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New York Notebook

Nothing scares men more than a successful woman – it’s getting quite exhausting

After reading a sexist op-ed about Jill Biden in ‘The Wall Street Journal’, Holly Baxter is fed up of women being belittled by men who feel threatened

Wednesday 16 December 2020 00:00 GMT
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<p>Joseph Epstein’s strange, mean-spirited piece said very little about our political moment</p>

Joseph Epstein’s strange, mean-spirited piece said very little about our political moment

A few short months after the New York intelligentsia responded with horror to a New York Times op-ed titled “Send in the Troops” during the Black Lives Matter protests, an American publication has done it again. The Wall Street Journal over the weekend published a column about Dr Jill Biden, soon-to-be first lady of the White House, and in particular her well-earned doctorate. In it, 83-year-old former university lecturer Joseph Epstein, who does not have a doctorate, wrote: “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. Any chance you might drop the ‘Dr’ before your name? ‘Dr Jill Biden’ sounds and feels fraudulent, not to say a touch comic. Your degree is, I believe, an EdD, a doctor of education, earned at the University of Delaware through a dissertation with the unpromising title ‘Student Retention at the Community College Level: Meeting Students’ Needs’. A wise man once said that no one should call himself ‘Dr’ unless he has delivered a child. Think about it, Dr Jill, and forthwith drop the doc.”

It was a strange, mean-spirited piece that said very little about our political moment. “The PhD may once have held prestige, but that has been diminished by the erosion of seriousness and the relaxation of standards in university education generally, at any rate outside the sciences,” Epstein continued. He added that Jill Biden received her doctorate “as recently as 15 years ago”, meaning probably long after standards had supposedly dropped.

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