Timothy Snyder holds the chair in modern European history, supported by the Temerty Endowment for Ukrainian Studies, at the Munk School of Global Affairs & Public Policy. He has authored or edited more than 20 books, published in 40 languages.
During the 2025-2026 academic year he taught his course Hitler and Stalin Today in person at U of T for the first time. Its ten lectures look at the connections between the Nazi and Soviet regimes and define terms such as communism, fascism and even history itself. They are now on YouTube for anyone.
It’s the mission of a public university to reach the publicTimothy Snyder
Snyder, formerly a professor at Yale, has done this before. He made his Yale online course on the making of modern Ukraine available in 2022. He says people used it to start thinking historically and to take a little distance from the news of the day.
He argues that the past helps us act. Without a connection between what happened and what might happen, he says, we have no sense of what we can do. He also says he was delighted when students told him they now saw why history is relevant today.
The alumni events page for the Public History Lab runs the online series from Jul 20 to Dec 18, 2026 and invites readers to register to view the lectures.
Reported from Timothy Snyder brings his U of T course on Hitler and Stalin to YouTube, by Cynthia MacDonald (U of T News, August 13, 2026).
More from the original reporting: www.utoronto.ca/news/timothy-snyder-brings-his-u-t-course-hitler-and-stalin-youtube