AMERICAblog: Arizona State refuses Obama honorary degree. Says he hasn't accomplished enough in life.
judybrowni
· 7 months ago
From Daily Kos, what you can do to rectify the situation, if you have any connection to Arizona State:
The ASU Honorary Degree Committee accepts nominations for honorary degree recipients from members of the ASU academic community at any time during the year. This includes faculty, staff, students, parents, alumni, donors, and so on... That's right. If you have a relationship with ASU, any legitimate relationship, you can make a nomination directly to the committee.
The chairs are Laurie Chassin and Christine Wilkinson. According to ASU's spokesperson, all nominations should be sent directly to the chairs.
One thing I'd like to add. Please BE RESPECTFUL. I honestly think this was more of a bureaucratic snafu than anything, and then ASU just didn't know how to avoid the PR nightmare. Friends of mine at the university are getting undeserved hatemail just for doing their jobs, and they had nothing to do with any decisions -- so please, be respectful if you write in to the university.
If I were Obama I would be relieved to NOT get an honorary degree from Party U! I would not hang their diploma in my garage!
Dave Porter
· 7 months ago
I wonder how many people have received honorary degrees from Arizona State University and just left them someplace on campus when they left?
Butch1
· 7 months ago
I suppose teaching constitutional law at Harvard and becoming the President of the United States is chopped liver?! Nope, never accomplished nothin'.
Arizona State, keep your little political diploma and put it where the sun won't get to it. It's a pity the republicans can't get beyond their partisanship. I have never seen such poor losers. Children, all of them.
Joneses
· 7 months ago
As the Tea Bangers, I mean Tea Baggers formerly know as the GOP have overstated in their blogs, since Pres. O is the Messiah, he needs to part water and then turn the water into wine. After that, I guess then the ASU will feel he is experienced enough to receive a Honorary Degree.
vkobaya
· 7 months ago
part water and then turn the water into wine.
As if being the first Black president is just chopped liver. What really gets me is that they deny Obama an honorary degree when they would have no hesitation to award one to Bush, the first cockroach president. Yeah, I guess that is quite an accomplishment considering that Obama is a human being and has more than just a nodal cord for a brain. Then again, Obama didn't lie us into an unnecessary, illegal war against a nation that did nothing to us, brutally slaughter 1.3 million heathen, infidel, darkie, terrorist enemies of this nation, butcher 4,300 American soldiers, create the second Great Depression, destroy the Constitution, Bill of Rights and laws of our nation, make our nation the most hated in the world, embezzled trillions from our Treasury ... Perhaps when Obama has a list of accomplishments to match Bush, and no longer can speak English as his mother tongue, maybe then Obama will be deserving of an Arizona State honorary kindergarten degree.
missime
· 7 months ago
Actually, that is called " changing the rules". I worked somewhere (the VA) once when I was told that I couldn't get "Outstanding" on my evaluation because that was my first year in the job, even though I met all the criteria. The year after they gave it to the most recently hired person. When I inquired about it, I was told that the rules had changed. Needless to say that that was my motivation to move on. I got a great job now. Sometimes, that is a sign to move on to better things. President Obama should go give his graduation address (speech) to a more deserving school.
Shonnie
· 7 months ago
This will motivate Obama to work hard to make something of himself. Maybe now he won't be such a slacker.
missime
· 7 months ago
President Obama is just being told what Black people are told every day in this country: "you are not good enough to deserve that respect (that job, that promotion) - not yet." You and I know that the people at ASU making that decision are not even good enough to shine Obama's shoes. If they were, they would be in the White House with him.
Jim Olson
· 7 months ago
Obama should politely tell ASU where they can put their invitation.
missime
· 7 months ago
The things you have to do nowadays to obtain the piece of paper that has no value by all accounts - well! can't take it to the bank and won't get you a job. Some people got honorary degrees without even going to College. Now Bush messed it up for all of us. Even being president is not worth jack anymore. What does a Black man do to deserve some respect?
Laura, Tulsa OK
· 7 months ago
Hmmm... I guess doing something that only 42 other men in the world have done is not considered an accomplishment?
