The “Poison Ivy League” may have finally
gotten better!

Good riddance! In a New York Times op-ed on May 14, 2025, three former Yale professors attempted to explain why they have quit their jobs at Yale and moved to teach in Canada at the University of Toronto.

Unbeknownst to them, their idiotic and ignorant reasons for leaving demonstrated that they are actually completely unqualified to be college professors, and that Yale (and the United States) will be better off without them.

Professor Stanley is leaving the United States as an act of protest against the Trump administration’s attacks on civil liberties. “I want Americans to realize that this is a democratic emergency,” he said.

Professor Shore, who has spent two decades writing about the history of authoritarianism in Central and Eastern Europe, is leaving because of what she sees as the sharp regression of American democracy. “We’re like people on the Titanic saying our ship can’t sink,” she said. “And what you know as a historian is that there is no such thing as a ship that can’t sink.”

Professor Snyder’s reasons are more complicated. Primarily, he’s leaving to support his wife, Professor Shore, and their children, and to teach at a large public university in Toronto, a place he says can host conversations about freedom. At the same time, he shares the concerns expressed by his colleagues and worries that those kinds of conversations will become ever harder to have in the United States.

As noted in this analysis of their actions, all three say they are doing this because they have studied fascism and thus “equate ‘Make America Great Again’ with Adolf Hitler’s ‘Ein Volk, ein Reich, ein Führer.'”

The analogy is so weak and incoherent as to be laughable. As the essayist in this second link notes, it cheapens the meaning of fascism and in fact suggests these three “professors” don’t have the slightest idea what the word means, despite their claim they have studied it.

More important however are the three quirks of personality illustrated by their position and actions that signify why their are unqualified to be professors to begin with.

First, they clearly live in the leftist intellectual bubble which sees Trump as the personification of evil, as the new Hitler, yet cannot really cite any examples that demonstrate even slightly a similarity. These three “intellectuals” seem to know nothing in detail about what Trump has done, both for good or ill. All they know is the 2-dimensional paper cutout portrayed by the leftist press that has little to do with reality.

For a college professor this lack of a wider curiosity and willingness to explore other points of view is a major disqualification for their work.

Second, they illustrate incredible ignorance, not only about Trump but about the totalitarian fascist movements they claim to study. While there are certainly aspects of this fascism that has crept into American political culture, to ascribe them all to Trump and his Republican supporters illustrates mind-blowing partisanship and close-mindedness.

More important, the comparison is wildly absurd, as expressed by these individuals. Trump and the right at this moment bear no resemblance at all to the fascist movements of the past. Trump is not arresting opponents wholesale, merely because they oppose him — unlike what was done to him and his supporters during the Biden administration. All Trump is doing is cleaning house, firing many government workers and ending many government grants that by law he has the right to do as the elected head of the executive branch of government. That these leftists don’t like it doesn’t make it “fascist.”

For these college professors to make such shallow and ignorant claims illustrates their lack of qualifications for their job. They simply don’t know very much, think they do, and thus likely end up teaching propaganda not history.

Finally and most important, they exhibit a certainty about their opinions that is frightening, especially because of their ignorance and close-mindedness illustrated by points one and two above. No one has a lock on the truth, and the very essence of modern civilization, expressed best during the Enlightenment in the 1700s, is to question everything and doubt all. You might have opinions, based on good data, but if you ever believe your opinions can never be wrong you have entered hell. Or to use Oliver Cromwell’s words, as expressed by scientist Jacob Bronowski in episode 11 of his brilliant television series, The Ascent of Man: “On the bowels of Christ, think it possible you may be mistaken.”

For a college professor to be so certain, without doubt, is the most significant disqualification for their work.

So, to put it bluntly, this exodus of these unqualified professors is maybe the best thing that could happen to Yale, and many of the other poison ivy American universities that have become since the 1960s junk heaps of leftist propaganda and indoctrination. Let these unqualified Marxists flee. We will be better off without them.