3 Ivy League scholars plan to leave US and teach in Canada amid Trump administrations higher education battle | National & World [Video]

(CNN) — Yale philosophy professor Jason Stanley, who is leaving the prestigious Ivy League university for Toronto as the Trump administration’s battle with higher education in the US continues, said mid-phone interview with CNN while walking the campus, “Hold on one second.”

A group of worried students approached the scholar as he walked the grounds of Yale Thursday in New Haven, Connecticut. Was he really leaving?, they wanted to know.

“I love Yale,” Stanley, who has taught at the university for 12 years, reassured the students. “But Marci, Tim and I, we’re gonna go defend democracy somewhere else,” he said, referring to the Yale colleagues joining him in Canada.

Stanley set off a firestorm at the highest levels of American academia last Friday, when he decided to leave Yale and the United States largely, he said, because of the direction of the country under the Trump administration.

“Suddenly if you’re not a …