteers, and students from doing the same. According to CBC, the Quebec government intends to “defend equality between men and women,” though the bill can often carry out the opposite effect. Dolores Chew, a member of Women of Diverse Origins, the group who organized the march, explained that “women who wear hijabs are going to lose employment, making them economically dependent.” Thus, instead of reversing the effect of patriarchal power dynamics, measures like these reinforce them. The consequences of Bill 94, which encourages women to choose between faith and involvement in civil society, are already evident. In January, the Riverside Elementary School in Montreal banned Sabaah Khan, a mother who had volunteered at the library for 8 years, for wearing a hijab due to its compliance with Bill 94. Furthermore, the new secular proposal of Bill 9 expands the current restrictions on religious attire to subsidized daycares and private schools, in addition to banning prayer spaces and religious foods in public institutions.

Another central issue among protesters is women’s access to healthcare. Funding and staff shortages have led to the temporary closure of obstetrics clinics across the province. In the last few months, several women have had to travel hours to give birth due to a lack of professionals or clinics near them, particularly in the Gaspésie region in eastern Quebec. As reported by CBC, a member of the Parti Quebecois and a health critic, Joël Arseneau, denounced the government’s idleness, which treats women in the Gaspé like “second class citizens.” Those without access to public health insurance face even more obstacles, since the community groups that are meant to help them also face severe funding drawbacks from the provincial government. Moreover, intimate partner violence reports in Quebec tripled from 2015 to 2024. The rise in reports throughout the decade might not only reflect the quantity of cases, but also an increase in women reporting violence to the police. In the first three weeks of 2026, at least four men killed women in a context of intimate partner violence in Quebec. Additionally, women’s shelters are in demand now more than ever, with the housing crisis and limited access to the appropriate resources women need to leave dangerous situations.

Furthermore, the stricter immigration policies in the last few years have created an especially precarious environment for female immigrants. Filipino protester Deann Nardo, from Migrante Quebec, claims women of colour who immigrate to Quebec are more vulnerable to “exploitation and abuse,” both at home and in the workplace. These women are more than 20 per cent more likely than men to arrive in Canada with spousal status. They are put in precarious situations where the right of many immigrant women to remain in the country depends on their partner’s employment. This systemic economic dependence binds them to their partners resulting in not only a lack of self- sufficiency, but also a difficulty in leaving a patriarchal household. While open work permits were a gateway into finding employment, now, with greater restrictions on the eligibility of spouses and dependents, financial autonomy for immigrant women seems even further away.

The provincial instability mirrors a broader concern. On a global scale, the ascension of the far-right threatens the security of women’s rights. “There’s a rise in anti- feminist discourse,” says Anne- Valérie Lemieux-Breton, the coordinator of the social services group Regroupement des Groupes de Femmes de la Capitale- Nationale. Québec Solidaire (QS) leader Ruba Ghazal highlights how hateful comments online targeting female public figures discourage many women from continuing to share their views online. She partly attributes targeted online harassment to “a rise in misogynistic and masculinist discourse, even in schools.” Montreal-based author, India Desjardins, shared a recent comment in which she was targeted on one of her posts: “You’re a crazy bitch. Go get help.” Ghazal defends the importance of not trivializing such violence, as well as the need for a service that addresses the issue and helps victims feel safer. The QS leader claims “There is a lot of work to be done to educate and raise awareness among the population.”

International Women’s Month is here not just as an opportunity to celebrate all that women have conquered over centuries of oppression. It’s a reminder that systemic barriers against equality perpetually rig the game, and that women of colour constantly find themselves in a lose-lose. In this political climate, women like protester, Mathilde Leduc, are fearful that “the rights that we had will disappear over time.” Though standing tall March after March is a tiresome battle, we’re still standing, as resistance is imperative so that no woman is left behind.

The post Second-Class Citizens appeared first on The McGill Daily.

One moment, an influencer is showing their skincare routine on TikTok.

The next, you are watching footage of bombings in Gaza.

This is the strange paradoxical rhythm of social media. Images of war, famine, and political violence appear alongside memes, fashion content, and pop culture gossip. Tragedy and entertainment converge into the same continuous stream of content.

For many people, especially students who receive most of their news through platforms like TikTok, Instagram, or X, the juxtaposition of global tragedy and everyday entertainment creates a kind of emotional whiplash. We move instantly from witnessing human suffering to something else entirely, without the time to process what we have just seen. In previous generations, exposure to global tragedy was slower and more mediated. Encountering global tragedy often requires dedicated time and attention—whether through reading a full article or watching a news segment — because understanding and emotionally processing such events cannot happen instantaneously. Social media breaks this experience into fragments: war footage appears between vacation photos and makeup tutorials, exposing users to global suffering in brief moments, squeezed between other content competing for attention. The infinite scroll collapses the distance between the catastrophic and the mundane.

This constant exposure to suffering can be psychologically exhausting. Seeing repeated images of violence, starvation, or destruction, even from afar, can create feelings of anxiety, helplessness, or emotional fatigue. Some psychologists refer to this as secondary or vicarious trauma: the emotional toll of witnessing suffering indirectly through media.

However, social media introduces an additional layer to this experience. The problem is not only that we see these images but rather how we see them. Online feeds offer no pause, no transition, and no context. The emotional system is forced to switch rapidly between empathy, shock, amusement, and indifference.

Over time, this can create a dangerous form of desensitization. When atrocity appears constantly in the feed, it risks becoming just another form of content. The brain begins to protect itself by dulling its response. The images are still disturbing, but they begin to blur together. What once felt shocking starts to feel like the norm.

There is also an emotional tension many users experience: the discomfort of scrolling past suffering. A video shows a starving child, a destroyed city, or grieving families. We watch for a few seconds, perhaps feel a surge of sadness or anger, and then we move on. Then, another post appears. Another video. Another distraction. Features like infinite scroll and algorithmically curated feeds encourage us to continue scrolling, even when what we have seen deserves attention and reflection.

This dynamic raises an unsettling question: are we truly empathizing with suffering, or simply observing it?

Critic Susan Sontag once wrote in her book, Regarding the Pain of Others, about how images of war can transform violence into spectacle. When suffering is repeatedly photographed and circulated, it risks becoming something viewers observe rather than something they meaningfully engage with. Social media intensifies this problem. The platforms that deliver these images are designed to maximize engagement and attention, not reflection.

None of this means people should ignore global events or stop paying attention to injustice. The circulation of images from conflict zones has also played an important role in raising awareness and documenting human rights violations. Many of the world’s most urgent stories now reach global audiences precisely because ordinary people share them online.

Nonetheless, it is worth questioning how the structure of social media feeds and shapes our emotional relationship to these events. When tragedy appears alongside entertainment, when catastrophe becomes part of the same endless scroll as memes and lifestyle content, our sense of empathy becomes harder to sustain.

We are more informed than ever before. Yet at the same time, we are often overwhelmed, exhausted, and unsure how to respond.

The problem is not that we see the world’s suffering. The problem is that the platforms through which we see it rarely allow us the space to feel it.

The post The Emotional Whiplash of Infinite Scroll appeared first on The McGill Daily.

If you’ve ever taken a high school language class, you’ve maybe encountered a form of close reading dissecting the many devices used in literature. Does the author use formal or colloquial language? What motifs are used in the text? How do form and content work together?

You aren’t asked these questions because you’re expected to pursue a career in literature. You aren’t asked to do most assignments, like write an essay, for example, because you’re expected to make a breakthrough on problems exhaustively studied by experts. Writing helps develop your own analytical voice. Understanding how to methodically work through a question is a muscle that needs to be constantly trained.

Yet in light of the rising critiques of the bias, disproportionate representations, and scarce job prospects seen in traditional journalism, masses have, as a response, begun to rediscover this form of textual analysis to make sense of our current social and political sphere. Old and new writers have found a home on Substack, where they can freely express their opinions without the constraints of an editor at their back. Many of us, disillusioned with major news outlets, have discovered newsletters covering marginalized voices and underrepresented stories. So while the “oversaturation” of writing platforms like Substack or Medium has exposed smaller communities to a newer, wider audience, I like to think that the abundance of people wielding their intellectual freedom outside of a formal classroom has the potential to create accessible spaces where knowledge, curiosity, and creativity can openly thrive… So why doesn’t it?

The resurgence of blogging in the last few years has naturally led to a mass migration of social media users to essay-format platforms. This past year, Substack amassed over 2 million new paid subscribers and currently has a total of over 20 million subscribers. To sustain this upward trajectory, and perhaps prevent shortened attention spans from pivoting elsewhere after experiencing the writer’s high, Substack introduced new features to keep its newfound audience seated. The On Substack publication run by the platform’s management team credits the addition of notes (basically tweets) as one of the drivers of Substack’s significant growth. Instead of merely publishing articles, users can now also put out status updates on subjects ranging from midnight musings to quotes from other publications. Notes provide a simple way to share one’s thoughts on any subject matter and receive engagement without the added task of research, drafting, or editing. Following their introduction, these short, sharp, and often morally superior attacks on current culture have begun to dominate the app’s discovery pages. Occasionally, these notes will be extracted from a longer essay expanding on the same point. Often, this longer essay will just be one out of the thousands on the app that advances the same general takeaway, which leads me to my second problem.

I am by no means a stickler when it comes to what people write about on their page. I also would not expect every newsletter I read to make transgressive breakthroughs, as I don’t have those expectations for myself. However, I do object to claims overstating the recent strides cultural commentary has made this past year in developing spaces for progressive discussion.

