Degrees of dishonour

On the sixth day of deliberations, a jury of eight women and four men convicted the former Chairman of misleading the public about the true financial health of Enron, whose collapse in late 2001 cost 4,000 employees their jobs and many of them their life savings. Investors lost billions of dollars. Kenneth Lay could have faced 20 to 30 years in jail, but he died of a heart attack, aged 64, early July 2006. He was to be sentenced in October of that year.

Fourteen years earlier, in May 1992, the University of Missouri conferred an Honorary Doctor of Laws on him. Around that time he donated US$1.1 million for the Kenneth L. Lay Chair in Economics. To date, the University of Missouri has not rescinded the Honorary Degree nor returned the donation.

Last year, over the matter of Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe, we witnessed one university (Massachusetts) carrying on the spineless tradition of Missouri, while another university (Edinburgh) unleashing courage and in turn, enhancing its reputation immeasurably.

In 1986, when Mugabe received an Honorary Doctorate of Law from UMass, he was feted as a humane revolutionary who ended the so-called “oppressive” rule of Ian Smith, so as to establish an independent Zimbabwe in 1979. But in the two decades since, Mugabe has been condemned for attacks on political opponents and stands accused of starving his citizens into submission.

In April 2007, the University of Massachusetts (Amherst) considered revoking the honorary degree. (Granted, while Mugabe’s crimes are not directly comparable to Messrs Pratt and Lay, the point here is simply to highlight how some universities respond to an attack - real or perceived - on their reputations.)

Early last year, the student senate of the University of Massachusetts (Boston campus) passed a resolution asking the university to revoke Mugabe's degree.

In June the University of Massachusetts trustees voted to rebuke Robert Mugabe but not to rescind the honorary degree presented to him in 1986. According to The Boston Globe, the trustees concluded that they needed to establish an official policy on revoking honorary degrees before actually doing so.

Two weeks earlier on the other side of the North Atlantic, the lads at Edinburgh showed themselves as being made of sterner stuff. The University’s Senate understood that Mugabe was not only bad for Zimbabwe, but that he was terrible for the University, as he was polluting the university’s good name. It smartly rescinded the honorary degree it conferred on him in 1984, noting how the now 83-year-old dictator was lording over the country’s decomposition.

The University of Melbourne’s Vice Chancellor, Professor Glyn Davis has no doubt been very busy preparing to chair the Prime Minister’s 2020 Summit in April. This explains why he seemingly hasn’t given too much thought to his university’s ongoing relationship with the Kaiser of Cartels and the damage it’s inflicting on current students, alumni, staff and most of all, other honorary degree recipients.

Apart from the three abovementioned examples, the Vice Chancellor can ape the policies of two fine institutions (London’s) Brunel University or (Perth’s) Curtin University.

When considering revoking awards, Brunel University in West London is blunt:

On the recommendation of the Honorary Degrees Committee through the Senate, Council shall have the power to revoke the award of an honorary degree or fellowship … where it is satisfied that the individual concerned has acted in such a way as to bring the University into disrepute. Council Ordinance No.14.

And in regards to philanthropic donations, Perth’s Curtin University of Technology (PDF 93KB), too plays with a very straight bat: