You might have heard about a little Wall Street Journal op-ed that went viral this weekend for arguing that future First Lady Dr. Jill Biden should drop the title “Doctor” from her name.
Many decried the column, by the Jewish essayist and former editor of The American Scholar Joseph Epstein, as sexist from its first line onward. (The first line in question: “Madame First Lady Mrs. Biden Jill kiddo.”) Its argument: Biden, who in 2007 earned a doctorate in education, known as an Ed.D., is an example of the ways in which, per Epstein, the standards required to earn a doctorate have declined. Based entirely on Epstein’s own anecdotal accounts of such declines he himself, he admits, has only an honorary doctorate the column is almost less about Biden than a general sense of grumpiness that academia is, in some vague way, not what it used to be.