Hillary Clinton already has quite the list of occupations in her Twitter bio and now she has the opportunity to add “college professor” to the list. Sources tell Politico that Clinton is fielding several offers to enter academia in some capacity. What each institution is proposing is unclear, but Clinton has been offered a program in her name or a spot on the faculty at several schools, including the Harvard Kennedy School, Yale, and New York University (where Chelsea Clinton has multiple faculty gigs). Baruch College reportedly has the most elaborate proposal: renaming its entire public policy school after Clinton.
Politico notes that holding an academic position could give Clinton a reason to deliver policy speeches in the coming months aside from her messy relationship with the Clinton Foundation. Harvard, NYU, and Baruch College have all confirmed that they made some sort of invitation to Clinton, and the talks are said to be in the “listening” phase (with Clinton adviser Maggie Williams doing most of that listening). Even if Clinton isn’t really interested in teaching or having her name on a building just yet, an academic position could be a good backup if she doesn’t run, or if years of 2016 speculation culminates in a spectacular election flop. She’ll just have to come up with her own version of Al Gore’s beard of defeat.
