Honorary Degrees: Controversial For Centuries

Last month, Roald Hoffmann, winner of the 1981 Nobel Prize in chemistry, added two more laurels to his already lengthy curriculum vitae when he accepted honorary degrees from the universities of Central Florida and Arizona. Top United States research institutions giving honorary degrees to scientists this spring include: University of Arizona, Tucson: Roald Hoffmann, John A. Newman Professor of Physical Science, Cornell University, winner of 1981 Nobel Prize in chemistry; Julius B. Richmond, John D. MacArthur Professor of Health Policy, Harvard Medical School. University of Colorado Health Sciences Center, Denver: Sidney Altman, Sterling Professor of Biology, Yale University, winner of 1989 Nobel Prize in chemistry. Columbia University: Walter E. Massey, director, National Science Foundation; Melvin Schwartz, associate director for high-energy and nuclear physics, Brookhaven National Laboratory, winner of 1988 Nobel Prize in physics; David B. Sprinson, professor emeritus of biochemistry, Columbia University. Duke University: Gertrude B. Elion, scientist emeritus, Burroughs Wellcome Co., Research Triangle Park, N.C., winner of 1988 Nobel Prize in medicine or physiology; Charles D. Watts, senior vice president and medical director (retired), Mutual Life Insurance Co., Durham, N.C. Harvard University: Francois Jacob former director, Pasteur Institute, Paris, winner of 1965 Nobel Prize in medicine or physiology; Frederick Mosteller, Roger I. Lee Professor of Mathematical Statistics, emeritus, Harvard University. University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign: Paul A. Beck, emeritus professor of metallurgy, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign; Gene H. Golub, professor, department of computer science, Stanford University. Johns Hopkins University: Thomas R. Odhiambo, director, The International Centre of Insect Physiology and Ecology, Nairobi, Kenya; Thomas B. Turner, dean emeritus, medical faculty, Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine University of Michigan: Seymour S. Kety, professor emeritus of neuroscience, Harvard University; Roald Sagdeyev, head of Theory Division, Institute of Space Research, Moscow;Ta-You Wu, president, Academia Sinica, Taiwan. Ohio State University: William M. Lipscomb, Abbott and James Lawrence Professor emeritus, Harvard University, winner of 1976 Nobel Prize in chemistry. University of Pennsylvania: Stephen Jay Gould, Alexander Agassiz Professor of Zoology, Harvard University; Claude E. Shannon, Donner Professor of Science, emeritus, Massachusetts Institute of Technology. University of Southern California: Carver Andress Mead, Gordon and Betty Moore Professor of Computer Science, California Institute of Technology. University of Wisconsin, Madison: Laxmangudi K. Doraiswamy, former director, National Chemical Laboratory, Pune, India. Yale University: Elizabeth H. Blackburn, professor of molecular biology, University of California, San Francisco. They constitute 33.3 percent of the honorary degrees Hoffmann will pick up in 1991; shortly after receiving them, he was similarly feted at the University of Athens and the Aristotelian University of Thessaloniki in Greece. Later this year, he will receive two more--from Israel's Bar-Ilan University in Ramat Gan and the University of Leningrad in the Soviet Union. These six institutions are not the only schools that offered to grant Hoffmann--John A. Newman Professor of Physical Science at Cornell University--an honorary degree. "Every year I turn some down and I accept some," the Nobelist says, noting that he believes there occasionally are ulterior motives behind such offers. Hoffmann says he will decline an honorary degree if the school in question is "either a place where I have no friends or I perceive they are using me for publicity, to get prestige for themselves." On the other hand, Hoffmann says, he is proud to accept the honor if there is "a tie between me and the university before the event," or if the school is one "where I think I want to be connected." The University of Central Florida in Orlando, for example, has published two volumes of Hoffmann's poetry; the University of Arizona in Tucson, he says, is "a university which I respect and where I have some friends and colleagues." Unlike Hoffmann, Seymour S. Kety, Harvard University professor emeritus of neuroscience, has never declined the offer to be so honored. "I would find it difficult to turn down the invitation to accept an honorary degree--that would be insulting," says Kety, who has accumulated "about 10" such degrees. "But," he adds, "I must admit that they vary in terms of their significance." Honorary degrees have been offered to scientists in America since 1663, when the Assembly of the Colony of Rhode Island passed an act that gave John Cranston a license to use the title "Doctor of phissicke and chirurgery" and to practice medicine. Stephen Edward Epler, whose 1943 book Honorary