I won’t deny the fact that Substack has achieved some significant strides in reviving many people’s love of writing. Substack has additionally exposed me and so many others to great ideas while allowing writers to monetize their content and make a living doing what they love. But the excitement of reading articles on the app began to subside once I realized that I was reading the same conclusions reached in the same manner. Think essays on performative femininity, parasocial relationships with media figures, the correlation between trend cycles and consumerism, etc. None of these topics are inherently flawed, and I’m sure there are interesting points to be made about each. Yet when cultural commentary writers are pigeonholed into social media analysis and fail to apply any historical research into the topics covered, you begin to ask yourself, does this observation aim to reveal pitfalls in modern-day society, or are these just repeating trend cycles and masquerading it as commentary? I don’t believe the recent growth of users is exactly to blame for the redundancy I’ve seen on Substack. As previously mentioned, the newcomers led to more frequent updates undertaken by Substack’s team, such as trending pages, direct messages, and newsletter rankings to secure the app’s growing popularity. Substack became a viable competitor to other social platforms, but instead of upholding what made it so unique, Substack caved into the algorithmic and fast-paced rhythm seen on TikTok, Instagram, and Twitter. While they were intended to maintain the stamina of Substack’s growth, these developments simultaneously fostered an environment where quantity has triumphed over quality, and devoid, sweeping, almost superficial aphorisms have replaced curiosity. Substack, like most other social platforms, was ultimately plagued by the internet flu, or in other words, the online philosophers’ problem of the week, quickly exhausted once the same point was recycled over and over again.

Besides my basic frustrations over the repetitive content seen on the app, the trend cycles piercing platforms centering art, politics, and all other forms of analytical writing do reveal some worrisome consequences. In the act of reiterating what’s already been said on the news, online, and in our circles, we weaken the muscle of writing to the point of paralysis – a point where eventually, all we can critically consider with a careful eye is what’s familiar. We step into the process of writing an essay with a set conclusion, and consequently no curiosity. Capitalism or anti-intellectualism become the foundation of the piece, a base that we build our analysis atop of, rather than being the end conclusion reached after research and investigation. Consequently, when the focal point of such analysis presents itself, with its many faces in the real world, there is little independent written about the matter. Capitalism and its consequences are only examined when discussing low-quality clothing from SHEIN and the death of personal style, rather than the devaluation of local textile markets in African countries for cheaper Chinese goods (which are typically produced in horrific working conditions). Anti-intellectualism is reduced to American college students’ inability to finish a novel, and the global cuts to education and research are seldom considered. We distance ourselves from the topics we aren’t informed enough on to make an opinion on, and in the end, writing and the skills acquired through that process are no longer transferable.

When considering what I personally would like to see in independent journalistic writing, I often fall back on Toni Morrison’s advice to young writers. Morrison, who despite mostly receiving accolades for her writing, was also a skilled editor at Random House. She also often provided young writers with a plenitude of advice. In a 2013 interview with the New York Public Library she said, “You don’t know nothing. So do not write what you know. Think up something else.” Morrison explained how she would usually say this to the creative writing students she taught, and I know the kind of online newsletters that fancy themselves in cultural criticism don’t necessarily concern themselves with creative non- fiction. Still, I do think there is some benefit in going into a writing project with a basic idea in mind and a strong motivation to gain more knowledge because naturally, the more you learn about a subject the more your opinion will change. The cycle of “trending discourse” that has afflicted many bloggers today reveals a larger issue with the way opinion writing is treated today. When we run with the idea that one must develop a clear thesis and layout before undertaking the drafting process, an idea that has been drilled into the minds of young writers and academics for as long as anyone cares to remember, we kill the potential of so many possibly insightful projects. Deciding that our own limited, probably one dimensional, perspective is the most important perspective will drive us to solely seek information that supports our main argument, or engaging with those that challenge it in a superficial manner.

The post The Substack Essay appeared first on The McGill Daily.

The enduring relevance of Sophocles’ Antigone lies in its lessons about tyranny’s deceptive capacity for self- reinvention, as well as the dangers of abandoning nuance in favour of easy political equivalences. And yet, the Daily’s recent op-ed on McGill Classics’ recent adaptation of Antigone asserts: “The takeaway of this production seems to be that Trump = Creon = Hitler.”

This is a striking claim — not only because it is provocative, or because the analysis seems distastefully hamfisted — but because it is largely unaccompanied by substantiating evidence. The op- ed broadly fails to root its claims in specific textual or staging analysis, making it somewhat challenging to see what underlies the author’s certainty that their own interpretation of the show is synonymous with authorial intent. You are, of course, free to express your artistic critiques of the adaptation in whatever terms you please — political theatre invites as much. Granted, there is a meaningful difference between sharing one’s subjective interpretation, and asserting that viewpoint as objective fact. The op-ed repeatedly collapses that distinction — most notably in its assertion that the delivery of Kreon’s speeches is “clearly meant to recall the aesthetics of Hitler’s speeches.”

On this matter, I would like to be particularly direct: you may speak for yourself and your interpretation of the work in whatever terms you please. But absent any definitive sourcing to support your assertions, do not claim to credibly speak for me — and certainly do not presume authority over my beliefs regarding the Nazis my Jewish ancestors fled. As a matter of mutual respect, it is reasonable to expect a higher journalistic standard.

It is precisely this substitution of assumption for analysis that shapes the article’s broader critique. The op-ed proceeds from the premise that the adaptation functions as a direct allegory for Donald Trump, refracted through the visual shorthand of Nazi Germany. It confidently posits that Kreon functions as a thinly veiled composite of Trump and Hitler, while instructing the audience to recognize contemporary America as a simple reiteration of the Third Reich. The author then labels this analogy as deeply reductive, which I would agree with.

The production is indeed occurring during Trump’s presidency, and the adaptation is set in the 1930s. But it is an enormous leap to, on a near temporal basis alone, assert that the entire production exists to argue a simple equivalency between Trump and Hitler — or, otherwise, to construct Kreon’s character in their direct image. The piece does not demonstrate that this equation is textually sustained; it simply assumes it, and then proceeds to critique the show for failing to serve as a sufficiently rigorous allegory for that comparison.

For one thing: Hitler was far from the only ascendant fascist in the 1930s, and to imply otherwise is naively ahistorical. To move from “interwar aesthetic” to “Hitler” to “Trump = Hitler” is precisely the kind of interpretive shortcut the op-ed claims to resist, in part because it flatly ignores the existence of other autocrats in favour of modern history’s most-cited tyrant.

For instance: in arguing the Trumpism comparison, the article states that “Creon wants to make Thebes great again. He … seeks to vanquish the enemy within. In the second act … a soldier cries “I didn’t vote for him!”” Otherwise put, the core examples that led the author to understand Kreon as a Trump metaphor are (1) his expressed desire for national greatness, (2) rhetorical references to “the enemy within,” (3) thematic allusions to civic responsibility/ accountability among voters. It seems bizarre to treat these traits as uniquely Trumpian, when they all reflect core features of authoritarian movements. Each appears across decades and continents, and was included precisely for its recurrent applicability. These examples are not the markings of a single presidency, but the grammar of authoritarianism.

In failing to see beyond its narrow allegorical framework, the op-ed (once again) mistakes its own interpretive lens for the text’s thesis. It also misses the fact that the production’s timelessness is not an accident of staging — it is rather the point.

The production draws deliberately from multiple historical reference points — not as a collage of aesthetic gestures, but as a structured study of recurring authoritarian mechanisms. Mussolini’s rhetoric of purification and national restoration informs Kreon’s language of order and rebirth. Mosley’s domestic fascist movement (with its normalization of organized intimidation) informs Kreon’s reliance on coercive enforcement. Saddam Hussein’s security-state logic shapes the regime’s mediated relationship to its citizens, while Stephen Miller’s bureaucratic nationalism echoes in the language of contamination and de-personification Kreon uses to justify violence. This structural layering of references is not arbitrary, but a deliberate integration of contemporary history’s fascist lineage — intended to illustrate how tyranny evolves across contexts while its underlying methods continue to rhyme.

The op-ed argues that this “aimless” historical referencing strips the play of its complexity — but it fails to locate complexity because it makes no attempt to search for it. Instead, it narrows the frame to two culturally familiar reference individuals and reads everything into that binary. Regrettably, the text of the article then finds itself too preoccupied with dismantling its own straw man (ie. whether “Trump = Creon = Hitler”) and leaves little time to engage with the actual subject matter or text of the show. Thus, by insisting that this production’s meaning collapses into a Trump-Hitler equation, it reduces tyranny to a visual or rhetorical checklist and reinforces the very flattening it critiques. This is a dangerous reflex.

If fascism only “counts” when it resembles Hitler, we will keep failing to recognize it in time. Reducing authoritarianism to surface resemblance — podium equals Hitler, nationalist rhetoric equals Trump — shifts attention away from structure. It distracts from how power consolidates itself, how law becomes weaponized, how cruelty is normalized, how dissent is reframed as treachery, how fear becomes governance. That black- and-white mode of thinking feels decisive, but is a lie.

When our political imagination narrows to two familiar templates, we become less capable of identifying authoritarianism when it emerges through different institutions, different languages, or different faces.

