Dr. Jill Biden Works with Community Colleges: That Makes Her a Hero

I have been involved in higher education, in one form or another, for 35 years, first as an undergraduate, then as a graduate student, a professor, and now as a senior academic administrator. I am no stranger to debates about who gets to call themselves “Doctor.” Along with parking and office space, it is the issue that most defines us as an industry.

Even by the standards of normal academic posturing, however, the recent dust-up about Jill Biden has been remarkably petty — both in the assertion that people who earn doctorates in things other than Medicine should not call themselves “doctor” in public (which is just silly, as almost everyone with a doctorate uses the title in some public forums) and in the claim that an Ed.D. is not a real doctorate (spoiler alert: it absolutely is, and universities rarely even make distinctions between Education faculty with Ed.D.s and those with other terminal degrees).

The original article by Joseph Epstein in the Wall Street Journal appeared to hit a low-water mark in condescension and gratuitous elitism, but it is weak sauce compared to today’s follow-up in the National Review by Kyle Smith. In “Jill Biden’s Doctorate Is Garbage because Her Dissertation Is Garbage”— a title that would embarrass most imaginative third-graders brawling in the sandbox at recess — Smith…