Degrees: A Survey of Their Use and Abuse (Washington, D.C., American Council on Public Affairs) is considered the definitive work on the subject, wrote that "except for military honors and occasional Congressional medals, the government of the United States grants few awards. Thus, the honorary degree is perhaps the most important honorific in the nation." Fifty-eight years after Epler wrote his book, the honorary degree is still widely held to be one of the most prestigious accolades an individual can receive. In contrast to earned diplomas, a degree granted honoris causa means that "the institution has not exuded influence or control" over the work that the recipient has done, says Jonathan Knight, associate secretary of the American Association of University Professors. "The institution, in one stroke, is recognizing a specific individual," he says. "It's making a statement as to how it wants to use its name. For most folks, it's very flattering to be singled out." Not every university chooses to honor outstanding achievement in this way. Indeed, many of the top U.S. research institutions, including such prestigious schools as the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Stanford University, have policies that prohibit the granting of honorary degrees. Penn State University has awarded only four honorary doctorates--in 1904, 1908, 1955, and 1958--and has not granted honorary master's degrees since the turn of the century. Not giving honorary degrees has become "a tradition" at Penn State, says meterologist Charles Hosler, the university's acting executive vice president and provost, senior vice president for research, and dean of the graduate school. "We've discussed changing it in the past several years," he says, because awarding honorary degrees "has benefits for visibility, and fund raising, and all sorts of things." But, he adds, Penn State administrators have rejected the idea, fearful that because the university is a state-funded institution, the awarding of honorary degrees "might get caught up in the political arena. It seems like something we wouldn't be able to control." Misuses of the honorary degree system such as those mentioned by Hosler and Hoffmann don't necessarily "mean there's anything wrong with the process--it's that the process has been bastardized," says Frederick Kelly, president of the American Association of University Administrators (AAUA) and dean of the school of business at Seton Hall University. "Where you get into problems is where the motivation moves away from honors and into the concept of P.R. [or] possible financial rewards in terms of gifts to the school" by the honoree. Below, scientists who received honorary degrees at graduation ceremonies this spring give their thoughts on the tradition. Roald Hoffmann, John A. Newman Professor of Physical Science at Cornell University, who received honorary degrees from the universities of Arizona and Central Florida last month: "One of the most memorable honorary degrees I received was from Yale University in 1980. Two times--when I had applied to college, and later, when I applied for a job after getting my Ph.D. I was rejected from Yale. They [the honorary degree committee] didn't know it but it made a good opening line for my talk." Seymour D. Kety, professor emeritus of neuroscience at Harvard University, who received an honorary degree last month from the University of Michigan: "I remember an honorary degree I received from Georgetown University about three years ago. Another recipient was Nancy Reagan; she and I were sitting on the platform, next to each other. A substantial number of reporters and photographers came up to the platform and took photos of her. I said to her, `I've been to a number of these things, but this is the only one I remember where they took so many photos of me.' She thought that was pretty funny." Gene H. Golub, professor, department of computer science, Stanford University, who received an honorary degree from the University of Illinois last month: "It's wonderful to be getting this honorary degree because I'm a graduate of the University of Illinois, and getting recognition from your home institution means a lot. Many of the people who were instrumental in influencing my career are still around [at Illinois]." William M. Lipscomb, Abbott and James Lawrence Professor, emeritus, Harvard University, who received an honorary degree from Ohio State University earlier this month: "The University of Kentucky recognized me rather early by giving me an honorary degree in 1963. I graduated from there. They had given me some other honors before, like their Sullivan Medallion [the university's humanitarian award]. When I received the Nobel Prize [in 1976], they wrote and said they didn't think there was anything they could give me." Melvin Schwartz, associate director for nuclear physics, Brookhaven National Laboratory, who received an honorary degree from Columbia University last month: "Why would one turn