Zimbabwean President Mugabe Faces Rebukes, Retraction of Honorary Degrees
By Ibram Rogers
Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe — once honored as one of the world’s leading human rights activists by universities in the United States and England — is now being reprimanded in those countries as one of the world’s worst human rights villains.
On June 6, the Edinburgh University of Scotland decided to withdraw the honorary degree it had awarded Mugabe in 1984. On June 21, University of Massachusetts trustees voted not to strip Mugabe of his degree, but to officially rebuke him and to consider creating a process for revoking honorary degrees.
At Michigan State University, which awarded an honorary degree to Mugabe in 1990, there have been calls to revoke Mugabe’s degree. MSU’s office of the vice president for research and graduate studies, which houses the honorary degree committee, is looking into “why it was given in the first place, and was it given for the right reasons,” says Terry Denbow, a university spokesperson, adding that the office does not have a timetable for reaching a decision.
In addition, MSU has never revoked an honorary degree, and there is no formal process for doing so, Denbow says. Neither has UMass. This is the first time in the 425-year history of Edinburgh that it has stripped somebody of one.
