Op-Ed Urging Jill Biden To Drop The 'Dr.' Sparks Outrage Online
December 13, 20206:48 PM ET
Updated at 8:25 a.m. ET Monday
An opinion column in The Wall Street Journal came under fire over the weekend for asking educator and incoming first lady Jill Biden — who holds two master's degrees and a doctorate in education — to stop using the title "Dr."
In the op-ed published Friday evening, writer Joseph Epstein, former editor of The American Scholar magazine, urged Biden to drop the title, a message that public figures and women in academia panned on Twitter as misogynistic both in substance and tone.
"Madame First Lady — Mrs. Biden — Jill — kiddo," the piece begins. "Any chance you might drop the 'Dr.' before your name? 'Dr. Jill Biden' sounds and feels fraudulent, not to say a touch comic."
Biden earned her doctorate from the University of Delaware in 2007. Biden's Obama White House biography describes the dissertation as focusing on "maximizing student retention in community colleges." Epstein disparaged the title of that dissertation as "unpromising."
A wise man once said that no one should call himself 'Dr.' unless he has delivered a child," he continued. "Think about it, Dr. Jill, and forthwith drop the doc."
Epstein went on to argue that the prestige of doctorates and honorary degrees has been diminished by political correctness and the relaxation of academic standards before urging Biden to "forget the small thrill of being Dr. Jill, and settle for the larger thrill of living for the next four years in the best public housing in the world as First Lady Jill Biden."
In a tweet Sunday night, Biden said, "Together, we will build a world where the accomplishments of our daughters will be celebrated, rather than diminished."
The backlash over Epstein's op-ed was swift.
Northwestern University, where Epstein wrote that he had taught for 30 years, issued a statement saying it "strongly disagrees with Mr. Epstein's misogynistic views" and noting he has not been a lecturer there since 2003. The university's Department of English said in a separate statement that it rejects the opinion piece "as well as the diminishment of anyone's duly-earned degrees in any field, from any university."
Biden's spokesperson called the piece a "disgusting and sexist attack" in a tweet that addressed Wall Street Journal editors directly, adding, "If you had any respect for women at all you would remove this repugnant display of chauvinism from your paper and apologize to her."
The Wall Street Journal has not responded to NPR's request for comment.
"What patronizing, sexist, elitist drivel," tweeted Kate Bedingfield, the president-elect's communications director. "Dr. B earned a doctorate in education, so we call her Doctor. The title Mr. Epstein has earned here is perhaps not fit for mixed company."
Other voices from the Democratic Party weighed in on Twitter, expressing support for Biden and slamming the op-ed as misogynistic.
"The author could've used fewer words to just say 'ya know in my day we didn't have to respect women,' " Chasten Buttigieg, husband of former Democratic presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg, wrote in a tweet that has since garnered (gather)more than 87,000 likes.
Doug Emhoff, husband of Vice President-elect Kamala Harris, praised Biden's "hard work and pure grit" in a tweet Saturday, adding, "This story would have never been written about a man."
Other prominent voices shot down the idea that the title "Dr." should only apply to medical doctors.
The Merriam-Webster dictionary noted in a tweet Saturday that the word "doctor" comes from the Latin word for "teacher," which the dictionary said first described theologians.
Bernice King, minister and daughter of civil rights activist the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., reminded Biden in a tweet that her father was a nonmedical doctor.
"And his work benefited humanity greatly," King wrote. "Yours does, too."
Epstein's article struck a particular chord among women in academia, who took to Twitter with their own searing criticisms and messages of empowerment. Scores of women with doctorate degrees added "Dr." to their Twitter names in an act of solidarity. Many did so alongside the hashtag #mytitleisdr, encouraged by academics, including archaeologist Sarah Parcak.
Biden famously taught at Northern Virginia Community College while serving as second lady from 2008 to 2016, and plans to continue teaching after President-elect Joe Biden takes office. In a 2013 interview with NPR, Biden said she did not talk about her political role in the classroom. "I think I have a separate role there as an English teacher and that's who I want to be," she said. "I want to be Dr. B, their English teacher."
If you would like to read the original op ed mentioned in the above article, here it is:
Jill Biden should think about dropping the honorific, which feels fraudulent, even comic.(RECOMMENDED)
By Joseph Epstein
Dec. 11, 2020 5:56 pm ET, Wall Street Journal
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 Ed.D., 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.
