Don’t Mess With PhDs

Hell Hath No Fury Like a Doctorate Holder Scorned

When I saw it trending, I thought, no! Not another “Doctorgate.”

In a Wall Street Journal op-ed last weekend, essayist and former professor Joseph Epstein attempted to make a point about academic pomposity (as well as the proliferation of frivolous PhDs in some fields) by suggesting that, as first lady, Jill Biden should stop referring to herself as Dr. Biden, as she has since earning an Ed.D in Educational Leadership in 2007.

“Madame First Lady — Mrs. Biden — Jill — kiddo: a bit of advice on what may seem like a small but I think is a not unimportant matter,” wrote Epstein, who is a former editor of The American Scholar. “Any chance you might drop the ‘Dr.’ before your name? ‘Dr. Jill Biden’ sounds and feels fraudulent, not to say a touch comic.”

Wouldn’t you know it, the piece didn’t quite land. It crashed spectacularly, sending the 83-year-old Epstein to the Twitter stockade and generating several news articles about the outrage, including this one in The New York Times. Pretty soon, Northwestern University, where Epstein is an emeritus lecturer, had released a statement denouncing the op-ed and decrying Epstein’s “misogynist views.” A subsequent Newsweek article suggested that Northwestern had removed Epstein’s biography from its website.