Antigone endures not because it allegorizes one regime, but because it interrogates the moral architecture of power itself and the recurrent tools that fascists have used to accumulate power and exercise cruelty throughout human history. The point is not to individualize the tyrant; it is to recognize their methods — and to learn from the past before we are forced to relive it once again.

The post “Trump = Creon = Hitler” appeared first on The McGill Daily.

For those immigrating to Canada, it might not just be the grass that’s greener on the other side of the border, but the conditional visas as well. Marriage-based immigration has existed in Canada since the early 20th century. That being said, it was only in 2001, through the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act, that the Canadian government established a modern spousal sponsorship framework. Family sponsorship or reunification programs quickly became a gateway of opportunity for many to build a life across borders; however, these programs also reveal the consequences of intertwining private life with public power dynamics, serving as a microcosm of the blind confidence we place in the law and how procedural legitimacy is often placed at odds with lived realities.

The privilege to import marriages to Canadian soil is selectively granted legitimacy, by a legal system that legitimizes situations it already has precedent for. With Canada’s Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship (IRCC) department’s announcement for “tighter immigration checks” and lower sponsorship quotas — declining from 70,000 in 2025 to a projected 61,000 for 2027, concerns about the system’s eagerness to approach spousal union feels more relevant now than ever. Though designed to prevent marriage fraud, the legal system’s exhaustive investigation procedure and rigid documentation policies can pose additional barriers for couples and immigrants who are already vulnerable upon entering a new country.

Public servants’ interference in the private sphere is exemplified when the Canada Border Service Agency (CBSA) cross examines Canadian immigrant households with scrutiny and suspicion, which exposes these households to societal norms of what is deemed an acceptable relationship. In one striking 2022 case, in Sudbury, Ontario, Ariella Ladouceur applied to sponsor her husband, Cordella James from Jamaica. Despite their three-year relationship and a child on the way, their application was rejected on concerns that Ladouceur’s husband might intend to commit marriage fraud. This remained a concern even after Ladouceur showed the immigration officers letters from her family physician and ultrasound photos of the baby. Though the couple has applied to appeal the decision, the process is said to take up to two years, leaving Ladouceur to give birth to her child without the father. The government attempts to measure the legitimacy of marriage and it is the lovers who bear the burden of providing proof. It is the government’s perception of legitimate marriage—the limits of what it is willing to acknowledge as a Canadian household that is justified by the rigorous documentation of a couple’s correspondences, travel records, family affidavits.

Conditional spousal immigration regulations embed inequality into the union of two equals. By introducing a power imbalance through legal asymmetry — a condition in which one partner holds immigration authority over the other — these regulatory forces create situations of dependency, where one partner’s legal status is contingent on the other’s sponsorship, a power that can be leveraged against them, opening up opportunities for exploitation and abuse.

In 2012, Canada had the Conditional Permanent Residency policy in place, which required couples to live together consecutively for two years after permanent residency was granted or risk losing legal status. This put victims of domestic abuse at risk, with many forced to choose between enduring two years of domestic violence or giving up the life they had begun to build in Canada. While the IRPR s. 72.1(6) outlined an exception in the case of abuse victims, accessing this exemption was widely regarded by legal advocates as procedurally burdensome and re-traumatic for victims, as the burden of proof for victims demanded comprehensive police reports and invasive medical examinations — leading to the policy’s repeal in 2017.

In a climate of fear and paranoia, the policy granted sponsors authority. It reinforced the view that citizenship was a privilege that the sponsor personally afforded to their spouse — one that could be revoked. When the sponsor’s authority is backed by the state, it is inevitable that a power imbalance results in the relationship. Manipulation could take the form of self- victimizing narratives about being promised a partnership and being “used” for a visa. Being unaware of one’s legal rights, the existence of the abuse exception, or availability of language learning resources could restrict newly arrived immigrants’ abilities to navigate the complex legal landscape and make them dependent on their sponsors. At the same time victims faced the emotionally taxing burden of supplying proof of abuse, which is made especially difficult if the abuser is uncooperative by withholding critical documentation and preparing to defend themselves against the possible reinvestigation into the legitimacy of their marriage. The power disparity is not a case of interpersonal relations, it is by design, a natural consequence of transposing law onto domestic life.

Examining the intersection of immigration and marriage reveals what kind of marriages the legal system legitimizes. Spousal reunification is at the mercy of the government. When we allow the state to assign legitimacy, the importance that we as a society place in the institution of marriage is revealed. It is because we validate marriage with legal recognition that these structures are given permission to grant, withhold and limit spousal partnership on the basis of borders. It is worth being skeptical of these government institutions that impose bureaucratic legal frameworks onto the very real lives of spouses and families across the world. It is not good faith, it is beyond bad faith; it is deeply un-Canadian.

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Every February 14, people partake in the same frivolous routine: buy flowers; book the overpriced dinner; or, if they’re single, brace for the annual reminder that they are alone and quietly wonder if they have failed at adulthood. Though the contemporary holiday was initially designed to celebrate love, Valentine’s Day has become oversaturated with social expectations – how to celebrate “properly,” gift-giving, or even performative posts on social media – that often leave single people feeling left out.

The irony is that, worldwide, fewer people are in relationships compared to the previous century. Since 2010, the number of people living alone has risen in 26 out of 30 wealthy countries. In the United States, the share of 25 to 34-year-olds living without a partner has doubled over the past 50 years. More and more people across Asia are choosing not to marry, and each new European generation is less likely to be married or living with a partner than the last generation at the same age. The Economist is calling this phenomenon the “great relationship recession.” This label makes it sound as if romance is collapsing, when what’s actually collapsing is the centuries-old convention that successful adulthood, and especially womanhood, must entail romantic relationships.

For most of history, romantic relationships weren’t merely a norm. They were also an economic necessity, especially for women. Marriage was pitched as security, status, and social legitimacy, safeguarding a woman’s “place” in society. If unmarried, women were called “spinsters,” a word which carried a misogynistic aftertaste in its pronouncing of a woman’s failure in life. While we may have retired the term, we have not yet retired the logic. Even today, as Vogue writer Chanté Joseph puts it, there’s still “boyfriend land:” a world where women’s identities are centered around their partners’ lives in a way that’s rarely reversed.

However, Joseph also affirms that “being partnered doesn’t affirm your womanhood anymore.” Women have many other claims to success: degrees, jobs, confidence, creativity and knowledge, to name a few. In spite of the historical pressure to marry, rising chosen singlehood isn’t automatically a crisis. Rather, it can read as one of the most significant forms of female emancipation in the last half century.

For some, this shift is evidence of women’s admirable self-reliance and the reclaiming of their lives. As women’s career prospects have improved, their financial dependence on partners has decreased. Being able to support themselves means they’re less likely to tolerate “inadequate or abusive” relationships. In fact, The Economist suggests that a multitude of women have been liberated from unhappy unions and that men must now treat their partners better if they want to stay together. In that sense, the story isn’t about dying romance, but rather about gendered emancipation.

Additionally, heterosexual relationship terms are being renegotiated. As living alone becomes more viable, women’s standards become more exacting – partly because increasing divorce trends taught people to think carefully about what they want and who they want it with, as SFU researcher Yuthika Girme notes. A mediocre partner is no longer a better bet than remaining single. For instance, many women prioritize education and financial stability in a partner. Yet, at the same time, men have gradually dropped behind women academically. Men are therefore incentivized to meet “this moving bar,” pushing domestic labour and childcare toward a more equal split across genders. For many, growing female autonomy and loosening gender roles is a genuine win.

However, if being single is so freeing, why does it often feel so bleak? Surveys across countries suggest that 60 to 73 per cent of single people would rather be in a relationship than single. A 2019 U.S. poll found that “although 50 per cent of singles were not actively looking for a partner, only 27 per cent said this was because they enjoyed being single.” Essentially, there’s a rising number of people yearning for love but stuck in a dating market failure preventing compatible people from finding one another. Worse still, the timing of this failure is brutal as we are in the midst of a so-called “loneliness epidemic.” Researchers within Harvard School of Education found a strong correlation between loneliness and mental health: reports of anxiety or depression were far higher among lonely adults (81 per cent) than among those who were less lonely (29 per cent).

Yet, “single” is not a synonym for “lonely” – and treating it that way is part of the problem. Stigma- entrenched couple-centered thinking, i.e. the assumption that being coupled up is the default and ideal way to live, has declined. However, single people are stigmatized as being “in between” their real lives, expected to, by midlife, “come to terms with being single.” Family gatherings still come with the expected question: “Are you seeing anyone?” This might sound innocuous, but it actually implies partnership is the ultimate goal. It also undermines the fact that, across representative samples – even including those who very much wish they were coupled – single people are often happy with their relationship status Many thriving singles savour solitude as an opportunity for freedom, reflection, productivity, and personal growth. For them, the discomfort isn’t the status of singlehood itself. Rather, it’s these social interactions that manufacture the insecurity they then claims to pity that threatens the happiness of single people.

Ultimately, if people want a romantic connection but can’t find it, what’s going wrong? By 2013, meeting online became the most common way couples formed, restructuring the relationship “market.” For one thing, social media sells relationships as perfect fairytales, producing unrealistic expectations. For another, dating apps foster excessive pickiness. Take Bumble, many women using the app to rule out men under six feet tall, eliminating roughly 85 per cent of potential matches. Social media has also made political identity inseparable from compatibility. The gendered polarization pushing men and women further apart – with the former leaning conservative and the latter leaning more liberal – turns politics into a deal-breaker. Take the 2024 US presidential campaign: women favoured Kamala Harris while Donald Trump benefited from a 10-point advantage among men.