it [an honorary degree] down? It doesn't cost anything to get it." --B.S. The University of California system stopped giving honorary degrees in 1972, partially in reaction to student activism. Says Clark Kerr, president emeritus of the UC system and chancellor emeritus of UC-Berkeley, "As things got hotter [politically], they couldn't give them on merit; they had to be concerned with audience reaction, which, for sometimes quirky reasons, couldn't always be anticipated." Only two exceptions to Cornell University's no-honorary-degree policy were made in the school's history. According to Morris Bishop's A History of Cornell (Cornell University Press, 1962), "Cornell regarded as a proud distinction its refusal to make honorary doctors of those who could never earn a real doctorate." In 1886, when the trustees voted to grant honorary LL.D. degrees to Andrew D. White, Cornell cofounder and first president, and David Starr Jordan, Indiana University president and a Cornell alumnus, the alumni "took fire," Bishop wrote. "Petitions were circulated, pamphlets printed." From then on, the policy against honorary degrees has remained in force. Geologist Frank Rhodes, Cornell's president, says he sometimes regrets that the university is unable to honor luminaries with honorary degrees. "But I wouldn't change the system. I think that [an honorary degree] is an appropriate way to honor someone," says Rhodes, who himself has "about 20 or so" degrees honoris causa, "but for Cornell, it is appropriate to keep things the way they are." Soviet space scientist Roald Sagdeyev, head of the Theory Division, Institute of Space Research, Moscow, is glad that not all universities are following Cornell's example. Sagdeyev, who, along with Kety, received an honorary degree last month from the University of Michigan, says that the honor makes a recipient "feel like a member of the university family." Says Sagdeyev, who has an appointment as a distinguished professor of physics at the University of Maryland, "It's very important to feel that academic communities are keeping in touch with each other--scientists from different continents, even. It's important for cross-breeding--it's cosmopolitan, in the best meaning of that word." Academic administrators agree that the vast majority of honorary degrees are intended as homage to those at the pinnacle of their careers, and not necessarily as an incentive to spur recipients on to greater accomplishments. Says AAUA's Kelly, "If you look at most honorary degree recipients, the peak of their accomplishments is either here or past." While an exception may be honorees in the popular arts, Kelly says, "the academicians, scientists, business-people [who receive honorary degrees] have had a long, successful career that's coming closer to its end than to its beginning." "Generally, [honorees] are well along in years--they've made their contribution, and it's had time to spread widely," says Everett M. Rogers, chairman of the honorary degree committee at the University of Southern California. Rogers, who is Walter H. Annenberg Professor of Communications at USC, says that his school is making an effort to honor younger people, but it's not always possible: "It's not easy to try to find younger people who have demonstrated excellence but have a contribution yet to make." After scientists have earned the Nobel Prize, the honorary degree may well be their only chance for future honors. Says Hoffmann: "When one gets a really major award, like a Nobel Prize, one is eliminated from the list of lesser awards." Awards like Israel's Wolf Prize or the Japan Prize to a certain extent are considered by their trustees and jurors as "vying for the prestige of the Nobel Prize," Hoffmann says. "They will never pick someone who has a Nobel Prize, because they like to pride themselves on being smarter than the Nobel people." When one is a Nobelist, he says, "the honorary degree is one of the really few honors that one gets." Most people are content to keep collecting these honors, even after they have acquired a dozen or more. Honorary degrees carry with them a great psychological benefit, suggests sociologist Robert Merton, University Professor emeritus at Columbia University: "It may sound strange, but even after much peer recognition, there's still a degree of self-doubt." Being offered an honorary degree, says Merton, "suggests that your work has not been forgotten or wholly superseded, that you're still considered a significant figure." Like citation analysis, he says, the tallying of one's honorary degrees is viewed as "a peer judgment of how much one has contributed to the society or culture." For Gertrude Elion, winner of the 1988 Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine, an honorary degree has even greater significance. "When I first got one, it meant a lot, because I don't have a Ph.D.," says Elion, scientist emeritus at Burroughs Wellcome Co. of Research Triangle Park, N.C. "This was my doctorate, essentially." Last