A Bad Cup of Joe

This is an awkward piece to write.  Not in a bad, problematic way.  More an eye-rolling, deep sigh, teeth-gnashing  and pissed off kind of thing. 

It's a bit long, but I think the background is helpful, and it's what's in the news, after all, but I feel pretty comfortable in saying that if you stick around it will all be worth it.  Really.

I suspect most people by now have seen the story about the idiotic op-ed in the Wall Street Journal about the author taking Dr. Jill Biden to task for daring to use her PhD credentials in her name, when the "kiddo" isn't a medical doctor and didn't deliver a baby.  (And no, having children doesn't count.)

It was a truly awful, belittling article on so many levels, not the least of which is the starting point that I'm sure the author, Joseph Epstein, has had not problem over the years referring to Dr. Henry Kissinger or Dr. Martin Luther King among many others, none of whom ever delivered a baby in either way.  And if for some imaginable reason he did have a problem, never wrote a public article about it.  Nor did the Wall Street Journal ever publish such an article, by anyone.

Indeed, the Wall Street Journal should not be let off the hook here.  After all, if Mr. Epstein had just written his screed and sent it privately to a fellow-misogynist, no one would be the wiser or care at his self-contained rantings.  It took such a major national newspaper to bring the thing such national attention.  And to make matters worse, they doubled-down on creating a problem for themselves when the op-ed page editor Paul Gigot wrote a defense of publishing the piece, noting (among other things) that as a public figure, Dr. Biden "can't be off-limits."

And, well...yes, that's very correct, Dr. Jill Biden should not be off-limits.  If she does something wrong, she (like everyone in life) should be held accountable.

The thing is, and this is the very important point, which happily should be incredibly easy to understand -- earning a PhD and using the "Dr." title that you earned through difficult, long academic scholarship is NOT doing something wrong.

The article was truly awful.  And the defense was tone deaf.  

Tone deaf, too, was some criticism of Dr. Biden that she should have a tougher skin to put up with articles like this one.  In fact, she only put only one response, and it was very polite, gracious and didn't even reference the author or the article.  It just made a point about young women and girls.  And indeed that's why the outrage at Joseph Epstein's article was so justified.  Not because it hurt Dr. Biden's feelings -- I'd be shocked if it did -- but because it sent such a horrible, public message to young women and girls (and all women, for that matter) that your scholarship doesn't matter.

(There was one amusing side note to Mr. Epstein's article.  It's when he referenced how he'd taught at a college for decades and never used a "Dr." in his title.  But it turns out that that's because he never earned a doctorate!  That makes it really quite difficult to legitimately claim one.  He has a Bachelor's degree.  Hey, I have a Master's degree, so even I outrank him!  In fairness, Joseph Epstein does have an honorary doctorate -- but well...y'know.  That doesn't carry you too far with college administrations trying to decide on tenure.  Or getting you a better table at most Wendy's.  And while it would be at the very least interesting to know where his honorary degree is from, alas he doesn't even name it.  He does at least mention that the president of the University who awarded it to him was later fired.  For the record, the school is Adelphi University.)

By the way, it should be noted that this isn't the first time that Joseph Epstein has come under great criticism for misogyny.  He did as editor for 22 years of The American Scholar, official magazine of the Phi Beta Kappa society. His views and articles were seen as critical of feminist scholars (yes, there's a shock to discover), and rarely gave voice to opposing views.  This included given a platform without opposition to such far-right voices as Dinesh D'Souza, who later pled guilty to a felony and subsequently got a pardon from Trump.  Even as eminent a writer as Joyce Carol Oates co-wrote an editorial calling for Epstein's firing.  He was, finally, fired in 1997, with a former president of Phi Beta Kappa commenting, "He has been driving people crazy for years. What has changed is that more and more senators were elected who are uncomfortable with the totally one-sided views in the journal.".

Okay, here is where we get to the awkward part.  And no, all that above was not "awkward," just reprehensible.  Very different concepts.

As readers of these pages know well, I went to Northwestern University, my dad taught at the medical school there -- and had season tickets to the school's football team for 51 years,, my brother went to medical school there, and about half-dozen relatives went there.  (Okay, I can guess most people can guess where this is heading.  But you don't, exactly.)  I love Northwestern University.

And yes, the school where Joseph Epstein taught for 28 years was...Northwestern University.

It is indeed galling.  That he was a visiting lecturer there for all those years and not a professor is no salve.  It is still galling to know.  Especially that he taught there for 28 years.

And here's the odd thing -- that's not even the most awkward part.

It's that -- while I can't swear to it, though I'm sure I could find out for certain -- but I am pretty sure that I had him as a teacher in one of my classes!  Yes, really.

I didn't put his name together with my time at Northwestern.  It's a fairly common name, I was there long ago, and remember the names of very few of my teachers there.  But last night, Brian Williams had a story on MSNBC about the whole controversy, and they showed an old photo of him.  And even though it was so long ago, and it was just one class, the picture flashed by and the name "Joseph Epstein" kept getting repeated -- and suddenly I went, "Oh, my God, I think I had him as a teacher!"  The professor was thin and had short hair name, like the person in photo, it was an English literature class (and that's what this Joseph Epstein taught) and I'm near certain that the teacher was named "Epstein" and as I focus on it, "Joseph" rings a bell.  And I even think he was a lecturer, not a professor.  I can't swear to it.  But if I absolutely had to bet, and afterwards we'd track it down in old transcripts, I would bet that, yes, I had Joseph Epstein as my teacher for an English literature class.

The class stands out because, though my college studies were in the humanities and not science, and my career work has been in writing, I think it was my only pure literature course.  Though I can't swear to that either.  But the other reason the class stands out is because of an amusing aside that took place one day.  For whatever reason, the name of author Arthur C. Clarke came up, and his story of 2001:  A Space Odyssey -- and the subsequent movie phenomenon.  And the teacher (this Joseph Epstein, I presume) asked the class to raise their hands if they'd either read the book or seen the movie, and all the hands around me shot up.  Then, he asked who had neither read the book or seen the movie -- and my hand was the only one to raise.

For what it's worth, my hand would still go up if asked the question...

By the way, there is one positive in all this.  

After the MSNBC story and my ruminating thoughts, I went online to do some research about "Joseph Epstein" and his time at Northwestern.  A Google search turned up a page for him on the Northwestern University website, so I clicked on it.  But unfortunately it turned up a "Page Not Found" result.  I did other searching and found other information.  But today, I checking out information for this article, I discovered something new -- Northwestern University, to their great credit, has actually scrubbed Joseph Epstein's emeritus page from its website!

Huzzah.

​There is a happy ending to this after all.