Then there is the social atrophy issue. Americans, young and old alike, now meet up in person less often than they used to. Though COVID-19 wasn’t the initial root of the issue, it certainly accelerated it. Stanford sociologist Michael Rosenfeld estimates that the pandemic-related reduction in dating pushed the number of singles in the US 13.7 million higher in 2022 than it would have been had 2017 singlehood levels held steady.

Some argue this erosion of in- person social life is indicative of “social and moral decay,” particularly as artificial intelligence (AI) grows more sophisticated and increasing numbers of people turn to it for intimate relationships. Surprisingly, seven per cent of young singles say they would consider a robo-romance with an AI companion. After all, AI does not ask you to clean the bathroom or get a better job.

Still, the real scandal isn’t that some people would rather date a bot; it is that, in a couple- centered world, singlehood comes with economic and social penalties. Even as stigma decreases, there can be a price to independence, and it is called the “singles tax” – the extra cost of living that falls on people who can’t split rent, bills, or groceries with a partner. While unattached New Yorkers may save on the costs of an expensive Valentine’s Day date, they’re paying a much higher – the highest worldwide in fact – “singles” tax to live by themselves. Living alone in New York City costs $19,500 (USD) more per year than living with a partner, not to mention inflation. In Toronto, the singles tax was nearly $15,000 (CAD) in 2023 based on one-bedroom rents. On the other hand, married or common-law couples can receive a spousal credit, pool medical expenses and split pensions with their partners, if eligible. As Queen’s University professor Elaine Power warns, “poverty rates for people living alone are ‘significantly higher’ than the general population.”

Overall, where being single was once a cautionary tale, it is now slowly becoming a desirable and coveted status. While some believe this “great relationship recession” might reflect social decay and loneliness, being single also reflects liberation from outdated expectations built on misogynistic assumptions. Yet, given the entrenched societal and economic barriers linked to singlehood, its rise might just be a trend. Only time will tell.

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Sophocles’ Antigone is a play for our time. In the wake of civil war, Creon, the newly self-appointed King of Thebes, issues an edict forbidding anyone to bury Polynices, brother to Antigone and Ismene, who fought against Creon’s winning side. More loyal to the laws of the gods and the needs of nature than to this sacrilegious edict from a tyrannical ruler, Antigone buries Polynices anyway and faces the consequences: death by abandonment through solitary confinement, where she is, in Luce Irigaray’s words, “deprived of the air, the sun, and all the environment necessary for living.”

Against the contemporary backdrop of rising fascism and suppression of activism, Antigone embodies the resolve and courage demanded of us today. Her unjust punishment, too, exemplifies the sort of repression that unfortunately dissuades many from following in her footsteps. Antigone has been widely regarded not only as a paragon of civil disobedience in general but also, more specifically, as a role-model for climate activists. Montreal’s own offshoot of the international climate activist group Last Generation has dubbed itself “Le Collectif Antigone.” This is a play with an important message that could resonate with viewers, one that is increasingly important for us to hear.

The McGill Classics Play’s “daring new iteration” seems, on some level, to understand that this is a play for our time. The adaptation, directed by McGill student Madelyn Mackintosh and alum Caroline Little, based on a new translation by Adam Zanin, certainly seems to have Donald Trump in mind. Creon wants to make Thebes great again. He is troubled by and seeks to vanquish the enemy within. In the second act, as the people start to turn on him, a soldier cries “I didn’t vote for him!”

Adapting the play for Trump’s America could be interesting. In truth, I happen to think that such an interpretation would, failing truly extensive and off-putting revisions to the dialogue, be too flattering to Trump and his ilk. Say what you will about Creon, but at least he can string a sentence together. Melania, unlike Eurydice, does not appear to have any sympathy for dissidents and Haemon is far more human than any of the Trump sons. Thus, when the McGill Classics Play’s production did obviously allude to Trump, I had to laugh at how absurd it is to live in a time when the “leader of the free world” is even more despicable than this villain of ancient literature.

However, rather than committing to making such a comparison, this staging is instead set “amid the rising authoritarianism of the 1930s.” Although the art deco set design confuses the analogy, the delivery of Creon’s monologues (pre-recorded and piped in such that Creon himself just stands, mouth unmoving, in front of a microphone a few times an act) is clearly meant to recall the aesthetics of Hitler’s speeches.

This confusion of contemporary (and 1920s) America with the Third Reich is, I think, in some ways meant to be the point. The takeaway of this production seems to be that Trump = Creon = Hitler. And insofar as we, the members of the audience, are not Antigone, we are the everyday Germans whose complacency allowed for the horrors of the Holocaust – although, in light of Hannah Arendt’s influential view of the Holocaust as a manifestation of the banality of the evil, this message is somewhat undercut by the choice to put all but the play’s “good guys” in ghostly face paint. Insofar as we understand Trump’s America to be devolving into a simple reiteration of Nazi Germany, we are, too, the Americans who “didn’t vote” for Trump, but who are doing nothing to stop him.

This choice of takeaway irks me. It is certainly true that many, if not all of us are complicit in a great many horrors. But as Trump’s cronies murder modern- day Antigones in the street and people increasingly compare Trump to Hitler, there has been growing discourse about how inapt this particular comparison is. John Meyer has recently argued that if you’re searching for a European fascist on whom to model Trump, Francisco Franco is your man. More compellingly, many point out that America in fact has its own long history of fascism. The Nazis were themselves inspired by this history. W.E.B. Dubois implied as early as 1935, in his Black Reconstruction in America, that “the white supremacism of Jim Crow America” was fascist. Two years later, Langston Hughes stated that “we Negroes in America do not have to be told what fascism is in action. We know. Its theories of Nordic supremacy and economic suppression have long been realities to us.” We might then worry that the compulsion to compare Trump to European dictators flows out of an unwillingness to look America’s own history in the face. Trump isn’t Hitler and he’s not Franco – his fascism is homegrown. In trying to say so much, this production thus fails to say anything especially compelling, flattening all particularity.

All of this said, this production had some real potential. Aniela Stanek’s portrayal of Antigone is excellent. The sister dynamic between her and Neela Perceval- Maxwell’s Ismene is very compelling, as is the choice to make Ismene as sympathetic as this version does. Nikhil Girard’s Creon, unmoving soliloquies in front of the mic aside, is solid. Nicholas Cho manages to make Eurydice surprisingly sympathetic even despite the character’s “moral blindness and outright complicity” with Creon. Megan Siow’s handmaiden and Sarah Shoff’s Tiresias are both important grounding voices.

Aside from the bloody and fiery spectacle that follows the death of the titular character, Griphon Hobby-Ivanovici’s Haemon, the most central and impassioned voice of reason, is the highlight of the second act for me. We can’t all be Antigones and we shouldn’t all be Ismenes. But many of us can, I think, aspire to be Haemons: loving and fiercely supportive of the few who, like Antigone, have an almost inhuman ability to stay committed to their principles against all odds. Loving them not in spite of this commitment, as with Ismene, but because of it.

Brendan Lindsay’s sentry is funny and charming – the comedic highlight of the show by a mile. Although making Sam Snyders’s magical bartender Hades himself leans a little too Percy Jackson and the Olympians-coded for my liking, especially in a production that already has so many moving pieces, his winkingly irreverent delivery is a welcome source of levity. Luca McAndrews’s advisor really shines in his fearful reactions to Creon’s increasing rage in the second act.

If I have more to say about the acting in the latter half, that’s largely because I was only able to see the actors’ faces after I moved into a seat that had been vacated during the intermission. While the original play is in part a call for tradition and ritual to be respected, this production for some reason – perhaps to leverage the art deco interior design of le 9e – foresook the tradition of the stage itself, thereby making it impossible for most of the audience to see anything. That this choice, and so many other confused adaptational choices, was made is a real shame, especially given that the cast, for all I could see, seem to have given such strong performances.

If this review is perhaps a little polemic, that is in part because this adaptation had such promise and because the choice to stage Antigone today is such a good one. But I love Antigone precisely because of its particularity. In G.W.F. Hegel’s influential analysis of the play, in fact, Antigone’s deepest crime is arguably that she preserves her brother in his particularity instead of allowing him to become just another anonymous corpse. It therefore saddened me to see this adaptation strip the play of what I take to be one of its greatest strengths. That Antigone is timeless does not mean that adaptations of it should pull aimlessly from so many historical contexts. In doing so, this adaptation loses much of the complexity that is so important for developing a robust understanding of the play, of the history of fascism, and of the workings of contemporary fascism.

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I always knew in the back of my head how important my friends were. I’ve obviously had ups and downs with many of them. Yet my friends have seen me through all my phases and stuck with me as I’ve evolved into the person I am today. And as friendship is a two-way street, I’ve done the same for them. While I reside in a happy romantic relationship, my friendships are one of the most important things in my life. I gain so much love and knowledge from the people I build friendships with, and what I’ve gathered up to this point, I will always hold close to my heart.

I resonate with the notion that our personalities are made up of the ones from people we’ve met throughout our lives; SZA has been one of my top artists ever since a close friend recommended “Good Days” to me in 2021. Every time before I peel an orange, I roll it the same way as a friend of a friend of mine.