Pissed off in Carolina
· 7 months ago
Such disrespect being shown for The President of The United States of America. It's a sad and scary place that the Republicans/Neocons have brought to this once great country. The main stream media make me puke for not doing their jobs. And just where in the hell are the Democrats? They should be fuming over stuff like this. Sorry folks, but we are all screwed.
vkobaya
· 7 months ago
Also consider what they will have to say about this school and this man 8 years from now when Obama is unquestionably one of the greats. Ah, that school, what was it, desert toilet bowl university, denied him an honorary degree. They will be begging him to accept a degree. I suspect Obama will have the class and character to let them award a degree, not that it will salvage their academic credentials which will not be worth a kindergarten degree.
MichaelC
· 7 months ago
Fabulous post, John. Thanks! You can't make stuff like this up. We're Number One! Merka!
Bubbles
· 7 months ago
I didn't think an African American would be elected President in my lifetime, or in the next 150 years.
Obama became a great man the day he was nominated for President. He became a stellar person in our history when he was elected President. From an historical perspective, he's already up there with the Roosevelt, Lincoln, Washington (and in my mind, other greats like Benjamin Franklin, Alexander Hamilton and Fredrick Douglas).
The rest of us are mere mortals.
ASU makes it's self look like Horace Greeley. A peon.
missime
· 7 months ago
I agree with you, Bubbles.
judybrowni
· 7 months ago
Not that he needs their paltry phony diploma: doesn't Obama have a couple real degrees from, like, Ivy League schools?
Why bother with this relatively rinkydink school grad ceremony at all, President Obama?
I'd find something more important to do that day, maybe having to do with being the leader of the free world, while they're stuck at Arizona state.
missime
· 7 months ago
Not that I'm putting down the honorary degree but I always looked at them as "Thank you" certificates after one volunteers to give a lecture. They mean the same thing as the certificate one gets from a child school's career fair given by the principal or his/her representative as a certificate of attendance so you can show to your boss that you are doing community service. That's all. President Obama does not need to show to us that he's doing community service in the US. After all, he's doing that all over the world.
Butch1
· 7 months ago
This from Wikipedia:
Barack Obama attended Occidental College, but received his undergraduate degree in political science from Columbia University, an Ivy League member currently ranked 9th in the country by U.S. News and World Report. Obama also graduated Magna Cum Laude from the Harvard Law School, where he also served as President of the Harvard Law Review. Harvard Law School is ranked the best Law School in America.
Columbia University - B.A. political science with a specialization in international relations.
Harvard - Juris Doctor (J.D.) Magna Cum Laude
toutwest
· 7 months ago
Occidental is no easy school to get into. All of the Claremont Colleges (Occidental is one of them) are top level small schools. If I remember correctly Occidental is listed by Newsweek as a top twenty liberal arts college.
Butch1
· 7 months ago
Sometimes the smaller university or college is a better deal in the long run because the ratio between students and professor is smaller allowing greater access to the professor by the student. Usually, many of the undergraduate classes are taught by a professor rather than a graduate assistant as well.
grandma
· 7 months ago
How ridiculous....didn't realize Arizona State was that petty and narrow minded.....shame on them.
Sure doesn't say much for their university.
wolfhound2
· 7 months ago
He shouldn't make a peep about it and go and be the man that he is. A lot more than the people who ask him to dance the head of a pin. Of course that is not what they want...they don't want him in the first place. I am always astonished at the ignorance and rudeness...but why? Why am I?
magster
· 7 months ago
By Obama hasn't accomplished enough by ASU's standards means he hasn't guzzled beer from a beer bong without puking.
judybrowni
· 7 months ago
My first guess was right.
Reading the comments on that piece, all was revealed: Arizona State is a second-rate party school, and the usual recipients of toilet paper honorary degrees are, aside from a few names like Barry Goldwater (!), fatcat nonentities who either have already ponied up big cash for the community college, or the college has hopes they will.
They're also still miffed the American public didn't join them in having the wool pulled over their eyes by electing John "Walnuts" McCain.
Surely you have something better to do on May 15, President Obama.
SanLuis
· 7 months ago
As a university professor, I find it risible that a third rate diploma mill like ASU would refuse an honorary degree to someone who's written two fine books, logged in many years of teaching constitutional at the U. of Chicago, revitalized American political speech along with the art of electoral campaigning, and ... (the list continues...). There's no one on the ASU faculty (much less its hack administration) who can hold a candle to Obama. This makes the place even more the laughing stock it already is academically.
Silver Owl
· 7 months ago
Honorary degrees are bullshit party favors given the university higher ups for dress up games.
