February 2, 1995
Every spring, after enduring four or more years of lectures, students across the nation face one more session: Graduation.
Commencement speakers pontificate, and honorary degrees are conferred. Only then do some students, still in shock over actually graduating, wonder about the identities of those who glide easily across the stage to accept their honorary doctorates, apparently for just being wonderful or famous people.
California State University guidelines for choosing honorary degree candidates are designed to allow students and faculty some say in who gets them. Nominations are being accepted now.
"Our basic mission is to collect the nominations and prioritize them," said George Frankel, chairman of the committee considering the nominations.
Johnson Hor, the Associated Student representative to the committee, said that faculty members tend to make more nominations than students. "If students have someone they want to see, they should submit names," he said.
The nine-member committee consists of faculty, alumni and one student representative appointed by the Associated Students. They will rank the nominations and present them to President Robert A. Corrigan. Corrigan will then choose up to two nominees from the list or of his own choosing for final approval by the Board of Trustees.
The guidelines state that degrees should be awarded, "to recognize excellence and extraordinary achievement in significant areas of human endeavor." Since the first honorary doctorate was awarded to President John F. Kennedy in 1963 -- before the rules were amended to prohibit the granting of degrees to incumbent politicians -- the CSU system has awarded about 60 doctorates.
The list of recipients includes writers, musicians, inventors, business leaders and a few celebrities. Steve Martin, Bill Cosby and Raymond Burr are among those who have been honored since the guidelines were adopted in 1983.
The number of doctorates awarded since the change is more than twice the 18 awarded in the 20 years after Kennedy was selected. SF State has also increased its output of honorary degrees considerably. Eight of the 10 degrees it has given were awarded after 1987.
Some schools give commencement speakers degrees as a matter of course. Nobody knows exactly how many are issued each year. A 1984 New York Times estimate put the number at around 5,000.
The practice of awarding honorary degrees can be traced back to 1682, when the first one went to the president of the nation's first university, Harvard president Increase Mather. He needed the title "Doctor of Sacred Theology" for the school to legitimize itself and churn out more Ph.D.s.
Soon universities were handing out degrees to attract attention as well as to gain credibility.
Students and faculty are often dismayed with their school's decisions on who to honor with degrees or invite to deliver commencement speeches.
Duke's faculty voted down in 1954, an honorary doctorate for then Vice President Richard Nixon, a 1937 graduate, after Nixon had already accepted an invitation to deliver the commencement address. Long before his Watergate infamy, Nixon's advocacy of intervention in Vietnam on behalf of France and past associations with red-baiting Senator Joe McCarthy made many uncomfortable.
Former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Colin Powell was faced with 7,000 pink balloons when he gave the commencement speech and received an honorary doctorate at graduation ceremonies at Harvard for 1993. "Lift the ban," was the phrase printed on the balloons, each one symbolizing a gay serviceman or woman forced to leave the military because of their sexual orientation during the four years Powell had presided over the military. During that time, Powell was a vocal supporter of the military's policy banning gays.
At the University of Michigan, the administration's refusal to grant a degree to South African president Nelson Mandela -- then imprisoned -- came to symbolize the university's inability to handle rising racial tensions on campus. The university later reversed its decision.
Despite the difficulties that can erupt, awarding honorary degrees can bring many benefits to those schools that do.
They can be a useful fund-raising tool, although college administrators deny it.
The University of Southern California awarded an honorary degree in 1975 to the Shah of Iran, Reza Pahlavi, who made a $1 million endowment. The petroleum engineering chair created by the endowment was filled for one year by Iranian-born USC professor George Chilingar, who was hand picked by Pahlavi.
Awarding honorary degrees also gives schools an opportunity to make political statements.
When the New College Law School of San Francisco honored Anita Hill with a degree in 1992, in the wake of the Clarence Thomas Senate hearings the previous fall, her acceptance received national media attention.
New College also awarded Norma McCorvey, better known as Jane Roe of the precedent-setting Supreme Court Roe v. Wade decision, an honorary degree in 1990.
1993 Doctor of Humane Letters recipients Marian Wright Edelman and Mimi Silbert typify SF State's choices.
Edelman, director of the Children's Defense Fund and the first African-American woman to practice law in Mississippi, and Silbert, a founder and president of the Delancey Street rehabilitation program, seem to conform to the guideline's criteria that those honored, "... must have demonstrated intellectual and humane values that are consistent with the aims of higher education, and with the highest ideals of the person's chosen fields."
Not all of SF State's honorary degree recipients have been free from controversy.
Yung-Fa Chang, billionaire chairman of the Taiwan-based Evergreen Group, the second largest container shipping company in the world and owner of EVA airways was honored in 1990. In 1993 Evergreen Group officials, claiming ignorance of campaign finance laws, admitted they had made $172,000 in illegal contributions to more than 20 California politicians, including Gov. Pete Wilson and Sen. Dianne Feinstein. Evergreen paid a record $895,000 fine for its role.
No honorary degrees were awarded last year. This year, Honorary Degree Committee Chairman George Frankel said, "It would be nice to have someone with a sense of humor."