With Valentine’s Day having just passed, there’s been a noticeable societal shift away from spending time with significant others to prioritizing our friendships. The moment I personally realized the importance of investing time and care into my friendships rather than romantic relationships was when one of my best friends got a boyfriend. Gradually, she stopped devoting time to us and our friends, as she spent more and more time with her boyfriend. If we wanted to hang out with her, he would be automatically invited. He was her priority, and she made this explicitly clear to us. Most of us noticed this shift, and in some ways, I started to resent her for it. I felt guilty, though. I wanted my best friend to be happy, but not at the cost of our friendship. I never wanted any of my friends to feel this way about me, so I calculated how I was going to act in my future relationships. I would approach my relationship with open arms, but still have set times dedicated to my friends.

I got into my first serious relationship shortly after experiencing this. I started to understand that some of my friend’s actions were valid: you’ll obviously devote time to the person you are with. But at the end of the day, it’s natural to still invest time in your friendships as well. I always find myself wanting to call my friends or have a laugh with them, which is a different experience than hanging out with my boyfriend.

Incidentally, being in a healthy relationship has amplified my commitment to my friendships. While my boyfriend and I are in a strong relationship, it’s only one extension of our lives, as we are much more than simply our romantic ties. By avoiding devoting my whole life to this one relationship, I’ve been able to still reach out and hang out with my friends.

Growing up in a patriarchal society, there are some things that only my girlfriends will ever understand, making their friendships that much more valuable to me. My friendships give me more than what a romantic relationship can sometimes offer. As I love to spend time with others, I’ve always been one to cultivate my existing friendships and seek new ones. My favorite memories are the ones I’ve shared with my friends, laughing about something ridiculous in the car or their rooms.

Asma Siddiqui mentions in an article for Vogue India how throughout a woman’s lifetime, friendships are neglected when more “important” relationships develop, such as the ones we have with “husbands, children, in-laws, and parents.” Depending on the phase of our lives, the strength of certain friendships can change. My friends talk about how their moms don’t have close friends, and it makes sense to lose these strong connections at an age when you have an entire family to take care of. The world has established that the role for most women is to become mothers and raise their children; that role is more often than not something that is forced upon women. So, when she is placed in that role, she isn’t given the free time to sustain her friendships and make new ones. Yet isn’t there a sting that comes with accepting that idea? How can the girls I’ve grown up with suddenly not be the centre of my life? The ‘inevitability’ of my lifelong friends someday having their own, more ‘important’ relationships to tend to is a terrifying thought.

Nevertheless, this fear has not altered the importance I’ve placed on developing close connections with my peers. At university, the single most important thing to me outside of academics is making lifelong friends. We can learn so much from anyone we cross paths with. While my friends’ mothers have a different experience with friendship in their maternal years, with dating becoming less of a worry to young women, I have greater hope that I will stay close to my best friends in my future. There’s been less of a concern on maintaining a family, and more of a focus on maintaining your friendships with the downfall of dating culture. There’s a newfound importance in keeping our friendships throughout those years that will stick with us even if we all decide to settle down and become mothers.

In high school, I was always looking for a boy to latch on to. It made the time go by quicker, and it was an easy distraction from schoolwork. Over time, the boys changed, but my friends never did. I will always be so grateful for the friends whom I’ve met and the ones to come. To have thoughtful conversations with, laugh with, and confide in a friend is the strongest connection one will have at the end of the day.

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It doesn’t take long at McGill to get a good sense of the university’s culture. As a highly-ranked anglophone institution, McGill attracts students from across the country and around the world. It’s fair to say that for many who move here to study, the school itself is the main selling point, not the city of Montreal. It appears that everything we need is right here on campus.

And maybe that’s a problem. Despite sitting at the heart of Canada’s second-largest city, McGill’s self-sufficiency isolates us from the broader Montreal community while fostering a culture of its own. With access to food, sports, leisure, healthcare, and social activities of every sort on campus, it’s easy to be disincentivized from exploring the rest of the city. We become entrapped by the idea of the McGill bubble, a subconscious limitation of our scope of the city to the McGill Ghetto and Milton Parc area. We’ve normalized taking the city and the province’s complex cultural fabric for granted, living at McGill but not truly in Montreal.

Justine, an exchange student from Sciences Po, became immediately aware of this social detachment between the campus and the city. She described how, if you live near McGill, you’ll naturally end up spending most of your time around campus. It’s not unreasonable to imagine a routine where you can grab coffee, go to class, have lunch, hit the gym, join sports clubs and activities, and even attend your medical appointments all within the comfort of McGill’s downtown campus. “It’s like a city within a city,” she says. Staying in this convenient microcosm makes an Opus feel like a luxury rather than a necessity, insulating downtown McGillians even more while limiting their gateway into all the city of Montreal has to offer. If you stop to think about it, the farthest many students have ventured in the last two weeks was likely a 15-minute walk to a club on Saint Laurent.

Thinking beyond convenience, International Development student Olivia suggests that the ‘bubble’ could also be a product of community building. She argues that “part of what makes the McGill bubble so profound is that a large part of McGill isn’t just from Quebec: the students from France stick with each other, just like the Torontonians and the Americans.” Olivia specifies that this is a cycle that begins when we first move into student residence. We form bonds with people who share similar backgrounds and create our friend groups in these limited spaces, rarely reaching out to students at Concordia, UQAM, and UDeM. After living in the McGill Ghetto for four years, Olivia is excited to “finally move from McGill to Montreal” after graduating. It will as she says, give her a chance to experience the city in a new light.

For those of us who won’t stay and fully experience this astounding city after finishing our studies, there are many other opportunities to exit the bubble. Keona Gingras, a 4th-year Linguistics student from Toronto, shared that bursting the bubble can be as easy as exploring the city’s bustling art scene. With countless concerts, plays, museums, and festivals throughout Montreal, there’s always an excuse to explore somewhere new. Bursting the bubble can also translate to hitting a pub in a new corner of the city to watch a hockey game, striking up a conversation with a local, joining sports groups in the park, or meeting someone new on a night out. If all of this sounds overwhelming for your social battery during midterm season, try these out when you have more breathing room in your schedule — stay for March break, explore for a bit of the summer, or dedicate a weekend to discovering a new neighbourhood.

McGill coddles us with unbound convenience, and in many ways, we’re privileged to have such an ecosystem at our disposal. But the real privilege should be being here at all: in a vibrant metropolis beyond our campus gates. At the end of the day, the ghost of the McGill bubble amounts to the choice of being accommodated. Burst the bubble. Choose differently. I dare you not to fall in love with the real Montreal.

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A website’s obligation to gain users’ consent is a product of the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR): a law which came into effect in May 2018 and became the global model for protecting citizens’ dat privacy and security. In 2022, Brussels continued to display its leadership in data security through the Digital Markets Act (DMA), which ensures a fair and competitive digital market, and the Digital Services Act (DSA), which strengthens citizens’ fundamental rights online. The EU has emerged as the global leader in tech regulation, consistently prioritizing its citizens’ privacy, enforcing platform transparency, and protecting its democracies from cyberattacks.

However, for Silicon Valley and the Big Tech industry, the EU’s extensive regulations are frustrating obstacles in their efforts to consolidate an unfettered oligopoly over the digital space. In other words, an antagonistic relationship has developed between the EU and Big Tech, exemplified in December 2025 by the European Commission’s decision to issue a €120 million fine to Elon Musk’s X for violating the DSA, the first non-compliance decision under the tech regulation. Musk responded to this fine on X, writing that “The EU should be abolished and sovereignty returned to individual countries, so that governments can better represent their people.” Musk has certainly built a reputation for outlandish social media outbursts, but his comments on the EU highlight the reality of the situation: the Big Tech elite have an unwavering interest in weakening Brussels and its digital regulation.

The tension between the EU and Big Tech is nothing new. Palantir Technologies chairman and political svengali Peter Thiel stated in 2018 that Europe was punishing Silicon Valley out of jealousy. However, the American tech lobby has been markedly emboldened by Donald Trump’s return to the Oval Office in January 2025, as Washington has since championed domestic tech deregulation and attacked the EU’s digital rules. In December 2025, Washington issued a visa ban on 5 Europeans, including the man behind the GDPR, Thierry Breton, for supposed censorship and coercion of U.S. tech companies. Subsequently, the U.S. Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, wrote on X that “for far too long ideologues in Europe have led organized efforts to coerce American platforms to punish [the] American viewpoints they oppose. The Trump Administration will no longer tolerate these egregious acts of extraterritorial censorship.” While Trump and his administration lambast the EU from across the Atlantic, Big Tech has identified its ally on the continent–the European far-right.

Right-wing populists began to establish themselves in mainstream European politics after the 2015 refugee crisis, which provoked widespread social unrest and demonstrated the inability of EU member-states to collectively respond to the crisis. Since then, support for anti-immigration policies have only risen, along with the popularity of the far-right. While the interests and beliefs of European far-right parties vary according to national contexts, there is a general agreement across this network of political actors that the EU is led by a network of globalist and technocratic elites who weaken national governments and promote immigration from countries that are culturally incompatible with European- Christian values. These ultranationalist parties — including France’s National Rally (RN) and Germany’s Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) — typically emphasize nativism, illiberalism, and the preservation of “traditional” values. While populist ultranationalists already hold positions of power in East-Central European countries such as Hungary and Czechia, the unsettling ascent of the far-right in Western Europe serves as a serious threat to the existence of the EU.

