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Fact check: What did Trump's other professors at Wharton say about him?
1. Summary of the results
Based on the available analyses, there is extremely limited information about what Trump's professors at Wharton said about him. The sources reveal only one documented account from a single professor:
- Professor William T. Kelley, who taught marketing at Wharton, reportedly made highly critical comments about Trump as a student [1] [2]
- According to a close friend of Professor Kelley, the late professor told him "100 times over three decades" that "Donald Trump was the dumbest goddam student I ever had" [2]
- This account appears consistently across multiple sources, with slight variations in the exact quote [1]
No other professors' opinions or statements about Trump are documented in any of the analyzed sources [3] [4] [5].
2. Missing context/alternative viewpoints
The question seeks information about Trump's "other professors" (plural), but the available evidence shows:
- Only one professor's opinion is documented - there is no evidence of statements from multiple professors at Wharton
- The Kelley account comes secondhand through a friend rather than direct quotes or official statements
- No positive assessments from any Wharton faculty members are mentioned in the sources
- No academic records or official evaluations from professors are referenced
- The sources span from 2019-2024, suggesting this limited information has persisted over time despite ongoing interest in Trump's academic background
Missing institutional perspective: None of the sources mention any official response from Wharton or the University of Pennsylvania regarding faculty opinions of Trump as a student.
3. Potential misinformation/bias in the original statement
The original question contains an implicit assumption that may be misleading:
- The question assumes there are documented statements from multiple professors ("other professors"), when the evidence shows only one professor's reported opinion
- The phrasing suggests there is a broader body of faculty commentary about Trump at Wharton, which does not appear to exist based on the available sources
- This framing could lead readers to expect more comprehensive faculty feedback than actually exists in the documented record
The question itself is not necessarily biased, but it may overestimate the available evidence about faculty opinions of Trump during his time at Wharton.