On May 13, 2009 President Barack Obama will deliver the commencement address at Arizona State University’s Tempe campus. Earlier this week, the University made public the fact that they would not be bestowing upon President Barack Obama an honorary degree. Sharon Keeler, a spokeswoman for the university stated, “His body of work is yet to come, that’s why we’re not recognizing him with a degree at the beginning of his presidency.”
So let’s get this straight. President Barack Obama has attended and graduated from Columbia and Harvard, authored multiple best-selling books, been a U.S. Senator, and most recently became President of the United States of America, yet he’s undeserving of an honorary degree from a State institution that rates barely above some community colleges. What standards ASU has. Kermit the Frog has an honorary degree from ASU. Take a look at past honorary degree recipients, don’t recognize too many of these names do you? At last check, Harvard was the #1 school in the nation and Columbia was #8. Both institutions accept less than 10% of the applicants they receive each year. Good ole’ ASU ranks 121 on the list and accepts more than 90% of its applicants. While honorary agrees do not account for much, it is the base level of disrespect that is most offensive.
Only in Arizona. This is definitely not the intellectual capital of the world. University president, Michael Crow has stated that ASU will honor Obama in every way possible. I imagine he will be savvy enough to make the right decision. Regardless, the slight is done. Whether it was a bureaucratic snafu or an intentional slight, once again Arizona has the distinction of being a bass ackwards place when it comes to topics of diversity and intelligence.
Is it about race? This topic seems inescapable in Arizona. This is the place that fought tooth and nail to avoid honoring Martin Luther King Jr. with an official holiday. This is the place that proudly re-elected the country’s most notorious racial profiler Sheriff Joe Arpiao. Whether it is racism, sour grapes, or simple ineptitude here is a list of the intellectuals that make up ASU’s Honorary Degree Committee:
Laurie Chassin, Psychology, 2010 (Chair) Christine Wilkinson, Senior Vice President and Secretary of the University, 2010 (Co-Chair) Roger Adelson, History, 2009 Bill Miller, Applied Biological Sciences, 2009 Joan Brett, Graduate College, 2010 Claudia Brown, Art, 2010 Chris Callahan, Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication, 2010 Philip Christensen, Earth and Space Exploration, 2010 Luis Gomez-Mejia, Management, 2010 Jewell Parker Rhodes, Virginia C. Piper Center for Creative Writing, 2010 Paul Patterson, Morrison School of Management and Agribusiness, 2010 Sander van der Leeuw, Human Evolution and Social Change, 2010 Linda Vaughan, Nutrition, 2010 Gary Waissi, ASU Global Engagement, 2010, the university vice provost and dean of the Graduate College, and the president of the ASU Foundation also are ex-officio members of the committee.
Back to Ms. Sharon Keeler, Director of Media Relations at ASU, hopefully she will see the contradiction in her own statements. The university you represent invited the President of the most powerful country in the world to deliver well wishes and congratulations to you graduates. Most would assume that only accomplished individuals would be worthy of such an invitation. By your statements, maybe you are waiting to confer an honorary degree on the next person to part the Red Sea, turn water to wine or walk on water. Even though you were not on the committee, the statements attributable to you are laughable. I can hear Kermit singing the Rainbow Connection to Ms. Piggy right now and reminiscing about is time on campus . The nation is laughing at ASU.
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