America’s Big Tech elites have cunningly thrown their support behind the European far-right, as the populist parties’ ambitions to reinvigorate the nation-state would inevitably weaken the EU’s jurisdiction to regulate tech. Musk has been very public about his political allegiances, making speeches at far-right rallies, such as one held by the AfD and its leader Alice Weidel in January 2025, and arousing anti-immigrant sentiment on X, a platform, which he uses for personal propaganda. Others, such as Thiel, are more subtle about their efforts; the co- founder of PayPal seemingly acts through U.S. Vice President JD Vance by grooming and financing Vance’s political career. In his infamous speech at the 2025 Munich Security Conference, the vice president declared that his paramount concern for Europe was “the threat from within” and critiqued the German “firewall,” which describes the refusal of all major political parties to work with the AfD. With the far-right gaining increasing popularity in Europe, the Big Tech network is seizing on the opportunity to hop on the anti-immigration bandwagon as a way to achieve its dream of a deregulated Europe. This may seem ideologically and morally void for an industry that used to be regarded as rather liberal and that’s because it is. Promoting inclusivity and diversity is no longer in style. However, political opportunism is not the only explanation for Silicon Valley’s ideological shift.

Mostly limited to fringe blogs and online forums, various radical far-right political philosophies started circulating around Silicon Valley during the mid-2000s. One of these doctrines came to be known as the “Dark Enlightenment,” which is most commonly associated with Curtis Yarvin, a software developer who envisioned an anti-democratic future where political power resided in dictatorial CEOs who would run states like for-profit corporations. Yarvin’s aspirations to dismantle liberal democracies resonated with the technolibertarian circles of Silicon Valley, who contend that untethered technological innovation will inherently lead to the most efficient and profitable form of governance. Back in 2010, Thiel gave a speech during which he said, “maybe you could actually unilaterally change the world without having to constantly convince people … through technological means, and this is where I think technology is this incredible alternative to politics.”

As the global liberal order is at a breaking point, Yarvin and his ideas are no longer on the fringe. The Dark Enlightenment and other techno-utopian streams of thought have captured the psyches of some of the most influential figures within the tech industry and beyond. In some corners of Silicon Valley, it is not mere business interests that motivate the support for the rising European far-right, but an ideological goal to eliminate the EU and everything it stands for. The prospects of Yarvin-style corporate monarchies popping up in Europe may be low, but the threat of tech companies completely subverting governments is a real concern.

The alliance between Big Tech and the far-right exists because they share a common enemy. They are both interested in undermining the EU for different reasons, but these differences illustrate a critical weakness in their alliance. On the one hand,far-right politicians frame their legitimacy around the notion that they are protectors of national sovereignty, striving to return political power to the people. On the other hand, Silicon Valley is interested in removing EU regulations for the sake of increasing people’s dependency on their services. A system without digital rules will lead to an inescapable situation where people will unknowingly generate wealth and power for the tech oligarchy with their every digital action. Collaborating with Big Tech to bring down the EU could culminate in the far-right’s nationalist dreams, but it would simply replace Brussels’ so-called technocrats with the biggest technocrats of them all, creating a much more sinister arrangement than the one that preceded it.

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The United States has long relied on its democratic primacy as the source of its international legitimacy. In the Second World War, it was the US commitment to a moral- democratic framing of foreign policy and its vehement opposition to fascism and autocracy that laid the groundwork for its future claims to liberal supremacy and its role as an international moral police. The Cold War additionally led to an increasingly bipolar balance that placed America at the helm of democratic ideals. While the US has consistently ranked lower on democracy indices than states like Australia, Canada, and the Nordic countries, its place of economic and cultural prominence made it the democratic archetype in the global political imagination.

The repression of civil society is one of the hallmarks of democratic backsliding. As national leaders seek to expand their domestic authority, they must first squash opposing movements, creating fertile ground for expansions in executive power and removing threats to their authority. Trump’s recent responses to anti-ICE protests in both Los Angeles and Minnesota reflect this brand of targeted repression. In June 2025, Trump deployed both National Guard and Marine Corps troops to Los Angeles and the surrounding area to combat the supposed “lawlessness” and “violence” demonstrated in protests. Similarly, the ongoing ICE involvement in Minnesota targeting undocumented US immigrants, involves swathes of heavily armed and masked federal officials who use crowd suppression techniques (like tear gas and pepper spray) and frequent arrests in their campaign. ICE’s presence in Minnesota has also resulted in the deaths of two American citizens this January: Renee Nicole Good and Alex Pretti. The timelines and public documentation of both killings call the administration’s claims of self- defense on behalf of ICE into question, failing to demonstrate a substantive threat to the lives of the agents. This use of an overwhelming militarized force to suppress protesters is typical of nations experiencing democratic backsliding and executive aggrandizement, the expansion of executive authority through a weakening of checks and balances. In Türkiye, a key example of democratic backsliding, the 2013 protests over the destruction of Gezi Park in Istanbul resulted in the brutal state repression of protesters where armed forces beat and tear gassed civil society, while also burning the tents of peaceful environmental protesters. This incident spurred even more protests throughout the nation’s 81 provinces, which only led to the continued state-sanctioned suppression. Examples of this in the United States and Türkiye bear eerie similarities. These instances involve an armed and violent militant response to a group of relatively peaceful protesters. Both anti-ICE and Gezi Park protests involved mass arrests, the deployment of riot police, and the use of tear gas. Despite these restrictions, both Türkiye and the US also have constitutional protections for civilian protest and assembly. Thus, the restrictions on protests in the two nations not only reflect a suppression of the popular will but a divergence from constitutional principles, another marker of democratic backsliding. While it can be assumed that executive authorities in both the United States and Türkiye would dispute the peaceful nature of the protests, human rights organizations such as Amnesty International and newspapers such as the New York Times assert the peaceful nature of each respective protest and the often-preemptive violent response by heavily armed authorities.

The infringement on constitutional and legal frameworks is another key step bringing a state down the road to democratic backsliding. As the judicial and legislative measures meant to protect citizens are undermined, the practice of democracy will also naturally fade. In El Salvador, a key ally of the US in the fight against immigration, the presidency of Nayib Bukele has been marred with concerns of increasing autocracy, including the suspension of habeas corpus within the Central American nation. In 2022, Bukele enacted a “state of exception” to combat gang violence in El Salvador. The campaign involved arbitrary detentions and due process violations, as well as torture allegations. Notably, Bukele allowed Salvadoran forces to enter and search properties without judicial warrants. This removal of democratic legal procedures is a key check on power as it allows for third-party review of coercive state behavior. The removal of checks and balances is a crucial characteristic of executive aggrandizement and is also central to autocratic regimes like Putinist Russia or theocratic Iran. A recent ICE memo, leaked from an anonymous Congress official, reveals a similar federal directive for agents in Minnesota. The memo authorizes ICE agents to search homes with an administrative warrant. These warrants do not have judicial approval and have a lesser probable cause requirement. While the distinction between a judicial and an administrative warrant may seem semantical, it is directly contrary to the US Constitution, America’s founding document, which protects against “unlawful search and seizure” and expressly requires, “no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause.” Thus, similarly to the suspension of civil liberties and judicial review in Bukele’s El Salvador, ICE’s new warrant policy is directly contrary to the core legal framework of the United States, again demeaning its democratic merit.

Narrative suppression and control are another key mechanism exhibited by leaders of unstable and backsliding democracies. This practice involves the state suppression of media that reports views that oppose the state as well as the proliferation of manipulative information through state- controlled journalism, films, and rhetoric. Hungary, a nation that, according to the V-Dem democracy index, has experienced severe backsliding since 2010, provides a pertinent example of narrative suppression. In January 2020, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán proposed reform to the nation’s educational curriculum, which aimed to encourage nationalism and erase Hungarian military defeats from textbooks. Furthermore, the new National Core Curriculum would remove authors like Hungary’s only Nobel Laureate and Holocaust survivor, Imre Kertész, from required readings, instead replacing him with antisemites and charged war criminals like Jozsef Nyiro and Albert Wass. Orbán’s policy is reflective of Hungary’s growing authoritarian bent as it encourages a selective remembrance of the nation’s history and government intervention into the propagation of nationalist ideals in the media. Trump’s recent directive to the National Park Service reflects the same type of ideological gerrymandering that typifies Hungary’s unstable democracy. In early 2026, the Trump administration ordered the removal of a number of cultural sites that reflect America’s history of subjugation toward Indigenous peoples and slaves, as well as feminist and queer imagery. The targeted removals included exhibits memorializing the slaves of George Washington, forced removals of Native Americans, and women and immigrants in Massachusetts textile mills. The Trump administration claims the removals are targeted at removing “corrosive ideology,” but in practice, they reflect the same confounding ideals that Hungary uses to hide its losses and disparage its most deserving cultural icons.

As the parallels between American domestic and international politics and nations like Türkiye, El Salvador, and Hungary, the role of the US among the paragons of democracy is an increasingly dubious proposition. We must consider that the impacts of the “democratic recession” of the 21st century may expand beyond the bounds of destabilized minor powers, former Soviet republics, or frontline nations, but to the core of Western democratic thought.

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When Prime Minister Mark Carney addressed the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos, Switzerland on January 20, 2026, the significance of the speech was shaped as much by the venue as by the message. The WEF describes itself as the “International Organization for Public-Private Cooperation,” saying it convenes political, business, and other leaders to shape global and regional agendas. Its Annual Meeting is framed as an “impartial platform” for dialogue on shared challenges. In his speech, Carney frames the present moment as “a rupture” rather than a “transition,” describing an international environment that he argues is already taking shape; and warning it will likely continue to shape state behaviour in the years ahead.

