Marianne Williamson announced on Friday, January 10th that she will be suspending her campaign for President of the United States in order to take a position at Barnard College as the Gwyneth Paltrow Professor of Crystallography and Astrological Studies. In a press conference held in the wine section of a San Francisco Trader Joe’s, which doubles as Ms. Willamson’s campaign headquarters, the aforementioned crystallographer stated that despite “optimistic” polling numbers at less than 1%, the draw of a full-time professorship at the Morningside Heights college was too strong for her to resist:
“Barnard’s cutting edge research, state of the art facilities, and “pro-astrology” environment are very compelling. I love the positive energy of the campus and the fact there are so many pigeons around to feed with my leftover rye bread sandwich crusts. The secret to a perfect sandwich? Just rye bread and mustard. Nothing else.”
Marianne Williamson, who has built her career as a self-help author and self-described “people person”, will head Barnard’s fledgling Crystallography and Astrological Studies department. The department focuses on attempting to heal people through channelling crystal energy and “the power of love”, a technique originally pioneered by Ms. Willamson while tripping on LSD in Ram Dass’s Jacuzzi. The department was founded in 2017 as part of Barnard’s counter-science initiative, created to mitigate the rising number of young women finding meaningful jobs in STEM fields and thus hurting Barnard’s “street cred”.
Marianne Williamson will be the first former Democratic presidential candidate to become a professor at Columbia/Barnard since former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton seemed to have a job locked down and yet somehow still managed to lose it.
“Ms. Willamson will breathe new academic air into this campus,” said Barnard College President Sian Beilock in remarks on Friday, “New academic air and a whole lot of pot smoke”.
Marianne Williamson will begin teaching CRYST BC 1101 Introduction to Love this fall, as well as an unnamed class that will be “a guide to being a Pisces” in spring 2021.
