Hillary Clinton is being skewered on social media for the above promotional video promoting her upcoming Columbia U. course “Inside the Situation Room.” Clinton was brought onto the faculty to co-teach the offering, which is open by application only to students attending the university’s School of International and Public Affairs and undergraduates from Columbia College, Barnard College, and the university’s School of General Studies.
Some of the criticism is in line with that of Glenn Greenwald and other Clinton adversaries who regard her as a warmonger. “The US official who has urged more wars than anyone over the last 3 decades with the possible exception of John Bolton – including Iraq, Libya, Syria, and now Ukraine – is teaching Columbia students a class called ‘Foreign-Policy Decision-Making.’ And boy they’re excited!” Greenwald tweeted. The rest of the brickbats are aimed at the video itself, which the Blaze described as “cringy.”
Oh, it’s that, all right. But both critiques are unfair, at least regarding Hillary. Regardless of what Clinton’s policies and proclivities were, she certainly has sufficient background in the field of international diplomacy and foreign policy decision-making to provide students with useful perspective. The press release about the course promises that students will learn “how to analyze and understand the complex interplay between individual psychology, domestic politics, public opinion, bureaucracy, the international environment, and other factors which feed into decisions about foreign policy,” including the “use of force, signaling and perception, intelligence and its analysis, the deployment of other instruments of statecraft, and more.” Hillary is qualified to provide guidance and the benefit of her experience on all of that. I’d take the course, just as I took the negotiation seminar taught by Adrian Fisher, who was the principle U.S. negotiator of the SALT Treaty.
The critique of the goofy video is certainly called for, but Hillary is innocent. She didn’t write, direct or conceive the stupid thing: that’s on the university. Nor is her the quality of her performance being fairly knocked: she’s a lot better than her stiff co-instructor, who has the ineffable air of a bad community theater actress about her. Helen Mirren couldn’t make that script work; I think Hillary was a good sport to do the video, lame as it was. She had just joined the faculty, and she was being cooperative, collegial, and willing to spoof herself to boost student interest.
Well, good for her. I came away from that video liking her more than I did before seeing it.
Ethics Alarms 
You’re sure that’s not a screen test for a remake of “Everybody Loves Raymond” and they’re looking (unsuccessfully) for replacements for Doris Roberts and Patricia Heaton?
I’m sorry. Given all she’s inflicted upon the country, Hillary should never, ever be given a break.
“I came away from that video liking her more than I did before seeing it.”
Back-handed compliment…?
Faint praise, indeed.
Why do you need to have a video to promote a course at Columbia. Even if the initial class size was 200 bodies in a theater sized room you should be able to fill it with a simple flyer distributed to the poly sci students.
As for her competency, I agree she has some experience and qualified to discuss what she did but that does not mean that the students will be exposed to effective strategies to position the U.S. as the principal leader in the geopolitical world. She has yet to say beans about the disastrous policies that are causing Russia and China to strengthen alliances between themselves and the other BRIC nations, China’s brokering a peace deal between Saudi Arabia and Iran. as well as the potential of the Yuan replacing the dollar as the world’s reserve currency. This administration is causing the world to see the U.S. as a impotent player whose only role is to bankroll their activities while they laugh at us. What say she to that. Nothing but dead silence.
I’d be very surprised if she didn’t have any input. If I was Hillary, I’d push for the “She’s running again?” students to look bewildered or even disgusted rather than excited. That way it would look more self-deprecating than self-promoting. In fact I’d argue against doing the video at all. “This makes it look like I’m still hankering for attention, or even testing the waters for another presidential run, and I’m done with that. Just announce me the way you would any other new hire, and the media will take it from there. Doing it this way is just troll-bait”.
If I was the dean in charge of hiring, I would lean away from hiring prominent politicians of any stripe. The polarization would detract from the course quality, and I don’t like the idea of politicians moving into the media and university anyway. It reinforces the notion that these institutions are a closed-circuit system where the elites gather to set the agenda for the plebs.