Student Weighs In On Hillary Clinton’s Class at Columbia University, Says She Failed to ‘Loosen Up’

Student evaluations of their university professors should be viewed with a degree of suspicion, but in the news this week is a very unflattering assessment of Columbia guest professor, Hillary Clinton.

The former Secretary of State, First Lady, and Democrat Presidential nominee has been teaching a class on “decision making” at Columbia University for the past year.

A student recently criticized the class, titled, “Inside the Situation Room,” taught by Clinton and Columbia Dean Keren YarhiMilo, as “lacking” as Clinton reportedly “morphed more into a politician as the semester [unfolded].”

Student Laalitya Acharya shared critical comments on TicTok, saying in a December video post: “I would have really, really hoped that [Clinton] would bring in some more unique insights… rather than her almost basically reciting passages from her book word for word during lecture.”

Acharya also stated that “Clinton wasn’t relatable to the students” and there was an obvious “feeling of disconnect,” according to a Fox News report.

Acharya said: “[There was a] kind of the divide between the students and the professors…I’d hoped that over the course of the semester, [Clinton] would start to loosen up a little bit. We’d get to know more about [Clinton] as [an]  individua[l] and really be able to have… a professor/student relationship rather than just having [her] talk at us.”

Noting her disappointment that Clinton remained aloof, Acharya said: “This, however, wasn’t the case, and pretty much for the entire semester, it felt very much like a one-sided speaking engagement where [Clinton and Yarhi-Milo] were just talking at us.”

“In addition, Hillary Clinton didn’t really bring up any examples or any instances or insights that she ‘hasn’t already mentioned in her book or in published articles,” said Acharya.

The student added: “And that was definitely frustrating because a big part of why we were in the class was to understand more about decision-making, why people made the decisions that they did.”

Emphasizing that in her opinion, the class situation got worse rather than better as the semester progressed, Acharya said: “Usually whenever you start to… get to know [politicians] more on a personal basis, you start to like them a little bit more because they become more humanized. Over the course of the semester, though, I feel like Hillary Clinton became more of a politician than she was at the end.”

Archarya summarized her assessment of the class by mocking the title of the class, “Inside the Situation Room” noting it fell far short of its stated goal of teaching students to “think carefully and analytically about how leaders… arrive at their decisions.”

“She was there as a professor to teach, and I wish that she had embraced that role a little bit more, said Acharya.

Columbia’s class profile reads: “Students will be taught 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.”

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