Hillary Clinton Being Courted By Academia
Hillary Clinton is getting offers from universities to add her name and presence.
Hillary Clinton is getting offers from universities to add her name and presence.
POLITICO (“Hillary Clinton considering academic options“):
Hillary Clinton is fielding offers from colleges and universities — including Harvard and her law school alma mater, Yale — to give her a formal academic role, a move that would give her a platform outside her family’s foundation.
The approaches have ranged from offers to join faculty to starting a program in Clinton’s name to rebranding the Baruch College public policy school after the former secretary of state, three sources told POLITICO.
The advantage to Clinton of an academic platform, beyond the scope of her policy interests, could be huge for someone considering a presidential run. It would provide her with a credible backdrop for speeches and events that would take her outside of a hotel ballroom or something sponsored by her family’s foundation or another outside group.
She announced her upcoming policy areas of interest at a Clinton Global Initiative meeting in Chicago and gave her fiery speech about the Voting Rights Act at an American Bar Association event. Having an academic platform could be enormously valuable in that respect.
The notions that Clinton lacks a platform or that an academic connection would be “enormously valuable” to someone running for president are rather obviously silly. I’m reminded of Daniel Patrick Moynihan’s quip when James Buckley referred to him as “Professor Moynihan” in a debate: “The mudslinging has begun.”
Still, I can see Clinton finding such an association gratifying and, certainly, she would lend prestige to the institutions in question. The Baruch offer is especially interesting; while not by any means in the same league as Harvard’s Kennedy School, having a school of public policy named after her would certainly be flattering.
Everyone wants to hitch their wagon to a winning horse.
An affiliation with the Kennedy School would be so … well, to-be-expected. It would be far more interesting if she took up an affiliation with just about any program other than the Kennedy School. The University of Chicago, Columbia, Georgetown, Johns Hopkins all would be prestigious high visibility affiliations. In fact, I’d love it if she affiliated with Stanford, if only to have Condoleeza Rice just down the hall, and to ruffle a few feathers at the Hoover Institute.
An affiliation or special lectureship or residency would make sense. However any position with daily responsibilities that lasted more than a semester would not.
The idea of Clinton chairing a new program initiative is complete fantasy — unless, she isn’t running for the Presidency. But again, all the signs indicate that she clearly is gearing up to make the run.
She should pick someplace where her incompetence won’t get anyone killed.
I hope whatever institution she chooses pays her several hundred thousand dollars a year for doing nothing except sticking her name on the masthead, while saving money by hiring and underpaying adjuncts instead of recruiting tenure-track faculty.
I mean, why should anyone buck a trend that’s working out so well for everyone who matters?
@wr: I like your style.
She isn’t going to run. She knows exactly what the job entails and doesn’t want it. However, she’ll play cat and mouse with it until the last possible moment.
She will take an academic position that will allow her to continue making the high dollar speeches to adoring crowds. The university will be close to New York, the center of the business world.
@ bandit
Dancing on the graves of Americans who willingly went to a dangerous place to serve their country while you sat on your ass at home is kinda chickenshit.
@ William Wilgus
I think you are confusing Clinton with Palin.
@William Wilgus:
I’m going to have to disagree. I think she wants it and wants it bad. She’s just not yet sure if she wants it badly enuf to put up with the grind. Lord knows, I wouldn’t and she has 15 years (I think) on me.
@anjin-san: How could I? One has a rather high IQ expressed as a large POSITIVE NUMBER and the other one has a rather low IQ expressed as a large NEGATIVE NUMBER.
Perhaps you think that anyone who had the opportunity to run for President would jump at the chance to do so. Perhaps you think that HC getting large speaking fees could only be due to the same motivations as SP. Perhaps you’re confusing HC and SP.
@OzarkHillbilly: ‘Wrong’ and I are well-acquainted. We meet often. :^)
I thought she wanted if very badly, perhaps ‘desperately’, when she ran before. (I believe that showed and hurt her chances.) I think that this time she’s enjoying the attention and basking in the popular demand. I remain convinced she won’t run.
I hope some of the money she’s earning will be put to charitable use. Surely some of it will at least eventually go to CC. Though I wouldn’t vote for her in a primary, I would in the general. Despite my dislike for her politically, I hope that the eventually I just mentioned is quite far down the road.
@OzarkHillbilly:
It’s hers if she decides she wants it. If it were me I’d blow it off, already lived in that house and what not.
I can think of several other candidates that could walk away with the election. Let’s face it, the GOP is a pathetic joke these days.
But again, would anyone really want it at this point? And would we wan’t to be lead by someone who did?
POTUS and Hilary should also point out that many institutions of higher learning seem to be reducing courses and coursework focusing on cultural diversity in our country…maybe even moreso in southern states. Why is that? Now more than ever cultural sensitivity is of import in our country.