Friday
A misogynistic Wall Street Journal column by former American Scholar editor Joseph Epstein has social media in an uproar. As is often the case in such instances, it has also brought out the best in Washington Post satirist Alexandra Petri.
Epstein’s editorial opens,
Madame First Lady — Mrs. Biden — Jill — kiddo: a bit of advice on what might seem like a small but I think is not an unimportant matter. Any chance you might drop the ‘Dr.’ before your name? ‘Dr. Jill Biden’ sounds and feels a touch fraudulent, not to mention comical.”
Given that many college professors are addressed as “Dr.” because of their PhDs (doctor of philosophy) or EdDs (doctor of education), Epstein appears to be just another man intimidated by powerful women. After all, do such types ever object to men who carry the moniker “Dr.” (say, Dr. Kissinger)? Epstein’s fatuous remarks resemble those previous rightwing attacks on first ladies who have their own careers and ambitions (Hillary Clinton and Michelle Obama).
Petri’s approach, common to satire, is to have a persona take Epstein’s stupid statement seriously and run with it. Writing as Dr. Victor Frankenstein, she has the scientist acknowledge that he shouldn’t be referred as “Dr.” Instead, he wants to be know as “monster.” Petri here plays with way we often mistakenly refer to the monster as Frankenstein:
Everyone, everyone! Please, do not address me, Victor Frankenstein, as “Doctor.” Technically, I am that Modern Prometheus, the man whose hubris has set him to steal fire from the gods and seek to create life from a reanimated corpse. Which is to say that addressing me as “Doctor” would be a mistake. I am, clearly, the Monster in this novel.
Employing Epstein’s reasoning, Petri’s Frankenstein demands that he be addressed “in a less respectful way”:
Also, I am not technically a doctor. My whole life people keep addressing me as “Doctor,” erroneously, I think because I am a man, or perhaps because I created life where there was none in a wild fit of hubris and science has yet to determine a good term for someone who does that!
I agree, I do technically possess the kind of knowledge of the natural sciences that might cause someone to be addressed as “Doctor,” and you would think, rationally, that the conversation would stop there. But nothing with me ever stops at a rational bound! I’m Victor Frankenstein! I steal body parts and reassemble them into an enormous being of my own design, I am ignorant in my pride of science, and now, I am writing an op-ed in a major newspaper asking for someone with an advanced degree to be addressed in a less respectful way.
Epstein writes that “no one should call himself Dr. unless he has delivered a child,” leading Petri to write,
I have heard that no one who has not delivered a baby should be addressed as “Doctor” — and all that I have done is to reanimate a grotesque specimen. This is, in a sense, a baby, like when people call their novel or their PhD dissertation a “baby,” but in a stricter more technical sense, it is not a baby. The difference here is that creating a PhD dissertation and unleashing it on the world would make someone else a doctor, whereas creating my creature and unleashing him upon the world made me a Monster. I have rightly won this credential, and I demand to be addressed by it.
I’m tickled by the image of unleashing one’s dissertation upon the world. I can testify that, while one pours everything one has into writing it, few people want to read it. Dissertations are designed to prove that one has mastered the discipline’s discourse, and to do that you must read all primary and secondary materials relating to your subject (all footnoted), synthesize and apply the relevant debates and theories, and add your own contribution. It’s academe’s version of lawyers passing the bar exam.
It’s not easy for anyone to earn a doctorate, and the academic landscape is strewn with uncompleted dissertations, earning people the derogatory moniker AbD (All but Dissertation). While some snobbism is directed against Education Departments (Biden has an EdD), most are no less rigorous than English or philosophy departments. To be sure, a few schools issue cheap doctorates, just as a few law schools issue cheap degrees, but Biden’s University of Delaware is a respected institution.
As an aside, I noticed that many of my students started calling me “Dr. Bates” rather than “Professor Bates” or “Robin” once my hair turned gray. (I used to tell them to use whatever moniker they felt comfortable with.)
Back to Petri, who goes on to refer to Christopher Marlowe’s most famous creation:
They say, too, that it is alarming and wrong to call anyone “Doctor” who could not save you if there were a medical emergency. (That is why people who have degrees in literature or education or who are professors have to refer to themselves as, say, Mr. Faustus.) Could I save you? I cannot even save myself! No, I must perish on this ice floe. It is the only way!
Technically, I guess you could say that Faustus is a medical doctor since he has saved whole cities from the plague. He is more known for his intellectual and scientific breakthroughs than for his medical contributions, however. Medieval and Renaissance Europe, following Aristotle’s footsteps, didn’t specialize as we do, and Faustus studies philosophy and theology along with medicine. Those medical professionals who, centuries later, came to be called doctors borrowed the term from the universities.
By the end of Petri’s column, it’s not clear who is a greater monster, Dr. Frankenstein or Joseph Epstein. Both are in the running:
I understand when people get mad and say that actually “Monster” should be reserved for people who transform during full moons or write dismissive op-eds about women’s educational credentials. But I think it should be applied to me. And I am a Monster, so you must listen.
Further note: Stories are coming in from Epstein’s former students at Northwestern, where he was a visiting professor on the basis of his essays. It sounds like his sexism was not limited to Wall Street Journal editorials.
And yet another thought: Another reason why Petri’s invocation of Frankenstein is appropriate: author Mary Shelley, despite being the author of a groundbreaking work, has also been the subject of attempts to diminish her accomplishment, with some giving credit to her famous husband.