It is a trite and nonsensical social mannerism. Who's resume was ever wrecked by not receiving a fake and useless degree? LOL!
Honorary degrees are cheesy party favors.
Jim Olson
· 7 months ago
True, and everyone knows it. But it's bad form and not done to invite someone to speak at graduation and not offer them an honoris causa degree.
Heathwood
· 7 months ago
That is very funny. Now why aren't we considered a 3rd World Country?
ROTFLMAO at ASU
· 7 months ago
ASU? You're kidding, right? The party school? The community college? The school of last resort for anyone west of the Rockies?
Jesus, even Cindy McCain left the state to go to USC. (Not that Cindy McCain is stupid - she's not - but her Dad was about as Arizona centric as you can get)
missime
· 7 months ago
Wait! Wait! Wait! Cindy McCain went to College? She doesn't look/sound like it.
Diogenes
· 7 months ago
Well, as someone who resides in Phoenix, I can tell you it is like Little Rock or Waco, but without the sophistication. Or the presidential library.
Like Obama, I have a degree from Columbia. If I ever wear a univerity T-shirt here, I am routinely asked when I visited South America and how I liked it.
No one has heard of Swarthmore, Bryn Mawr, Williams College, Mt. Holyoke, etc., and anyone with a shred of education is viewed as suspect.
The fact that ASU, with 100,000+ students will take a pass on Obama is laughable. It is a fourth rate school at best, a fall-back for people applying to third tier schools.
woodka
· 7 months ago
I'm ashamed of my alma mater.
Fuck them next time they call asking for money. I'm glad my son's at U of A now. Seriously.
Bubbles
· 7 months ago
U of A is the "Harvard of the Desert".
Or as we used to like to say to ASU folk when I went there "At least we have some standards."
Apparently ASU has to accept everyone that applies to attend there.
Coming Undone
· 7 months ago
Whatever the reason is it makes the school look small minded and petty and not like true educators.
They should give him the fake degree because he is the President of the United States, what other reason do they need?
SkippyFlipjack
· 7 months ago
George W. Bush was given honorary degrees by Yale and Notre Dame in 2001 and LSU in 2004. (And many more, I'm sure; those were the first few I found.) The Yale Daily News noted that his degree in 2001 was given with his father's history in mind; apparently his Bush Sr. received his own honorary degree from Yale in 1991, three years into his presidency, and was peeved that it took three years.
ASU's defense of their decision is laughable. Why not just say "We're very conservative here and just don't like the President"?
missime
· 7 months ago
Laughable? Plllllllease. It's stupid. President Obama is probably smarter than all the ASU execs combined.
ndtovent
· 7 months ago
SCREW AZ even though I have some good friends there. that's mccain territory, isn't it?
benb
· 7 months ago
Yeah, you know you haven't made it 'till you have an Honorary from ASU.
missime
· 7 months ago
Rubbish! Why is President Obama even going to Arizona? Didn't they vote for McCain? The President should have better fish to fry with all the problems that he has to deal with. I know he is the President of all Americans but I'm sure he can say no to some people.
ndtovent
· 7 months ago
he's inexperienced and hasn't quite learned that yet
missime
· 7 months ago
Yes! I didn't think about that. He's done in 3 months what some president was given 8 years to do yet managed to screw up: the government, the economy, the people, the war against Al-Qaeda and terrorism, our relationships with our allies, etc. I could go on and on but I'm tired of rehashing what I want to bury: the past 8 years.
nml150
· 7 months ago
He should go there to speak and (gently) turn it back on them. Make light humor of not getting the honorary degree, then acknowledge that they are in fact right: He has yet to prove himself in the most important undertaking of his life and time. He should thank them profusely for motivating him to strive for that ASU degree because, if he is successful, it will look nice on his wall (and all Americans will benefit).
SkippyFlipjack
· 7 months ago
I like that, but I'd recommend that he leave off the part about "striving for an ASU degree" because people might think he's being sarcastic. This isn't Harvard we're talking about..
joe
· 7 months ago
Harvard of the desert?
U of Airzona is a great school. But ASU is a glorified 4-year community college. any high school grad can get in that school, even with bad gardes
mistabaka
· 7 months ago
"hasn't accomplished enough in life?" I'm pretty sure Harvard would beg to differ (they being just one voice in a very long list)
Dusty
· 7 months ago
Maybe he's not accomplished enough, all Obama ever did was.....