In the same address, Carney references the end of what he calls a “pleasant fiction”: the belief that the world’s most powerful states, particularly major military and economic powers such as the US and China, would reliably submit to limits. He also argues that “middle powers,” including countries like Canada and other mid-sized economies, can still increase their influence by acting collectively rather than seeking individual accommodation. Coverage of the speech described it as unusually direct for a Canadian PM speaking in Davos: the Financial Times highlighted Carney’s framing of “weaponized interdependence” and a world order in “rupture,” while The Guardian characterized the address as a forceful challenge to the “rules-based” framework and a call to action for middle-power coordination. Reporting on the full text and immediate reception also emphasized the speech’s focus on economic coercion and vulnerability through trade and supply chains, with The Independent and Global News both presenting it as a major, unusually blunt intervention for a Canadian leader at WEF.

The remarks landed amid heightened tension in Canada– US relations during US President Donald Trump’s second term, which began on January 20, 2025, and has been widely covered as a period in which the Trump administration has applied more pressure on allies through both security and economic tools. In Europe, coverage focused on Washington pressuring NATO partners to assume greater defence burdens and openly questioned longstanding assumptions about US commitments. In North America, reporting has emphasized the use of tariff threats and trade leverage, including tensions tied to the USMCA review process, as instruments of pressure on close partners such as Canada. While Carney did not name Trump in the Davos speech, The Guardian described the address as a thinly veiled critique of US conduct and the broader erosion of the “rules-based order.”

The political escalation that followed made the subtext explicit. In remarks reported by Canadian and international outlets, Trump asserted that “Canada lives because of the United States,” a line that circulated widely as a reprimand. Carney later rejected this framing in public comments, and emphasized Canadian sovereignty and national capacity. The exchange was framed less as a personal dispute than as evidence of a more openly contested bilateral relationship: the Associated Press linked the rhetoric to looming USMCA review dynamics and tariff threats, while Time situated it within wider disputes over tariffs and sovereignty issues.

The domestic and international political response added to the speech’s impact. In Quebec, the CBC reported the reactions of Premier François Legault as well as other provincial political and business figures reacting mostly favourably to the speech, despite Legault’s history of disagreement with Carney on other issues. Internationally, Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum publicly praised Carney’s remarks during her morning press conference, calling the speech “in tune with the current times,” according to multiple reports. The approval from Quebec and Mexico was widely read as politically notable by political commentators and foreign-policy analysts because it signaled support from actors positioned differently within North American diplomacy, at a time when Canada and Mexico both face uncertainty over the future tone and terms of their engagement with Washington.

The economic backdrop is central to why the “rupture” framing resonated. Canada remains deeply integrated in trade with the United States. The trilateral North American trade pact, USMCA, is approaching a major inflection point because its joint review on July 1, 2026 is a built-in decision point that can shape whether the agreement is reaffirmed or becomes a renewed target for renegotiation. This has significant implications given Canada’s heavy trade dependence on the US. The Center for Strategic and International Studies similarly emphasized that the review mechanism can become a political battleground because it creates a scheduled moment for the parties to debate renewal and concessions. In that context, CBS News reported that Carney’s message amounted to a call for middle powers to build a new order “less reliant on the United States,” while Policy Magazine explicitly framed the speech as Canada declaring “strategic autonomy” and warned that autonomy without leverage invites pressure. Both readings situate the address not as a diagnosis of global disorder, but as an argument for diversification and reduced vulnerability.

Taken together, the Davos address and the ensuing exchange with Trump positioned a long-running Canadian debate, to what extent should the country rely on the United States, as a more immediate policy question rather than an abstract geopolitical thought experiment. Carney’s argument, as presented in his WEF address and echoed in subsequent coverage, is that a middle power’s security and prosperity cannot rest on the assumption that the dominant partner will remain predictable, rule-bound, or non-coercive. With the USMCA review scheduled for July 2026, and public rhetoric hardening on both sides, the underlying question raised by the speech is increasingly practical: whether Canada’s approach should aim for a return to a familiar equilibrium or policy should be built around the expectation that the relationship will remain more volatile and openly transactional for the foreseeable future.

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On January 8, Iran went dark. Internet monitors recorded a near-total nationwide shutdown, an abrupt collapse in connectivity that has continued into its third week, with only minor flickers of traffic and tunneled VPN use. The blackout has become one of the state’s central tools for controlling what the world can see.

This matters because when visibility is restricted at this scale, the story of a crisis gets written differently. Facts travel slower, casualty claims get harder to verify, and the state gains time and space to shape the narrative before evidence can circulate.

The internet shutdown began as the protests that erupted in late December swelled into one of the most serious uprisings against Iran’s leadership in years. What started on December 28 as a movement where Iranians proclaimed their anger over soaring prices and the plunging currency quickly turned political. Since then, the country’s unrest has largely been communicated to the world through foreign media reporting and human rights organizations. Footage is rarely shared, and official statements often contradict independent accounts. In the gaps between those fragments lies the central question: what can we actually confirm about what’s happening in Iran right now?

From economic spark to political rupture

Multiple news outlets trace the protests’ spark to economic collapse. The devaluation of the rial and the rising prices of everyday goods has made daily life unsustainable for many households. Early demonstrations reportedly began with shop closures and street protests in Tehran’s Grand Bazaar, then spread beyond the capital.

Following the 1979 Revolution, major protests have often risen initially as a frustration over a specific issue, before escalating into a nationwide movement. For example, the disputed 2009 presidential election and allegations of vote-rigging, rising fuel prices and economic hardship in 2019, and the death of Mahsa Amini in 2022 all eventually developed into broader social demands over changes in governance, rights, and the legitimacy of the state. Human rights organizations, including Amnesty International, have described the scale of this unrest as the largest nationwide protest wave since 2022, emphasizing that the ongoing blackout makes independent verification of events and casualty figures far harder than in a normal reporting environment. On January 8, as demonstrations intensified, Iran imposed the nationwide communications blackout, limiting external reporting ever since.

What’s happening on the ground, and why numbers are contested

Three things can be said with confidence based on the convergence of reporting by major news outlets and human rights organizations. Protests occurred across the country, the state responded with repression, and the scale of deaths and detention remains deeply disputed, partly because the blackout makes verification extremely difficult.

Reports describe mass arrests, limits on large gatherings, efforts by authorities to restrict documentation and shape what information can be shared, and accounts of families receiving little or no information about detained relatives. The Center for Human Rights in Iran has reported forced confessions, limits on legal representation, and concerns about an escalating risk of executions for detained protesters.

HRANA (Human Rights Activists in Iran) has also published rolling tallies of casualties. In its January 25 update (day 29 of protests), HRANA reported 5,848 confirmed deaths and 17,091 deaths “under investigation,” alongside 41,283 arrests*. Still, even these figures, and other independent counts, remain difficult to verify fully while the internet blackout limits documentation and outside reporting. This is exactly why the numbers are being contested: in a shutdown, the usual pathways for confirming casualties –– such as local journalists, hospitals, public records, open communication, and video verification –– either disappear or become dangerous to use. When evidence can’t move freely, the state gains an advantage not only in policing the streets, but in controlling what becomes provable. The result is a crisis where uncertainty isn’t just a byproduct of chaos; it becomes part of the landscape of power, because contested numbers delay accountability and leave room for official narratives to dominate.

Iranian officials, meanwhile, have framed the unrest as foreign-backed destabilization and have referred to demonstrators as “rioters,” alongside warnings about punishment and asset seizures. On January 21, Iranian state television issued the first official death toll from the protests, reporting that 3,117 people were killed, a figure widely described as “lower than activist and rights group counts.” In spite of independent estimates varying dramatically, UN-linked statements emphasize that the true toll could be far higher than what Iran’s authorities have publicly acknowledged. In an interview published on January 26, the UN Special Rapporteur on Iran, Mai Sato, described the discrepancy between governmental and independent figures and warned there could be tens of thousands of victims, noting the blackout’s role in obscuring evidence and enabling coercion around casualty narratives. The UN’s broader human rights apparatus has also characterized the crackdown as potentially the deadliest since the 1979 Revolution and has stressed evidence collection for accountability.

The blackout as strategy, not symptom

Internet data strongly suggests the shutdown was deliberate: connectivity dropped sharply on January 8 and has remained severely restricted. But even a near-total blackout isn’t absolute. Starlink terminals, along with other smuggled satellite devices have offered a thin, uneven workaround for a small number of people, and recent reporting says SpaceX waived subscription fees for users in Iran while authorities attempted to jam signals and identity devices. This patchwork connection matters because it highlights what the blackout is designed to do: make communication scarce, risky, and unequal, so the flow of evidence becomes harder to sustain at scale. Thus, Starlink has become one of the main ways footage and testimony escape the blackout for those who can access it. At the same time, the satellite remains illegal inside Iran, and reports have described serious risks for anyone caught using it.

The practical effects are immediate. Protest coordination becomes harder. Independent journalism becomes close to impossible. Evidence of abuses becomes harder to share. Families struggle to locate detained relatives. And international pressure, often fueled by images and documentation, becomes easier for the state to dismiss as misinformation.

How we know what we know in a blackout

In a normal “breaking-news” environment, a reporter might determine casualties through hospital access, local journalists, mobile footage, official records, and on-the-ground observation. In Iran right now, the blackout collapses that system.

