On Why Not to Award Honorary Doctorates to Those Whose Body of Work is Yet to Come

President Barack Obama was invited to deliver a commencement address at the Arizona State University (ASU) the other day. His hosts at ASU -- Smell a rat? Isn't that in John McCain's home-state!?! -- had seen it fit to warn him in advance that he would not be getting any honorary degree from them, much as they desired that he grace the occasion. Their reasoning: His "body of work is yet to come."

Obama went anyway: Click here

Moral of the story: Honorary degrees are not rewards for political success -- or office.

Obama of course joked that those who chose to not award him a degree would have their financial records subjected to IRS scrutiny. He joked, but University Vice-Chancellors in Africa would not find such a joke a joke, but rather something real -- a sort of life-changing rebuke and promise. So our VCs continue to dish out honorary degrees (DOCTORATES) to all and sundry -- even people who will never earn a doctorate. Before you know it, these people are Dr. This and That, all over the place. There is, in all this, palpable devaluation of a good and inspiring thing -- so that those who aspire to earn it wonder if the effort is worth the effort; as they note with growing alarm -- the obscenity of it all -- that there is no place in which those who have it on a silver platter allow their last names to be mentioned at all without the prefix Dr.

Yet what is a mere Vice-Chancellor to do when pressed by those -- either the Chancellor himself, who doubles up as head of state and for whom the Vice-Chancellor technically or in principle "deputizes" at univerity, or the Chancellor's cronies -- who hold his/her fate in their hands and, by virtue of that fact alone, subtly or crudely demand a name-changing ceremony? But even ordinary citizens, who can tell a real doctorate when they see one (that is, determine that it was earned, not "taken" = nyakuad) are getting worked up by this rule of the jungle -- with none of the comic relief in PhDComics -- as was recently witnessed in Kenya. And they don't know how to stop it, or get relief.

With the mushrooming of universities around the world, including Kenya, nearly everyone with consequential muscles to flex is assured of his or her honorary doctorate. But standards are important: And a recognizable body of (scholarly) work seems to me a good, solid metric. Thank you, ASU!