Who you callin’ “Dr.”? A short course on the American psyche.

January 29, 2002 9:25 a.m.

f you are a steady NRO reader — and our gratitude if you are — you may have noticed a piece of mine Friday called “Is There a Dr. in the House?” It dealt with the issue of Ph.D.’s and who’s called “Dr.” — and why. You’d be surprised how much that is imbedded in the American psyche is brought out by this single, seemingly simple little issue. The article provoked so much mail — and so much interesting mail — I thought I’d devote an entire column to airing a little of it. You will find many interesting thoughts, insights, stories, admissions, and remarks. I have not included any names; these letters come from a diversity of Americans who represent many Americans.

I will begin with something a friend of mine told me: that the story is told at Harvard — probably apocryphal, but still fun — of the young man who, on the first day of class, addressed his professor as “Dr.” The professor said, “Where does it hurt, sonny?”

My friend also said that he knew a professor at Harvard who, much to the consternation of everyone, insisted on being called “Mrs.” Not “Ms.,” not “Professor,” and certainly not “Dr.,” but “Mrs.” This blew everyone’s mind, because they were used to thinking of  “Mrs.” as insulting — isn’t that incredibly weird? Whenever someone said “Ms.” — which the modern, PC-directed mouth moves to form — the professor issued a correction: “Mrs.” Now there is a liberated woman, and a non-conformist.

On to some letters, which may be subjected to some interjections from me.

“I recall seeing Huey Newton (of Black Panther fame) referred to as ‘Dr. Newton’ in his New York Times obituary. Now, if that doesn’t take the cake.”

Huey Newton was, indeed, referred to as “Dr. Newton” in the Times. He received a Ph.D. in “social philosophy” from the “University” — sorry, University — of California, Santa Cruz. Now that does take the cake.

Can anyone think of a more suspect Ph.D. than one in social philosophy from the University of California, Santa Cruz? What do you have to do? Hate Reagan, recite a little Marcuse, and vote for Angela Davis?

That letter has a P.S.: “Before being called to active duty in the Navy, I worked at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, where the only person, including the director, who is referred to as ‘Dr.’ is, of course, Dr. Teller.”

Seems more natural to call Old World Europeans like Teller “Dr.” Has the feel of Herr Doktor, as I pointed out in my original article about Kissinger.

From an editor at a “major metropolitan newspaper,” as they say:

“We strictly confine ‘Dr.’ to physicians and dentists — though I remember that earlier on an exception was made for ‘Dr. Kissinger.’ I also remember Dixie Lee Ray, when she was alive, complaining bitterly about that, not having been granted the same exception.”

Have another:

“You should follow your article up with one on the incredible proliferation of doctorates from Arab universities, as we see with ‘Drs.’ Erekat and Ashrawi.”

From the South:

“Down here, the real sign of status is when you’re called ‘Colonel.’”

Yes, indeed. I don’t have much patience with the comedian Chris Rock, but he did say something that will always endear him to me: “Al Sharpton’s a reverend like Col. Sanders is a military hero.”

“Let’s give all the ‘doctors’ their due reward. But wait! Aren’t we indulging in elitism? Let’s give all graduates their rightful place in the sun. As the proud recipient of an MBA, which I worked darn hard for, I feel that it is only appropriate that I be addressed as ‘Master.’ Works for me!”

“It is indeed curious, the conceits that people hold regarding their — or others’ — doctorates. From my own experience, I think Ph.D.’s in biochemistry are more knowledgeable than medical doctors in the body’s chemistry but feel they must fight for equal respect when they work, as they often do, alongside MDs in medical research. And having a son and daughter-in-law who have just finished their doctoral work in music composition, I am amazed that they don’t want to bother with the gowns and caps that to me are the delightfully pompous trappings of high academic standing, and aren’t particularly concerned about how they are addressed.”

We interrupt these comments to remind you that, in my article, I averred that the best line in either Austin Powers movie belongs to Dr. Evil, who says, “I didn’t go through six years of evil medical school to be called ‘mister,’ thank you very much!” A reader says to me, No: The best line is, “Ow, you shot me, you a-hole.”

To continue:

“Anyone who has ever met Larry Summers has to smile inside when reflecting on the utter intellectual mismatch between him and ‘Dr. West,’ et al. I think Summers has gotten some things wrong in his work, professionally and academically, but he’s one of the smarter people on the planet. If West were a student in one of Dr. Summers’s classes — oh, the joy that mental picture brings!

