In friendship,
The Executive Council of the Association for Canadian Studies in the United States
*signed individually, not on behalf of ExCo members’ employers.
12/12

Alternatively, we invite you to continue to use ACSUS and its events as a scholarly site for expressing concerns, proposing new plans, and making things better. As scholars, we are much more effective on the ice than on the bench. 11/

If you feel you must step away from ACSUS in these trying times, we get it. 10/

You, alone, can decide what your relationship with ACSUS should and will be. Our hope is that in doing so, you will see ACSUS for what it is and what it represents: a cross-border, collegial, non-partisan space that embodies no political project. 9/

We know the indignation and pain that these political circumstances are causing, and we share that indignation and pain. Some members of the ACSUS leadership are Canadian, and many ACSUS members are Canadians who live and work in the United States. 8/

ACSUS is indeed based in the United States, but you, our Canada-based members, are a valued and critical part of our mission, not just for the cross-border exchange of ideas but for the viability of the Association. 7/

More than ever, we are committed to the pursuit of our mission: to promoting teaching and learning about Canada; to facilitating and supporting the study of Canada through a robust grants program, and by hosting forums for scholarly discussion, debate, and publication. 6/

We stand by our mission when it is challenged and when it is characterized as a political act, and in response, we need to declare: we wholeheartedly support a strong Canada and a healthy academic relationship between Canada and the United States. 5/

Its biennial conferences and its quarterly scholarly journal, American Review of Canadian Studies, have always been politically ecumenical. ACSUS is a big tent with room for all legitimate, fact-based scholarly opinions. 4/

ACSUS is, and always has been, a non-partisan forum for the promotion of the study of Canada and Canada-US relations. It does not follow, and has never followed, any political agenda or direction. 3/

Heated public rhetoric about the tariff barriers and threats to Canada’s economy and boundaries have created fissures that affect us all in profound ways. 2/