Hillary Clinton's New Professor Gig Isn't Going So Well, According to One Student
Editor’s Note: Our readers responded strongly to this story when it originally ran; we’re reposting it here in case you missed it.
She was an awful secretary of state. She failed at winning the presidency not once but twice. And, according to one student who’s gone viral on TikTok, she’s not so hot at being a university professor, either.
In a series of videos from Columbia University student Laalitya Acharya, Clinton — who taught a class called “Inside the Situation Room” alongside Columbia Dean Keren Yarhi-Milo — had a teaching style very much akin to “a one-sided speaking engagement” and was “basically reading passages from her book,” according to Fox News.
And — here’s a surprise — the notoriously stiff Clinton didn’t “loosen up” in her on-campus gig, Acharya said.
In two videos posted in December, Acharya insisted she didn’t “regret taking the class” but felt Clinton’s teaching style left something to be desired for a university where a year’s tuition could buy a Tesla Cybertruck and still leave you with a few thousand dollars pocket change.
“[There was a] kind of the divide between the students and the professors,” Acharya said.
“I’d hoped that over the course of the semester, she would start to loosen up a little bit. We’d get to know more about her as [an] individua[l] and really be able to have … a professor/student relationship rather than just having [her] talk at us.”
“This, however, wasn’t the case, and pretty much for the entire semester, it felt very much like a one-sided speaking engagement where [Clinton and Yarhi-Milo] were just talking at us,” she said.
“And that was definitely frustrating because a big part of why we were in the class was to understand more about decision-making, why people made the decisions that they did.”
At the start of the semester, she said, students would gush over Clinton with not-really-questions “like ‘oh my gosh, you’re my hero, what piece of advice would you give me if I wanna be like you one day?'”
Then, the Hamas attacks on Israel happened on Oct. 7, and things took a turn. After that, Hillary was asked more difficult questions, including, “What about the Benghazi crisis?” Yeah, have fun getting answers on that one.
@laalityaacharya I have more *thoughts* ab the execution of the class too but here are some ab HRC herself #ivy #ivyleague #columbia #college #school #university #columbiauniversity #nyc #hillary #hrc #clinton ♬ original sound – Laalitya Acharya
The class was supposed to be on high-level decision making: “Students will be taught how to analyze and understand the complex interplay between individual psychology, domestic politics, public opinion, bureaucracy, the international environment, and other factors which feed into decisions about foreign policy,” the class description read.
If it was anything like what Acharya was describing, that definitely wasn’t what was going on in the classroom.
“Usually whenever you start to … get to know [politicians] more on a personal basis, you start to like them a little bit more because they become more humanized,” she said. “Over the course of the semester, though, I feel like Hillary Clinton became more of a politician than she was at the end.”
Acharya — who, as you can see from her initial video, is a bit of a Hillary fangirl — said she thought Hillary could have “been more honest” with those in the class.
“I would have really, really hoped that she would bring in some more unique insights and … more vulnerability and discussion on why she made the decisions that she did, what her insights were, what her thoughts were,” she said.
“So while I don’t regret taking the class, I think there are definitely places where she could have been more honest with us because she wasn’t in her role as secretary of state or politician. She was there as a professor to teach, and I wish that she had embraced that role a little bit more.”
@laalityaacharya I dont regret the class – but there are definitely places for improvement so we can actually get more from the course #hrc #hillaryclinton #columbia #ivy #ivyleague @Laalitya Acharya ♬ original sound – Laalitya Acharya
No word from Hillary as of Fox News’ Jan. 11 report on Clinton apparently lacking pedagogical skills, but I imagine her response would be something like this, were she forced to give one:
In the words of Hillary Clinton: What Difference At This Point Does It Make? #BenghaziAintGoingAway
Deaths: US Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens; USFS officer Sean Smith; CIA contractors Tyrone S. Woods and Glen Doherty.
Hillary Clinton should be in a prison cell for this alone. pic.twitter.com/MNgB00DiRa— Mister Peabody (@hector_peabody) April 22, 2022
The idea that a Columbia student is shocked that Hillary lacks candor and honesty is yet more proof, if we needed any in this winter of academia’s discontent, that the Ivy League is pretty much a broken echo chamber. However, it’s good that Acharya’s up-close-and-personal introduction to Clinton was also, apparently, her introduction to reality: Clinton is a charmless liar and self-promoter, something that becomes evident when the media isn’t breathlessly treating her like St. Rodham of Arkansas.
And, let’s also stop for a second and marvel at the fact that the woman at the helm of the State Department at the time of the Benghazi debacle was allowed to teach a class called “Inside the Situation Room.” What are some other celebrity professors at Columbia teaching, one must wonder?
Is Ryan Leaf teaching a class called “How to Succeed in the NFL”? Maybe the ghost of John DeLorean is the professor for both “Building a Profitable Automotive Startup” and “Avoiding FBI Entrapment for Beginners”?
Whatever the case, if these reports are correct, you too can get the same kind of education Columbia students are getting by purchasing any of Hillary’s self-hagiographical memoirs — available for less than a dollar in the remainder bin at pretty much any Barnes & Noble nationwide. Spend the money you saved on that Cybertruck.
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