As a result, the strongest verification tends to come from three overlapping streams. The first is internet and network monitoring, which can confirm the blackout itself and shifts in connectivity. The second is human rights documentation, such as Amnesty International, UN bodies, and human rights organizations, which tracks arrests, patterns of abuse, and testimonies, often with careful caveats. The third is major international reporting that can corroborate events across multiple independent channels and, sometimes, verify footage through fthe orensic methods.

Social media also matters here. TikTok, Instagram, X, and Telegram channels become important, as these spaces showcase on-the-ground evidence firsthand. However, in a blackout, social media also becomes a space where misinformation spreads the fastest. Old videos recirculate, locations are mislabeled, and timelines blur. Therefore, the responsible approach when engaging with the movement digitally is to tentatively treat most viral posts as leads, until verified by multiple outlets or corroborated by human rights monitors.

What happens next

Making predictions about the future of Iran can be risky in a situation this volatile, but a few short-term scenarios appear plausible. Sustained repression and tighter surveillance could push dissent into quieter forms, including work stoppages and strikes, short-lived flash gatherings, nighttime rooftop chanting, or symbolic acts like public memorials and slogans, which are harder to police at scale. Renewed protest surges are also possible if economic shocks intensify, especially if the public feels the state response has not addressed underlying grievances.

An escalation of pressure from the international arena is another potential risk. Tariff threats, sanction enforcement, and military posturing could harden Iran’s stance and reinforce the state’s claims that unrest is foreign-driven, while also worsening economic pressure on ordinary people. At the same time, international accountability mechanisms may expand. The UN Human Rights Council’s renewed fact-finding mandate signals a growing effort to preserve evidence, even if immediate enforcement remains limited.

International accountability often begins with documentation. Fact-finding mandates can preserve testimony and evidence and map patterns of abuse, which can later feed into targeted sanctions, domestic prosecutions under universal jurisdiction in some countries, or broader transnational justice processes if political conditions change. Immediate enforcement may be limited, but the record matters.

The central truth at this moment

Iran’s protests and crackdown is not just a political crisis, it is also a crisis of visibility. When a country of over 80 million people can be pushed into near-total digital isolation for weeks, the struggle becomes not only over streets and prisons, but over what can be proven, what can be denied, and who controls the story.

That is why the blackout matters as much as the protests themselves. It shapes what the world knows, when it finds out and how easily footage of abuse can be erased –– if it can be documented at all.

*According to news outlet Iran International, deaths have surpassed 36,500 –– making this the deadliest waves of protests in Iran’s modern history.

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Why do students turn to generative tools?

Recent data illustrates how widespread this shift has become. A Higher Education Policy Institute (HEPI) survey conducted in February 2025 found that 88 per cent of students reported using generative AI tools such as ChatGPT for assessments, a stark difference from the 53 per cent of students who admitted to using generative AI the previous year. At the same time, the proportion of students who reported not using generative AI dropped sharply, from 47 per cent in 2024 to just 12 per cent in 2025. For many students, it seems as if AI tools have become a default form of academic support, used in response to mounting pressures such as heavy course loads, overlapping deadlines, and rising performance expectations.

Although the use of generative AI is usually interpreted as a form of academic misconduct, such actions cannot be understood solely through the lens of cheating. In fact, the HEPI survey shows that students most commonly use AI tools to explain unfamiliar concepts, summarize readings, and generate research ideas — reasons that fall within many schools’ integrity guidelines. McGill’s Office of the Dean of Students emphasizes the “vital importance” of academic integrity, underscoring values such as honesty and “giving credit where credit is due.” For many, AI functions less as a shortcut to bypass academic work and more as a support mechanism. However, this normalization of AI use comes with uncertainty. When the boundaries between acceptable use and misconduct remain unclear or inconsistently enforced, students are left navigating a grey zone, unsure whether the tools they rely on may later be used against them.

At the same time, not all students engage with AI in ways that align with institutional policies. Some rely on generative tools to produce substantial portions of their assignments, directly undermining not only the value of their work but also violating “the academic integrity of the University” itself. From an instructor’s perspective, distinguishing between legitimate support and misconduct has become increasingly difficult. “AI is a great opportunity to personalize a student’s learning,” Desautels Vice-Dean Genevieve Bassellier notes. However, a student can prompt generative tools such as ChatGPT or DeepSeek to write entire essays in minutes, which leaves professors grappling with how to distinguish human work from machine- generated content. In many cases, the final submission may look the same, regardless of whether AI was used as a learning aid, a substitute for original work, or not used at all.

How are professors adapting to AI?

Concerns about academic integrity in the age of AI are being echoed at the institutional level. Research by UNESCO highlights how generative AI could disrupt assessment methods that rely primarily on final outputs such as essays. This demonstrates that when students can generate essays or reports in minutes, traditional indicators of effort and comprehension lose much of their reliability. The report thus encourages educators to place more focus on smaller step-by-step assignments that emphasize the learning process itself, such as journals or peer reviews.

At McGill, departments focused on written assignments — particularly in the arts and humanities — have introduced explicit AI policies in course syllabi. These disclosures increasingly restrict (or sometimes forbid) the use of AI for idea generation, formulation, or refinement. A similar effort to define boundaries of acceptable academic conduct can be seen in the introduction of a mandatory online Academic Integrity Tutorial in 2011. Required of both undergraduates and graduates, the tutorial walks students through scenarios involving plagiarism and academic misconduct, underscoring the idea that a degree earned through cheating is ultimately hollow. Students who fail to complete the module are unable to register for courses.

Moreover, many instructors are also reconsidering not only what they assess, but how and where that assessment takes place. In- person examinations restrict access to AI tools and allow professors to observe students’ reasoning directly. For many students, the effects of this shift are already tangible. During my first semester at McGill in Fall 2023, only two of my five courses required in-person final exams. By contrast, all five of my courses this semester rely on in-person exams for both midterms and finals.

Importantly, the return to in- person evaluation is not driven solely by concerns about security. As Dr. Andrew Woon argues in a 2025 report for HEPI, the value of exams lies in their ability to foster “deep, internalised understanding”— particularly in fields with higher stakes such as medicine or education. Dr. Woon explains that, while AI can assist with information retrieval or diagnostics, it cannot replace the human judgment required to interpret context, nuance, or ethical complexity. “We wouldn’t want to be treated by a doctor who relied on ChatGPT to make clinical decisions,” he notes. These types of professions require rigorous skills that must be practiced and assessed directly.

However, in-person written exams are not necessarily a perfect solution. Concerns about potential AI-assisted cheating have led some educators to explore oral examinations as an alternative. According to Dr. Kyle Maclean, assistant professor at Ivey Business School, live oral exams are “about as cheat-proof as it gets,” as they require students to explain their reasoning in real time. However, Dr. Maclean adds that oral exams present significant feasibility and equity challenges. They are difficult to scale in large undergraduate courses, grading can be less consistent, and their lack of anonymity raises concerns about potential bias. Moreover, such formats are widely reported as stressful by students, particularly those with anxiety or processing challenges, highlighting trade- offs inherent in assessment methods designed to limit AI use.

What does this shift mean for students?

While for instructors, the return of in-person exams may restore confidence in students’ academic integrity, the effects of this exam type on students are more complex. One of the less obvious ramifications is the reshaping of student behaviour, even among those who do not dishonestly rely on AI. As sanctions against AI- generated work become more common, some students have begun to self-police their writing to avoid suspicion. As an English student, I have found myself consciously altering stylistic habits such as avoiding em dashes — a punctuation mark frequently associated with AI-generated text — not because of academic guidance, but out of fear of being misidentified as relying on generative tools.

Beyond questions of perception, these changes also raise concerns about equity and accessibility. By shifting assessment formats rapidly, students registered with disability services may face additional barriers such as reduced access to accommodations, heightened anxiety, physical or sensory challenges, or disadvantages in oral assessments that rely on verbal fluency and performance. When accommodations are unevenly implemented or poorly adapted to oral or time-constrained assessments, exams eventually risk privileging student confidence over genuine comprehension.

In-person exams: harmful or helpful?

In-person examinations, while effective in limiting AI misuse, are not a comprehensive solution. Such exams may create fairness in one sense as they can standardize conditions and restrict cheating behaviour. Nonetheless, they risk pushing students to rely more heavily on AI elsewhere — readings, essays, research — in order to manage increased academic pressure which eventually weakens the value placed on out-of-class work. As long as generative AI remains widely accessible and difficult to regulate, attempts to fully exclude it from academic life are likely to remain imperfect.

Rather than framing such tools as a problem to be eliminated, universities may need to reconsider how AI can be integrated intelligibly into teaching and assessment. The future of evaluation may lie not in stricter controls alone, but in smaller classes, more project-based learning, and deeper, sustained conversations between students and faculty.

At a time when reliance on AI risks weakening foundational cognitive skills, academic degrees must be understood as a privilege rather than a shortcut. In this sense, instructors play a crucial role in designing learning environments that protect core intellectual abilities — restoring value to human reasoning instead of allowing it to be eclipsedd by digital assistance. “That’s why it’s even more important that we continue to enforce the basic knowledge,” Bassellier notes. Ultimately, the challenge facing higher education is not how to assess without AI, but how to design systems of evaluation that continue to reward curiosity, effort, and the ability to think critically with it, to strike a balance in which AI can support, rather than undermine, student learning.

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