I taught at Northwestern University for 30 years without a doctorate or any advanced degree. I have only a B.A. in absentia from the University of Chicago—in absentia because I took my final examination on a pool table at Headquarters Company, Fort Hood, Texas, while serving in the peacetime Army in the late 1950s. I do have an honorary doctorate, though I have to report that the president of the school that awarded it was fired the year after I received it, not, I hope, for allowing my honorary doctorate. During my years as a university teacher I was sometimes addressed, usually on the phone, as “Dr. Epstein.” On such occasions it was all I could do not to reply, “Read two chapters of Henry James and get into bed. I’ll be right over.”
I was also often addressed as Dr. during the years I was editor of the American Scholar, the quarterly magazine of Phi Beta Kappa. Let me quickly insert that I am also not a member of Phi Beta Kappa, except by marriage. Many of those who so addressed me, I noted, were scientists. I also received a fair amount of correspondence from people who appended the initials Ph.D. to their names atop their letterheads, and have twice seen PHD on vanity license plates, which struck me as pathetic. In contemporary universities, in the social sciences and humanities, calling oneself Dr. is thought bush league.
The Ph.D. 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. Getting a doctorate was then an arduous (difficult & tiring ) proceeding: One had to pass examinations in two foreign languages, one of them Greek or Latin, defend one’s thesis, and take an oral examination on general knowledge in one’s field. At Columbia University of an earlier day, a secretary sat outside the room where these examinations were administered, a pitcher of water and a glass on her desk. The water and glass were there for the candidates who fainted. A far cry, this, from the few doctoral examinations I sat in on during my teaching days, where candidates and teachers addressed one another by first names and the general atmosphere more resembled a kaffeeklatsch. Dr. Jill, I note you acquired your Ed.D. as recently as 15 years ago at age 55, or long after the terror (extreme fear)had departed.
The prestige of honorary doctorates has declined even further. Such degrees were once given exclusively to scholars, statesmen, artists and scientists. Then rich men entered the lists, usually in the hope that they would donate money to the schools that had granted them their honorary degrees. (My late friend Sol Linowitz, then chairman of Xerox, told me that he had 63 honorary doctorates.) Famous television journalists, who passed themselves off as intelligent, followed. Entertainers, who didn’t bother feigning(fake/pretend to be injury 0r feeling) intelligence, were next.
At Northwestern, recent honorary-degree recipients and commencement speakers have included Stephen Colbert and Seth Meyers. I sent a complaining email to the school’s president about the low quality of such men as academic honorands, with the result that the following year the commencement speaker and honorand was Billie Jean King —who, with the graduating members of the school’s women’s tennis team, hit tennis balls out to the audience of graduating students and the parents who had paid $70,000 a year for their university education, or perhaps I should say for their “credential.”
Political correctness has put paid to any true honor an honorary doctorate may once have possessed. If you are ever looking for a simile to denote rarity(quality of being rare), try “rarer than a contemporary university honorary-degree list not containing an African-American woman.” Then there are all those honorary degrees bestowed on Bill Cosby, Charlie Rose and others who, owing to their proven or alleged sexual predations, have had to be rescinded. Between the honorary degrees given to billionaires, the falsely intelligent, entertainers and the politically correct, just about all honor has been drained from honorary doctorates.
As for your Ed.D., Madame First Lady, hard-earned though it may have been, please consider stowing it, at least in public, at least for now. Forget the small thrill of being Dr. Jill, and settle for the larger thrill of living for the next four years in the best public housing in the world as First Lady Jill Biden.
Mr. Epstein is author, most recently, of “Gallimaufry: A Collection of Essays, Reviews, Bits.”
'It’s all about democracy': inside gender neutral schools in Sweden
At five preschools in Stockholm, the idea that ‘boys will be boys’ and ‘girls will be girls’ is being challenged – with interesting results
Anna Leach Tue 2 Feb 2016 11.01 GMTLast modified on Fri 15 Sep 2017 12.24 BST
These schools are helping young people explore ideas of gender as the concept becomes less and less rigid. ( the benefit is improve the student learning and develop their ability )
Photograph: Södermalms Stadsdelsförvaltning
At five preschools in Stockholm you won’t find the usual designated areas for dressing up, building blocks, toy cars and dolls houses.
All the toys are purposefully jumbled up together as part of a gender-neutral policy. ( for the student equal right and equal opportunities)
The concept began in 1998 when an amendment to Sweden’s Education Act stipulated that all schools must work against gender stereotyping.
