Update: Apparently, O’Donnell’s Oxford “instructor” enjoyed having her in class. (Via TalkingPointsMemo):
[Bruce W.] Griffin, who once wrote O’Donnell a recommendation to an Ivy league grad school, wrote up a full endorsement that he considers the [The Phoenix Institute/Oxford-based] course equivalent to “any graduate school at any university.” From his posting:
The course we did that summer in Oxford is nearly a decade old, but the basic issues we addressed are eternal. Today, too many of the Republic’s leaders have abandoned the natural law tradition of the Declaration of Independence for a murky moral relativism—a relativism that is both destructive of democratic values and philosophically bankrupt. Christine O’Donnell would bring to the US Senate a deepened commitment to the philosophical convictions of the Founding Fathers at a time when the philosophical bankruptcy of too many leaders is mirrored in the economic bankruptcy of the federal government. She would surely add intellectual and philosophical depth to a Senate that at this point in its history badly needs both.
Then this explanation that further backs up O’Donnell...
Here’s how Griffin explains it:
Although we were never an Oxford University course, we drew heavily on the faculties of Oxford and Cambridge for our lectures. The organizers had put together a star-studded cast of lecturers, and partly as a result we drew students from Latin America, the US, and Europe.
In a followup interview, Griffin told TPM the Phoenix program was definitely not an Oxford course, but that it was more than just renting space at Oxford. “Our lecturers were drawn heavily from the Oxford faculty, and the opportunity to hear those lecturers was a critical reason for why our students came,” he said.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/2600372/posts?page=3
Whether it’s an “equivalent” course is NOT the issue though. The issue is that she claimed she had a certification FROM Oxford University when she did not. That’s called - you guessed it - LYING.