[SE carpetbagger, a derog. description applied, after the American Civil War (1861–5), to immigrants from the northern into the southern states, whose ‘property qualification’ consisted merely of the contents of the carpet-bag they had brought with them. Hence, applied to all northerners who went south and tried, by a variety of deceitful tricks, to obtain political influence, esp. by claiming an interest in local areas of which, in fact, they had no real knowledge](US campus)
to attempt to make a good impression, usu. on one’s teachers, by pretending to have an all-consuming interest in a given subject.
H. Sebastian ‘Negro Sl. in Lincoln University’ in AS IX:4 289: carpetbag To attempt to make a favorable impression on a professor (or anyone in authority) by feigning deep interest in the subject; high-powered toadying.
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