Weigel

The Delaware Senate Race is All About College

The strangest press release of the day comes from the campaign of Christine O’Donnell, who was thwacked by The Washington Post’s Greg Sargent over a LinkedIn profile that oversold an honor from Oxford University. O’Donnell now denies that the LinkedIn profile was hers, while basically confirming the gist – not the high-falutin’ names of degrees, but the gist – of what it says.

There have been reports that I have released falseinformation on a LinkedIn profile under my name. This is categoricallyuntrue. I never established a LinkedIn profile, or authorized anyone todo so on my behalf. I have always been clear about my educationalbackground. I completed undergraduate work at Fairleigh DickensonUniversity. After my undergraduate work, I completed a summer program runby the Phoenix Institute, at the Institute’s Oxford University location. The Institute runs programs around the world at various universities, andparticipants study issues of human dignity. I also completed a LincolnFellowship at the Claremont Institute in Claremont, CA. We wouldencourage LinkedIn to remove this profile. 

I am about to type a sentence that I never thought political journalism would inspire: O’Donnell’s MySpace page was far more accurate than her LinkedIn profile.

The incredible thing about the undying O’Donnell college/high school/90s stories is that her conservative supporters continue to respond to it by asking, well, what Chris Coons was doing in college. Jeffrey Lord fires off the latest salvo , demanding that Coons reveal his teachers and assigned reading from Yale Divinity School.

Since Coons’ liberal friends have made much of ahigh-school date by O’Donnell with a guy into witchcraft, did ChrisCoons take the “Witchcraft” course the school offers? How about the”Queer Worship,” “Feminist/Womanist/Gendered Theologies” or”Introduction to Christian Ethics II” courses? The latter featuringreadings by Black Liberation theology guru James Cone and socialjustice evangelist Ronald Sider? If not, what specific courses did Coons take while getting his Master of Arts inReligion at YDS – graduating in 1994. 

This is actually a follow-up to a longer Lord investigation of the fact that Yale Divinity School teaches things.