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Campaign Trail Yields Epithet: "Professorial"
By Hans Johnson
The fights for the main parties' presidential nominations have wound down, but while they lasted, they had their share of illuminating exchanges. One theme made its first appearance in Iowa. Then, it recurred in the New Hampshire debates. By March, it had become a fixture of the Democratic presidential campaign, and the allusions were too much to miss. The term "professor" had become an insult. As if to underscore the affront--and for some observers, the irony--the epithet's chief target did not have a Ph.D.; it was the candidate's wife, depicted as more sensitive, who was actually the academic.
Throughout the winter presidential primaries, the verbal missiles descended on Bill Bradley, whose wife, Ernestine Schlant, is a professor of literature at Montclair State University in New Jersey and a longtime AAUP member. It began as an innuendo from a rival campaign, which suggested that Bradley's blueprint for broadening health-care coverage and his meditations on the new economy were so much "theorizing" better suited for a "seminar" room than the Oval Office. As all eyes shifted to New Hampshire, the debate became more pointed, and the Washington Post picked up on the strategy. "Bradley's biggest problem, however, may be an awkward campaign style--the Gore campaign derides it as professorial--that seems to be turning some voters off," wrote reporter Mike Allen in the January 13 edition of the Post.
According to one academic observer, employing "professor" as an epithet is just one way for candidates to use education to set themselves apart from the pack and stigmatize each other. "It's odd that Gore would use this approach, because he's vulnerable to a different angle of it," notes Paul Russell, a professor of English at Vassar College. Echoing a poll gauging popular reactions to the candidates' campaign styles, Russell says that, to some, Gore may "tend to come across as the prototypical kid with all the right answers."
Besides, say some faculty members, wasn't Woodrow Wilson a professor? And wasn't two-time 1950s presidential candidate Adlai Stevenson, now eulogized as a stirring speaker, also criticized in his day as professorial? "It's sad," says Russell, "because beyond the stereotype are a lot of lively, smart, sensitive, and engaged people."
Yet Russell doesn't lose sight of the cultural dynamics behind the name-calling. "Maybe appearing professorial really is the kiss of death. Sometimes, when people are first introduced to me, they say, 'Oh, I'll have to watch my grammar.' It's as if they see our job as somehow minding the intellectual store. I don't really know where that comes from, but it seems deeply ingrained."
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