Celebrities With Degrees: Controversial Honorary Doctorates

Phyllis Schlafly, an activist known for campaigning against legal changes designed to promote equal rights for women, was awarded a Doctor of Humane Letters by Washington University in 2008. This did not go down too well with some, who started a Facebook page called "No honorary doctorate for anti-feminist Phyllis Schlafly". At the ceremony, about a third of the graduates turned their backs on her, along with some faculty and family members.

Judith Butler, a supporter of a movement for boycott, divestment and international sanctions (BDS) against Israel, received an honorary Doctor of Letters from McGill University in May this year. This prompted pro-Israeli groups to send a letter of protest to the university’s chancellor Arnold Steinberg, asking for the honor to be withdrawn on the alleged grounds that she was “pro-terror and anti-Israeli”. However, Butler responded to allegations against her the previous year, denying everything but her support of BDS, which she said was “partially true”.

Zimbabwe’s president Robert Mugabe has been awarded around a dozen honorary degrees, but some have been revoked. In 2007 he was stripped of his doctorate for "services to education in Africa" from the University of Edinburgh, once the institution became aware of his alleged role in atrocities in Matabeleland. The University of Massachusetts Amherst and Michigan State University did the same in the following two years.

As well as all these celebrities with degrees they didn’t really study for, there are several places where you can buy a degree without completing a course – essentially conferring an honorary doctorate on yourself! The University of Berkley (not to be confused with the University of California, Berkeley) is an online institution that offers honorary doctorates “to a select group of highly accomplished individuals such as yourself”. For a minimum fee of US$2,000 and a “brief autobiographical sketch”, you can pick your title.

Or how about the Cambridge Ministry Church Institute (not to be confused with the University of Cambridge)? For US$99, the institute says, “you too may deserve to be in the position showing you are an expert”. Just try not to wince too much at the bad grammar and punctuation on the page…

What do you think? Do celebrities deserve to be granted degrees they didn’t study for? If you could award yourself an honorary doctorate, what would it be for?

Image credits: Julio Enriquez; Disney; Gage Skidmore