Christine O’Donnell, the Tea Party-backed Republican candidate, came under scrutiny in recent weeks when political opponents and media outlets said she falsely implied that she pursued a master’s degree at the University.
In 2005, O’Donnell filed a $6.9 million gender-discrimination lawsuit against a former employer, the Intercollegiate Studies Institute. ISI is a nonprofit education group dedicated to promoting “the rising generation’s knowledge of our nation’s founding principles,” according to its website. In the lawsuit, in which she claimed that her gender was a factor in her firing, O’Donnell also alleged that ISI had “violated its promise to allow [her] time to take master’s degree classes at Princeton,” costing her time and potential earning power.
O’Donnell noted in the lawsuit that when she accepted the position at ISI, she had already “applied for admission to a master’s degree program at Princeton University, to start in the fall of 2003.” At the time, she had not been accepted into a graduate program at the University and had not yet received her bachelor’s degree, which she completed in August at Farleigh Dickinson University in New Jersey.
O’Donnell dropped her complaint in 2008, citing the high cost of the lawsuit, but her political campaign has prompted renewed attention to the action. She has denied ever claiming that she pursued a master’s degree at Princeton, and her campaign manager Matt Moran has said that she audited an undergraduate course here.
The Office of the Registrar did not respond to a request for comment on Tuesday afternoon about the class O’Donnell audited. O’Donnell’s campaign office did not respond to calls and e-mail requests for comments. The presidents of College Democrats and College Republicans also did not respond to requests for comment.
O’Donnell, who is running for Vice President Joe Biden’s former Senate seat, has also been in the national spotlight for claiming to have attended Oxford University and Claremont Graduate University on her profile on LinkedIn.com.
She actually attended a course held by an independent group that rented a room from Oxford as well as a workshop at the Claremont Institute, a conservative think tank. O’Donnell recently completed her course requirements for her bachelor’s degree, but her campaign has refused to comment on or explain why she did not receive the degree in 1994 with the rest of the class she matriculated with.
O’Donnell beat Rep. Mike Castle, the state’s former governor, in the Republican primary on Sept. 15, and she now faces Chris Coons in the race to replace Democrat Ted Kaufman. Some of O’Donnell’s public pronouncements have made her a favorite for television pundits. Among other claims, she has suggested that China is planning to “take over America,” and has declared evolution a myth.
Recent polls show Coons holding a double-digit lead over O’Donnell.
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