Santorum: My grades suffered because I was conservative.

March 11, 2012|By Karen Heller, Inquirer Columnist

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"I can tell you professor after professor who docked my grades because of the viewpoints I expressed and the papers that I wrote. There's no question that happened," Santorum said. He added: "I used to go to war with some of my professors, who thought I was out of the pale, these are just not proper ideas," noting, "There is clearly a bias at the university."

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"I never received a complaint from any students that a professor had downgraded them because they were conservative and the professor was too liberal, or a student was too liberal with a conservative professor," Robert Friedman told me. He served as chair of the political science department in the late 1970s when Santorum was a student. "Any problem he had with his grades had nothing to do with the fact that he was politically conservative."Friedman said. "He wasn't a very serious student."

"He was an OK student," noted O'Connor, "not great."

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The real story about Rick Santorum's education is this one: "He was telling a story that isn't true," Friedman said. "It's a fantasy," Eisenstein echoed. "You're in a political campaign and you're dealing with people you can get to applaud if you tell stories about people being indoctrinated and liberal professors, but it's not true."