To say many professors and economists are a bit wary of a potential Donald Trump presidency is probably underselling it.
Not too shortly after author and Questrom School of Business at Boston University professor Mark T. Williams wrote a scathing response to Trump’s proposed economic policies in Business Insider, a host of the country’s most esteemed academic minds joined him in resolute agreement, signing a letter of warning against voting for the Republican presidential nominee.
The letter featured 370 economists, professors and several Nobel laureates—including Harvard economist Oliver Hart, who recently won the Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences with MIT Sloan economist Bengt Holmström—calling a Trump a “dangerous, destructive choice” for president.
The letter does not explicitly endorse Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, nor any third party candidates. Rather, the group only warned against voting for Trump.
“I don’t normally engage in politics, but I decided to sign this one because I think that the destruction that Trump’s campaign tactics have done to the institutions of this nation is a great moral issue,” writes Yale University economist Robert Shiller “It isn’t Republican versus Democrat. It isn’t a normal political statement. It is a feeling of outrage against a demagogue.”
The criticisms run deep. From his proud misinformation, to his proliferation with conspiracy theories and even his notorious business practices.
Signatories Paul Romer, the new chief economist at the World Bank, and 1972 Nobel Prize winner Kenneth Arrow add, “He misinforms the electorate, degrades trust in public institutions with conspiracy theories and promotes willful delusion over engagement with reality,” propping “magical thinking and conspiracy theories over sober assessments of feasible economic policy options.”
The Wall Street Journal also reports that 19 separate U.S. Nobel Prize winners in economics endorsed the aforementioned Hillary Clinton in a letter released on Monday, Oct. 31. That letter came out just days after FBI Director Paul Comey announced the bureau would proceed with more investigation into the Clinton server email scandal, this time relating to emails coming from former U.S. House of Representatives member Anthony Weiner. Weiner was formerly married to Clinton’s trusted aide Huma Abedin.