Misogynistic overtones of his insinuations aside, Epstein spends considerable time discussing his own credentials as a professor at Northwestern University (he’s actually a lecturer). The fact he cites the prestigious four-year university so often seems purposefully designed to contrast with Biden’s experience working for two-year schools.

Not only does he mock her dissertation on community college students’ needs, but his constant reminders of his association with Northwestern bring Biden’s own popular role as a community college professor to mind, perhaps in an effort to subvert her.

Certainly in his tedious paragraphs despairing how easy it is to get a doctorate degree these days (despite the fact that, again, he doesn’t have one), he aims to show she’s somehow inferior to him. It’s easier for him to accept the title of “First Lady”, a reminder of a woman’s place second to her husband the President, than address a woman with a degree in education as doctor.

And that’s the thing. The fact Biden studied education — which has so long been women’s role in society, a field beneath men — but attained a degree of note in it, is a threat. It’s a threat because it makes women in educational fields legitimate.

It reminds me of the time I was seventeen and my dentist, an old man with older values, asked me what I planned to do after college. I told him I wanted to be a professor, maybe even be president of a university. In response he asked, in that sour tone men use when a woman disappoints them with her ambitions, aren’t you more suited for working with children?

From Epstein’s perspective, he probably thinks little of how Biden is actively working to uplift the status and resources of community colleges in the United States. Those supposedly terrible two-year schools that men like him would never stoop to associate with. Those junior colleges that let anyone get a degree.

Do you see what I’m getting at? There’s more than misogyny going on here. Biden is subverting an entire system that places women and accessible, inclusive education at the bottom. Epstein and men like him want to keep enjoying the exclusivity of their ivory towers, their boy’s clubs, as long as possible.

The moment that women and other marginalized groups breakthrough, attain advanced degrees, and arrive to smash the ivory tower, this kind of men move the bar. They insult the system. It’s too easy now, Epstein argues.

“The PhD may once have held prestige, but that has been diminished by the erosion of seriousness and the relaxation of standards in university education generally, at any rate outside the sciences. Getting a doctorate was then an arduous proceeding,” he writes. “Dr. Jill, I note you acquired your Ed.D. as recently as 15 years ago at age 55, or long after the terror had departed.”

Because that’s the thing. As soon women and people of colour break through the barriers people like Epstein hope will keep them out, they will say the system is broken. It’s too easy now, they argue. The terror has departed, Epstein says, but what he and his ilk mean is you didn’t earn the right to be here.

The implication is clear: you’re not one of us and you never will be.

Of course, the truly ironic thing — the thing that cracked me up as I read this pitiful drudgery produced by yet another insecure man masquerading his credentials — is that he’s the one with the honorary degree he so despises.

In his own words, “Such degrees were once given exclusively to scholars, statesmen, artists and scientists.” But now men like Epstein can get them. He doesn’t include himself in the list of people he despairs over receiving them, but readers can still see a comparison he likely didn’t intend.

Biden, however, holds a degree she earned. She studied, took the classes, wrote and published the dissertation. She did the work — she didn’t just write snarky essays about other people she resents.

No, Biden rises far above the disparaging remarks of little men. She’s too busy using her degree to fight for community college students — students like me.

Community colleges serve underrepresented communities at an unprecedented rate compared to bigger, more prestigious four-year universities. But community college students who transfer to university to achieve their four-year degrees succeed at much higher rates than their peers who went straight from high school.

I, for one, am proud that my country will soon have a first lady who is willing to fight to make education more accessible and equitable. I am sure that’s a scary prospect for someone like Epstein who is so eager to protect the ivory tower of academia which welcomes mediocre men like him.

Of course, he hasn’t realized that whether or not Biden continues to use her title throughout the rest of her successful career, as I’m sure she will, the dominoes have already toppled. The ivory tower is coming down next.

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