‘Dr’ Hillary’s award for achieving absolutely nothing

Swansea University is to award Harvey Weinstein an honorary doctorate for his tireless services to female actresses and models in the film industry. The award is in recognition of Weinstein’s creation of safe spaces for vulnerable women in Hollywood, such as his shower. Swansea University will rename its Media Studies programme after the Hollywood movie predator (oops, producer) and call it the Harvey Weinstein Institute of Film and Feminist Studies.

I’m not being flippant. Can you give me one good reason why Swansea University should not confer this honour on horny Harvey? After all, Swansea University has just awarded Hillary Clinton a doctorate ‘in recognition of her commitment to promoting the rights of families and children around the world’. It has also named its College of Law the Hillary Rodham Clinton School of Law.

Great universities award great degrees to great people. Yeah! Here are some great examples. Edinburgh University awarded Robert Mugabe a doctorate for his contribution to education. The University of St Andrews gave rogue banker Fred ‘the Shred’ Goodwin a Doctor of Laws degree. The University of Bedfordshire crowned the BBC’s in-house sex predator Jimmy Savile with a doctorate for his charitable fund-raising. Meryl Streep has four doctoral handouts from Indiana, Yale, Princeton and Harvard for ‘her role as a powerful advocate for women’. Phooey!

Why not? In an age of entitlement everyone is entitled to something. Schools give children trophies for playing on the losing football team. If you are a college drop-out like rapper Kayne West with a sexy celebrity wife like Kim Kardashian you are entitled to an honorary degree from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. And if Kermit the Frog was awarded a doctorate from Southampton College, New York, why begrudge Hillary the Toad the honour of a Mickey Mouse degree from a Mickey Mouse university?

After all, as the Vice Chancellor of Swansea University, Professor Richard B Davies, astutely observed, Mrs Clinton’s ‘influence on domestic policy and on global affairs has been colossal’. So let’s list Hillary’s achievements, shall we?

Hillary did not propose a single important piece of legislation as a New York senator. American progressive Markos Moulitsas pooh-poohed her in the Washington Post. ‘Afraid to offend, she has limited her policy proposals to minor, symbolic issues – such as co-sponsoring legislation to ban flag-burning. She doesn’t have a single memorable policy or legislative accomplishment to her name.’

On Hillary’s achievements in global affairs this pundit was no less scathing. ‘Meanwhile, she remains behind the curve or downright incoherent on pressing issues such as the war in Iraq.’ Moulitsas quoted Hillary’s policy statement on Iraq to prove his point: ‘I disagree with those who believe we should pull out, and I disagree with those who believe we should stay without end.’ Duh? ‘Despite travelling millions of miles as Secretary of State, Hillary negotiated no treaties, secured no agreements, prevented no conflicts – in short, she accomplished nothing,’ concluded Dinesh D’Souza in Hillary’s America: The Secret History of the Democratic Party.

But Hillary is a good person, right? New York Times columnist William Safire called her a ‘congenital liar’. He elaborated: ‘Drip by drip, like Whitewater torture, the case is being made that she is compelled to mislead, and to ensnare her subordinates and friends in a web of deceit.’ Christopher Hitchens’s book on the Clintons was titled No One Left to Lie to. According to the Left-wing magazine Politico, when voters were asked the first word that came to their mind about Clinton, the No 1 response was ‘liar’. The second and third words were ‘dishonest’ and ‘untrustworthy’.

The Wall Street Journal’s Pulitzer-winning James Grimaldi investigated the Clinton Foundation and indicted Hillary as ‘one of the most aggressive global cheerleaders for American companies, pushing governments to sign deals and change policies to the advantage of corporate giants such as General Electric Co, Exxon Mobil Corp, Microsoft Corp and Boeing Co . . . At the same time, those companies were among the many that gave to the Clinton family's global foundation set up by her husband, former President Bill Clinton.’

The Wall Street Journal also reports that, while Hillary was Secretary of State, around 60 companies which lobbied the State Department donated more than $26 million to the Clinton Foundation and at least 44 of these companies participated in Clinton Global Initiative projects valued at £3.2billion. Were these companies doing charity? Not on your life! In some cases, donations came after Hillary did something to help the company. In some cases, donations came before. In other cases, donations came both before and after.

Hillary herself confessed that the Clintons were ‘dead broke’ when they left the White House in 2001. After analysing 15 years of the Clintons’ tax returns, Forbes magazine deduced that they had ‘turned political fame into a personal fortune, raking in more than $240million’. Where did all this money come from? Dr Hillary didn’t invent the iPhone. She couldn’t run a convenience store to save her life.

Of even greater concern is the fact that ‘tens of millions of dollars’ flowed to the Clinton Foundation from governments notorious for human rights abuses such as Algeria, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Oman, Kuwait, and the United Arab Emirates, writes Peter Schweizer in Clinton Cash: The Untold Story of How and Why Foreign Governments and Businesses Helped Make Bill and Hillary Rich.

Hillary’s greatest gift is making a mountain out of a microscopic pimple. What did she do to promote the rights of families and children? She didn’t stop her husband from preying on young female interns in the White House. She didn’t make a comment on pal and donor Harvey Weinstein until a week after the scandal erupted.

Oh yes, she brags about introducing a new approach to early education called Home Instruction for Parents of Preschool Youngsters to 26 states in the US. Hyperbole! She brought the programme to Arkansas from Israel, but she wasn’t responsible for importing it to the US. And it’s not very big – only 15,000 participants each year. And 21, not 26, states use the programme.

If Hillary is the champion of women’s rights, why did 49 per cent of American millennial women from across the political spectrum give her an unfavourable rating and say that they preferred Bernie Sanders to her? And why did 53 per cent of white women vote for Donald Trump?

So can anyone give me one good reason why Swansea University and its bootlicking Vice Chancellor decided to curry favour with Dr Clinton? Hillary was booed and called a fascist as she entered Swansea University – not by Right-wing conservatives but by radical Leftists and Swansea University Socialist Students! Locals are lambasting Swansea University on its Facebook page. calling Hillary ‘one of the biggest criminals on the face of the earth’.

Why did Vice Chancellor Richard Davies decide to bring utter disgrace on his university? He explained that it was to ‘symbolise our support for the values of social justice and rights that have been her hallmarks’. Got it? Not justice, but social justice. Social justice is code for virtue-signalling. Swansea University has now declared itself a beacon of this political abracadabra.

If you want to pursue a degree in lesbian dance theory or media studies from the Harvey Weinstein Institute of Film and Feminist Studies, you know which Welsh university to apply to.

(Originally published in The Conservative Woman)