Darcy Burner and the politics of degrees

Much has been made the last week or so about the Degrees of Dem Darcy Reichert and incumbent Repub Dave Reichert. Reichert, with a new war chest of campaign funds has launched an agressive campaign against Burner claiming that she in effect lied about her "degree in Economics" from Harvard. slumping in the latest polls, Reichert is looking for anything to attack Burner on and if it is over the education qualifications of his opponent, so be it.

What's galling about this is not that Reichert is flat out wrong in his assertions but that his own educational background is wrong - what with stating incorrecting in numerous places that he has a BA when in fact he has an AA degree from a small luthern junior college.

The best response I've though is from this letter to the Seattle Times that clarifies that yes Darcy has an Economics specialty within a Harvard Computer Science degree: Point for burner I think:


Not an exaggeration
As recent Harvard graduates, we have a shocking revelation we would like to share with your readers: Democratic congressional candidate Darcy Burner may have received a degree from Harvard in 1996, but she was neither a computer-science major nor an economics minor, and she was certainly not both ["Darcy Burner's claims of a Harvard econ degree an exaggeration," News, Oct. 22].

The terminology our university uses can be tricky. Graduates of Harvard College (which is part of Harvard University, but actually predates it), receive artium baccalaureus (A.B.) degrees, also known as Bachelor of Arts in English, and instead of majors, we have concentrations. We call teaching assistants "teaching fellows." And despite last year's addition of secondary fields, there was and is still nothing called a minor at Harvard.

As her profile on The Seattle Times' Web site correctly states, Burner's education is, "Harvard University, B.A. in computer science with a special field of economics, 1996." And as she explains on her own Web site, at Harvard, Burner "earned a degree in computer science and economics." There is no contradiction here, no exaggeration, and certainly no lying.

At Harvard, we have joint concentrations, which are like double majors. As of this year, we also have primary and secondary fields, which is like a major and a minor. And to make matters even more confusing, when Burner was at Harvard, the computer-science department required students to choose an area of specialization. Burner chose economics. As a result, Burner completed five upper-level economics courses, in addition to significant course work in computer science and mathematics. Burner's course of study was almost certainly more intensive than that of the majority of economics concentrators at Harvard.

Voters in Washington's 8th Congressional District have more important issues to worry about than the terms in use at Harvard. We hope that The Seattle Times recommits itself to investigating issues that really matter as the election draws near.

-- Jean Yang, Cambridge, Mass., and Seth Flaxman, Switzerland