Several months ago, I wrote several posts about the University of Tennessee’s announcement to grant Al Gore an honorary degree. I haven’t forgotten about this and have maintained my pledge to never give the UT system another dime.
Over the weekend, I was reminded that my friend and former colleague, Lindsay Souza, will be in Knoxville to organize a protest against Al Gore. Her note is below. If you are interested in attending, please contact Lindsay directly. Fortunately for the University, I’m throwing a wedding shower that day, so I can’t travel to Tennessee for graduation.
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Hello,
My name is Lindsay Souza and I am a Campus Services Coordinator with the Leadership Institute. I’m looking to get in touch with students at UT that are angry Al Gore will be speaking on their campus and are interested in putting a protest together. I plan on being on campus the week of graduation and would be more than willing to organize a meeting for everyone that is interested. Please contact me if you’re interested.
In Liberty,
Lindsay
lsouza@campusreform.org
5 Comments
While I’m no fan of Al Gore, I’m not really seeing the justification for punishing UT for giving him an honorary degree. Wherever you stand with his politics, he was a longtime Senator, VP and Presidential candidate, and certainly one of the more famous Tennesseans of the past fifty years. Would it be so egregious for University of Indiana to grant an honorary degree to Dan Quayle?
Had this been a genuinely odious character, such as Al Sharpton, I’d be in agreement. But Gore, for his faults, is hardly a villain.
Brando, this post was meant to serve as an update. I went into my reasons for opposing Al Gore previously.
Essentially, the Gore family has had very little to do with the UT system. Unlike many states, we have numerous university systems, and the Gore family has historically been connected with Vanderbilt.
Also factor in that Gore is a nominal Tennessean. His family maintains a farm there, but he actually grew up in DC. He couldn’t even win his “homestate” when he ran for president. The people of Tennessee could really care less about him. This is UT’s attempt to get on the global warming bandwagon and get a piece of the Gore family pie. Gore simultaneously created a crisis and managed to profit from it.
There could be some underhanded work here. Just three years ago, Gore endowed a climatology chair at UT. Now he’s getting an honorary doctorate. University philanthropy is notoriously dirty.
There’s certainly a lot of “quid pro quo” involved in university philanthropy and honorary degrees, and a general protest against that system itself is fine as it is. But this particular case you point to doesn’t seem any more egregious than most. Famous, rich and influential people constantly get degrees from colleges they have no connection to–at least Gore has SOME Tennessee connections (losing his home state was pathetic, but does that really mean he lost all connection to the state?). I wouldn’t be surprised if Obama or Bush got honorary degrees from colleges they’d never even visited before.
But this raises another broader question–do honorary degrees cheapen the concept of the earned degree? (and let’s not even get into grade inflation, etc.!) What sort of contortions should schools be allowed to do in order to secure funding or “prestige”? Those are issues worthy of a broader protest.
Agreed that the issue of honorary degrees should be explored more. However, I already wrote about that in my previous posts on my objections.
Honorary degrees are new to the UT system. They have previously only given away two–Howard Baker and Dolly Parton. Both are committed to the State of Tennessee and are tremendous philanthropists. As such, those are the standards that the University established. Al Gore meets neither.
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