Transcripts-- Are They Academic?

-by Michael Wolkowitz



No not Flynn’s conversations with the Russians. Not Manafort’s with the Russian clients in Ukraine. Or anything else from this century.

Remember, earlier this century, when the current President (hereinafter referred to as “T”) took a side-trip from his crusade to prove that the prior President (hereinafter referred to as “0”) was not an American citizen? The one where T pointed out that O first went to Occidental before going to Columbia, and then on to Harvard Law? The trip that implied, in case after case after case, it proved the perverse privilege that is known as affirmative action? You know, the kind black people get?  If T had been able to learn and pronounce Punahou he would have added High School in Hawaii. Remember how T dared O to release his transcripts from Columbia because they would be a bombshell? OK, maybe you did, certainly you do now.

Let’s flash back to those days in the ‘60s when our T was going to college. He was a mere handful of years ahead of me and I remember. We can skip the part when some would ask: if he went to New York Military Academy and graduated, bone spurs and all, why wasn’t he a ROTC guy in college? Let’s go straight to Freshman and Sophomore Years. At Fordham. Yep, just like O, the current President did not start at an Ivy League school. While a fine university, Fordham was no Occidental. T did not start at the undergraduate program of the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School until he was a junior. That Ivy League education of his was only two years long. By the way, the Fordham University of today, unlike Occidental, does not like to be known as a school that was attended by a President of the United States; darn Jesuits!

Back then, the undergraduate school at Wharton was no Columbia. No Columbia? I distinctly remember kids in those days needing more than anything to go to an Ivy, any Ivy. When 100% of the envelopes were rejections, they raced to the guidance counselor’s office (at my privileged public school in a privileged NY suburb). Here was the advice they got and mostly it worked:  there are two other places we can still try to get you into (yes it was April but I told you we were privileged). The School of Industrial and Labor Relations at Cornell-- no it’s not the College of Arts and Sciences but the diploma says “Cornell” or the Wharton School of Economics, no, it’s not the College of Arts and Sciences but the diploma says “University of Pennsylvania.”

Fordham and Wharton. Not Occidental and Columbia let alone Harvard Law and its Review. All the more reason for the biggest genius in the world to:

SHOW US THE TRANSCRIPTS. Will it change anything, no. But it could be fun! And by mistake maybe they will send the tax returns . . .

UPDATE from Howie

Trump planted stories-- I mean #Alt-Facts-- as early as 1973 that he graduated first in his class. Records show that he wasn't even on the honor roll nor the recipient of any graduating honors. He couldn't have graduated "first in his class" when 15 of his classmates graduated cum laude from Wharton (1968), 4 magna cum laude and 2 summa cum laude, unlike Trump who... graduated... from something. What he graduated from was always in question. After left-- possibly flunked out of-- Fordham, his father bribed Wharton into taking his unqualified son into a "special" real estate program that apparently didn't even exist except for him. He made no impression on anyone for anything and has carefully hidden his academic records and prohibited Wharton from allowing anyone to see them after he was repeatedly caught lying about being a top student.


UPDATE II: The Organization Man

A note from a long-time DWT reader included the page from William H. Whyte's 1956 classic, The Organization Man. Whyte quoted a very interesting passage from the Daily Pennsylvanian about the less than salutary effects of Wharton on intellectual life at Penn.