When Christopher Lloyd's character is mentioned in the movie, it is said that he started teaching in Brown. Brown was the last name of his most remembered character: Dr Emmett Brown in Back to the Future. The fact that Brown University in New England is an Ivy League college is completely irrelevant.
Joanne Whalley ("Jacueline") played Beatrice in a 1990 mini-series of Dante's "Inferno," which is discussed in the first scene of the movie and referenced throughout.