“I have a Ph.D. in economics from NYU; I spent half my 20s getting it. I don’t insist on the title ‘Dr.’ except in professional communications, and that’s largely a function of my fellow economists’ not taking anyone seriously without it. One of my jobs is to do scholar recruitment for think tanks. If I write a letter to a fellow economist and I don’t reveal the credential, sometimes I’ll be handled like an interested lay person when what I need is the math.

“I don’t mind being called ‘Dr.’ (especially around my mother), and I can understand why some people insist on it in all but informal settings — when the print and broadcast media care more what Sean Penn, Ben Affleck, and Jon Stewart think about economics than I do, it is perhaps necessary to reinforce that there are some professional standards left, and that some people have in fact worked harder than others to understand certain issues. If it has to come down to the fact that I have a credential and those jackasses don’t, well, at least the shorthand isn’t completely useless.”

Yes, but how to handle the fact that the guy who owns the gas station may know more about (practical) economics than, say, John Kenneth Galbraith or Lester Thurow?

“I am from Mississippi, and I went to Mississippi State (electrical engineering). I never heard anyone call a professor anything but ‘Dr.,’ and that includes other professors. I never heard anyone get corrected for calling someone ‘Mr.’ because I never heard anyone make the mistake. That’s how things were.

“At home in the small town of [Smallsville], Miss., my parents also required me to use ‘Dr.’ for Ph.D.’s (except for preachers, who were always ‘Brother’), but they constantly poked fun at them (especially Ph.D.’s in education). They saw it as a sign that old so-and-so was getting too big for his britches. I don’t know who actually coined the phrase, but my dad used to say that Dr. [Smith], my high-school principal, had been ‘educated beyond his intelligence.’”

I simply love that phrase: “educated beyond his intelligence.” I’ll look for excuses to use it.

Another correspondent says:

“I find the whole ‘call me doctor’ controversy half maddening, half amusing.

“I’m an MD and a tenured associate professor of medicine. I never refer to myself as ‘doctor’ outside the hospital, and rarely inside it. In fact, when I return pages from the operators, I usually say, ‘Hi, this is [John Smith] from Gastroenterology. I was paged.’

“I developed this practice because of my absolute loathing for those who use their membership in the profession for social leverage. It is a seal of approval, to be used sparingly, to reassure frightened, desperate patients that I have the necessary training, not to get a table at the Russian Tea Room.”

“Some wag once observed that there was a linear relationship in the use of ‘Dr.’ from the hard sciences, through the soft sciences, culminating in the Graduate School of Education. As he put it, ‘I’ve never met a Ph.D. in physics who used “Dr.,” and I’ve never met a Ph.D. in education who didn’t.’ I repeated this joke in a lecture once, forgetting that there was a grad student in education in the back of the room. He blushed bright red, left, and never came back. I am truly sorry I offended him, but sometimes the truth . . .”

“You mentioned Einstein. I have a book of amusing stories of scientists (Absolute Zero Gravity) that relates a supposedly true story of Einstein’s later years in Princeton. He would apparently wander through town, lost in thought, and then walk up to a random person and ask for directions back to the university. On one occasion, he awoke from his reverie to find a young lady in front of him. ‘Hello, little girl,’ he said. She replied, ‘Hello, Einstein,’ and gave him directions. She ran inside to tell her mother what had happened. Her mother was mortified: ‘You should have said “Dr. Einstein”’! The girl responded, ‘But Mom, you wouldn’t call Napoleon “Mr. Napoleon,” would you?’

“For now, I’m just a little nobody with an empty bank account and a ‘Dr.’ Perhaps someday I’ll have discovered something neat enough to go back to ‘Mr.’ But if I truly hit the scientific jackpot, perhaps I could join Einstein, Napoleon, Alexander, and Cher.”

“I hope you’ll revisit the subject in the next few days to examine the silly (northern, it seems) practice of lawyers’ adding ‘Esq.’”

“Your article reminded me of the Seinfeld episode in which the conductor of a small local orchestra insisted on being called ‘maestro.’”

“When Henry Kissinger was appointed secretary of state, reporters at a press conference asked if he wanted to be called ‘Secretary Kissinger’ or ‘Dr. Kissinger.’ He replied, grinning, ‘You can call me “Excellency.”’”

This reminds me — it’s me, Jay again — of the time I heard Vice President Bush speak at the University of Michigan. The occasion was a ceremony to honor the 25th anniversary of the Peace Corps. There were assorted officials there, including some from African nations. There was also, of course, a very hostile and leftist crowd, ready to boo and jeer the vice president. The hostess, introducing one of the Africans, said, “And now, His Excellency . . .,” and the kids were so dumb, they started booing, thinking that the woman was introducing Bush.