As a result, Lotta Rajalin, the head of five state preschools for children aged one to six, introduced gender-neutral policies in her preschools.
In 2011 she opened Egalia (equality in Latin), a school that specialises in gender equal teaching – an approach that does not assume that different genders have different characteristics, wants and needs. “It’s all about democracy,” says Rajalin. “We want to give all children the same opportunities the same rights.”
“We don’t say, ‘Come on boys, let’s go and play football,’ because there might be girls who want to play football,” says Frida Wikström, the schools’ coordinator. “We say ‘friends’ instead because it puts yourself on an equal level.”
The children can use whatever language they like but if one of them says something like: “You can’t play that, it’s a boys’ game,” the teachers use open questions to discuss why the child feels like that.
They use “hen” as a gender neutral alternative to he or she because they feel that it discourages stereotyping.
“For example, if a firefighter is coming in and we don’t know if they are a man or woman we would call them ‘hen’,” says Wikström.
“We assume it’s a ‘he’ because we get that image in our head.” They also use “” in songs where they’ve noticed that more assertive or aggressive animals tend to be called “he” and sweeter ones “she.” “A bear is nearly always a he. Why is that?” asks Wikström.
When Rajalin started out, she filmed teachers to see if how they treated boys and girls varied.
“We discovered that there is a big difference,” says Wikström.
“For example, we would take a lot more time to comfort girls. Boys were just told, ‘Off you go, you’re fine.’”
The next step was developing guidelines. They include not assuming that different genders play in a certain way. For example, the building blocks, cars, dolls and dressing-up play areas are mixed together, opening up more interaction between the boys and girls.
“It’s had a really positive effect. Boys and girls play a lot more together. It’s very rare that you hear a boy say, ‘I only want to play with boys’.
It’s important to us to really work on the idea that we’re friends and a group, not separated by gender.”
It’s not all been smooth sailing; however, most of the challenges have come from adults.
First, changing deeply-ingrained attitudes to gender from staff is not easy, says Wikström.
“We assume we treat everyone the same, but we don’t,” she says. “It’s very difficult to change behaviour.”
Asking staff to analyse their behaviour has also been difficult. “To look at oneself in a critical way is not always that pleasant, but that is the starting point.”
The schools have a policy of recruiting staff members with a diverse range of backgrounds, from 20-year-old Swedish women just out of university to a 50-year-old man from Iran (they have a much higher proportion, about 40%, of male teachers compared with other schools). The staff members have a lot of discussion and training, and they all agree on the guidelines before they start.
Although some parents chose the schools specifically for their gender-neutral policies, accepting the approach can be challenging for others.
The staff show parents a circle separated into two with gender stereotypes in each half. “We explain, ‘Do you want your child to have half a life or a whole life?’” says Wikström. “Everyone wants the most for their children.
Even fairly traditional parents get it when they see that it’s not about taking anything away from the child.”
Spaces where children can be whatever they want to be are important, says Pippa Hodges, a child counsellor at schools in north London.
But there could also be risks with a gender-neutral environment.
“There might be a danger of children identifying strongly with a particular gender and not being supported in that; the risk of confusion and shame is high at this developmental stage,” she explains.
Genevieve Passamonte, a nursery school teacher in north London, also has her reservations: “Every good nursery has equal opportunities and anti-bias policies.
It’s absolutely fine if a little boy wants to wear a dress, but... it’s important for the children to learn language correctly.”
Neuroscientist and director of educational space Science Gallery, Daniel Glaser, says studies support the idea that language is vital to defining behaviour.
“Very subtle changes in language can have dramatic effects,” he says. “Psycholinguistics, or the use of different words, is very influential on teachers’ behaviour.”
It will also be vital for changing children’s perceptions. “If you think that the way that children perceive gender is important, then making an early intervention to equalise between the genders is a good idea. It’s definitely too late by the time they get older,” he adds.
Ideas of how each gender should behave are also becoming less rigid with each new generation. Hodges says children and young people are far more accepting of the fluidity of gender and sexuality than older generations.
Rajalin describes her school’s approach as preparing children for this new world. “We must work against our traditional way of thinking,” she says. “The world that I grew up in doesn’t exist anymore. The children are going to be adults in 15 or 20 years’ time. They are going to live in another sort of society. We have to prepare them for that.”
