Arizona State University Denies President Obama Honorary Degree?

President Barack Obama is set to be the commencement speaker at Arizona State University this year. Often, when a high-profile official provides this service, he or she is awarded an honorary doctorate. But ASU will not be giving Obama the ceremonial degree, because "his body of work is yet to come".

Depending on your perspective, that statement might mean, he's too inexperienced, or his best days lie ahead. But considering all the other people that ASU has bestowed with honorary degrees, it seems hard to read this as anything but a slight.

Phoenix's East Valley Tribune notes,

Arizona State University has handed out honorary doctorate degrees to pioneering scientists and college presidents, titans of oil and computer microchips, newspaper publishers and generous donors, a foreighn communist educator and a successful movie director.

But no president of the United States has been deemed worthy of ASU's recognition, not even the nation's first black president. It's an odd gap that besmirches the image of an excellent institution.

Furthermore, the "body of work is yet to come" explanation doesn't ring true, considering ASU gave Barry Goldwater a fake degree in 1961, three years before his failed bid to become president, and after he'd only served eight years as a US senator.

With degrees from Columbia University and Harvard, Obama probably doesn't really care much about this particular tempest in an Arizona teacup. But one wonders whether the people who decide such matters at ASU are teabag hoarders, themselves.



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