Amazing.

Back to a letter-writer:

“In Ph.D.s, there is a difference between scientists and humanists. Scientists work to reveal basic facts of nature based on strict standards of proof. Humanists play mind games with man-made things. Scientists include mathematicians, physicists, chemists, etc. Humanists include sociologists, economists, drama teachers, etc. Scientists work long and hard to contribute something indelible to the human understanding of the universe — which goes unappreciated by much of American society. And not just anyone can get a Ph.D. in science. These folks deserve the honorific ‘Dr.’ As for the humanists — well, they dispense opinions (interpretations), which cannot really be proved one way or the other. Pretty much anybody can do that. As for physicians, who get the ‘Dr.’ as a matter of course, they fall somewhere in between.”

“I would swear the consistent ‘Dr.’ reference to Martin Luther King started after his death. I’m going from strict childhood memory. Before, it was always ‘the Rev. Martin Luther King,’ and he was clearly a religious figure. I remember, in Sunday school, learning about ‘the other Martin Luther,’ who was a religious figure.”

“I grew up 50 years ago in the Deep South. There were rules and we learned them. The two honors that were never granted blacks, because they would have been tokens of equality, were a handshake and ‘Mr.’ or ‘Mrs.’ Naturally, this created awkwardness in the case of recognized community leaders. So, the preacher was called ‘Reverend So-and-so’ or ‘Dr. So-and-so.’ The attorney, ‘Lawyer So-and-so.’ The college authority, ‘Professor So-and-so.’ As far as I’m concerned, through a long and agonizing process, Cornel West has earned the right to be ‘Mr.’”

“I’ve had some up-close-and-personal experiences, married to a math professor as I am. When my wife received her Ph.D., I sternly informed our daughters, then 5, 10, and 12, that henceforth their mother was no longer just ‘Mom,’ but ‘Dr. Mom’. Now the 10-year-old has embarked on her own quest for a Ph.D. No doubt when that’s completed I’ll be told I have to call her ‘Dr. Daughter’. Hey, I never asked anyone to call me ‘Dad, MBA’!

“Actually, the whole of it comes down to the instructions that a football coach gave his players about post-touchdown celebrations: ‘Act like you’ve been there before.’”

“As a southerner, I grew used to calling my undergraduate professors ‘Dr.’ I must admit, however, to having developed thin skin over the indiscriminate use of this term. I’m a lawyer, and I worked very hard to earn my J.D. My children’s elementary-school principal has a Doctor of Education degree from some mail-in university down in Florida, and she routinely introduces herself to parents as ‘Dr. X.’ I have known her since she was a little girl, and I swear that she walked up to me once and said, ‘[John], I’m Dr. X.’ I was sorely tempted to reply, ‘[Lulabelle], I’m Lawyer John.’”

“I have a friend who is applying to get into a Ph.D. program, and he said, ‘I can’t wait until I have a Ph.D. so people will have to call me “Dr.”’ I responded that I’ve known him to be a jackass since the day I met him and that he will therefore never hear the word ‘doctor’ come from my tongue in reference to his personage. I’m standing firm even if he someday goes to med school just to spite me. I have forwarded him your article and expect I’ll soon be rewarded with great wailing and gnashing of teeth. Thanks very much!”

Let me interrupt again — this is Jay — to say that I had some interesting letters from professors who insisted on the “Dr.” distinction to fight against a false egalitarianism and a loss of respect for authority — a loss of a proper deference. I’m afraid I can’t find those letters at the moment, and am too lazy to look for them, but I have conveyed the spirit of them.

To resume:

“I’ve been teaching math at a rural Texas high school for six years, after careers in the Air Force and private industry. Public-school administrators with Ph.D.’s in education, probably the least challenging Ph.D. I can think of, routinely are referred to as ‘doctor.’ And of my motorcycle-riding buddies, several are medical doctors, and never refer to themselves as doctors in conversation or e-mails on the many motorcycle lists to which we all subscribe.”

And finally, a letter I especially love, and agree with, entirely:

“I’ve always thought that the coolest honorific one can have is ‘Coach.’ It was just bestowed on me this year, as I’m coaching my four-year-old’s T-ball team. When you have a bunch of kids and parents calling you ‘Coach [Smith]’ or just ‘Coach,’ it makes you feel pretty good. Forget all that ‘Dr.’ bunk; ‘Coach’ is where it’s at!”

Anyone who has read to this point has earned, from the Impromptus Graduate School of American Society, an honorary Ph.D. Congratulations, doctors.