month, Duke gave Elion her 11th honorary degree. She says the honor is "comparable with getting elected to the National Academy [of Sciences]." In both cases, she notes, "people have looked at your work very carefully and decided you belong." In 1946, Elion was in the midst of a doctoral program at Polytechnic Institute of Brooklyn (now New York's Polytechnic University) when she was told by her dean that in order to continue her studies, she had to give up her job at Burroughs Wellcome, then located in Tuckahoe, N.Y. She decided to forgo the doctorate, she says, because "I was doing exciting cancer work." In 1989, the school awarded her an honorary degree, along with a citation that read, "It was a bittersweet decision, but in retrospect, the world is far richer because of your uncompromising dedication to pharmaceutical research, even at the cost of your doctorate," a gesture that the Nobelist says made her proud. But, says Penn State's Hosler, it occasionally can be dangerous to award an honorary doctorate to someone who does not have an in-course doctoral degree. "It's my opinion that sometimes the honorary degree has been interpreted by third parties as a `real' degree," he says. In such cases, he cautions, a person might be offered a job that wouldn't have been offered if it were widely known that the individual's doctorate was not an earned one. What distinguishes the honorary degree from other prizes and honors is that recipients are selected by committees composed not only of scholars in their own field, but also of faculty and trustees from a wide variety of backgrounds. Says physicist James Duderstadt, president of the University of Michigan, "I have a list of people I would like to see honored, but it's a grass-roots process. I sit as a member of the honorary degree committee, [but] I have [only] one of 15 votes." Scientists who are selected for this type of distinction are chosen over other scientists, but also over musicians, actors, politicians, businesspeople, and the like. This makes it difficult for those who have the responsibility of weighing the relative merits of these individuals, says USC's Rogers. "The criteria for excellence are different in each case," he says. "It's a rather general comparison--specific comparisons can't be made when you're comparing people in different fields." For example, Rogers says, when a concert pianist is under consideration, knowledgeable people from inside the university will review performances. With scientists, "reputation enters into it; how they are regarded in their field." To assist them in their decision, he says, committee members look at "general indicators of eminence. Sometimes we are presented with citation data; these are general indicators." Committee members, Rogers says, may also examine reviews of a scientist's seminal publications. Another feature distinguishing honorary degrees from other honors is the accompanying pomp: the cap, gown, and hood; the reading of the citation; and the ceremony, where one is likely to be in the company of international celebrities. Kety and Sagdeyev, for example, were joined on the podium at the University of Michigan by George and Barbara Bush, who also were receiving honorary degrees; three weeks later, the president shared a podium with another scientist, molecular biologist Elizabeth Blackburn of the University of California, San Francisco, when both received honorary degrees from Yale University. In most cases, the honorary degree recipients are given more attention than students receiving earned degrees, who, unlike the honorees, do not have their individual achievements recited at the commencement ceremony. The University of California's Kerr says honorees are given more personal attention because, in academic circles, "the honorary degree is taken more seriously than an earned degree. That may sound silly, but it's true." But Claude Shannon, the founder of information theory and Donner Professor of Science emeritus at MIT, doesn't believe that honorary degree recipients are given an undue amount of attention. "I don't think [the ceremonies] are overdone," says Shannon, who received an honorary degree from the University of Pennsylvania last month. "All we do is stand up and get the hood." And the AAUA's Kelly says that when degrees are given honoris causa to truly deserving individuals, they serve as "an enhancement" to the commencement proceedings, and as such are worthy of the extra attention. Honorary degree recipients, he says, "give more significance to the students by their presence. It makes the event more memorable." But, says Kelly, the tradition of the honorary degree should be seen in its proper perspective, as "a nice appendage to the really important work of commencement--recognizing students whose coursework has been completed. "The guests of honor at this party should be the students."

Honorary Degrees: Controversial For Centuries

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