Author of two best selling books.
Columbia University B.A. Political Science with specialization in international relations Thesis topic: Soviet nuclear disarmament Graduate
Harvard Law School J.D. magna cum laude 1988-1991
President, Harvard Law Review
1983-1984 Writer/Researcher for Business International Corporation. Helped companies understand overseas markets.
1984-1985 Community Organizer for New York Public Interest Research Group (PIRG), promoting personal, community, and government reform at City College in Harlem.
1985-1988 Director of the Developing Communities Project (DCP), a church-based community organization originally comprising eight Catholic parishes in Greater Roseland on Chicago's South Side. While director grew the DCP staff from 1 to 13 and their budget from $70,000 to $400,000.
1992 Led Chicago's Project Vote! push. This resulted in a record number of voter registrations, over 600,000 in Chicago.
1993-2004 Visiting Law and Government Fellow, then Senior Lecturer, in Constitutional Law at the University of Chicago Law School. Taught courses on the due process and equal protection areas of constitutional law, on voting rights, and on racism and law.
1993-2002 Worked as an associate attorney with Davis, Miner, Barnhill & Galland. Represented non-profits and private individuals in urban development projects, voting rights cases, and wrongful firings. Filed major suit that forced the state of Illinois to enforce the Motor Voter Law and successfully argued a wrongful firing case before the U.S. 7th Circuit Court of Appeals.
November 4, 2008- Elected 44th POTUS!
Older_Wiser
· 7 months ago
Just more academic political BS. If you haven't ever experienced it, you haven't lived. With ASU, I expect it has a huge taint of racism overlapping the cheap politics.
Come to think of it, my decision of 45 years ago to never set foot in AZ again was a wise one...
mizzy
· 7 months ago
"They're not offering you an honorary degree, Mr. President."
"What, seriously?"
"Yes, sir."
"Bummer. I needed that for my résumé."
julio
· 7 months ago
I'll bet they've given one to John McCain. Can anyone check?
FatRat
· 7 months ago
I can hardly comprehend why they would intetionally embarass themselves like that!
Harvard Law Review President. Law degree. Law professor. Community organizer. Civil rights attorney. State Senator. United States Senator. Best-selling author. Multiple Grammy-Award Winner. Oh, and President of the United States.
Fucking slacker! What does he have to offer? It's not like he's ever been successful at anything or is able to motivate or inspire people.
JamieinAZ
· 7 months ago
As a University of Arizona law graduate, calling ASU the Harvard of the Desert is BS. Univ. of Arizona is a far superior school in all areas. Univ. of Arizona consistently ranks as one of the best public universities in the country.
Stu
· 7 months ago
Even with the buidling burning down around them Bigots can always find time to hate.
C. YNGVE
· 7 months ago
I AM SURE PRES. OBAMA WILL RISE ABOVE THIS ISSUE THE WAY HE ALWAYS DOES. WITH GRACE AND INTELLIGENCE. AS FOR ME , WELL, ARIZONAS' PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE LOST HIS CAMPAIGN AND I THINK INVITING A PRES. TO SPEAK AND THEN REFUSING THE HONORARY DEGREE BECAUSE HE "HASN'T ACCOMPLISHED ENOUGH" (?), WAS MEANT TO BE AS PETTY AS IT SEEMS. I BET IT WAS NOT THE STUDENTS DECISION TO DENY HIM. LET NO DRAMA OBAMA SHOW YOUR STUDENTS HOW TO CONDUCT THEMSELVES WITH DIGNITY SINCE THEIR FACULTY CAN'T !
missime
· 7 months ago
Maybe, one day, one of their students will become president. Who knows? After all, we had a fourth rate student be president for the past 8 years and we had one fourth tier candidate from Arizona run for president in the last election but he lost, even though he and the GOP are the only ones who don't know that. They keep going on Sunday Morning shows badmouthing the President that the people elected.
All Comments
The ASU Honorary Degree Committee accepts nominations for honorary degree recipients from members of the ASU academic community at any time during the year. This includes faculty, staff, students, parents, alumni, donors, and so on... That's right. If you have a relationship with ASU, any legitimate relationship, you can make a nomination directly to the committee.
The chairs are Laurie Chassin and Christine Wilkinson. According to ASU's spokesperson, all nominations should be sent directly to the chairs.
One thing I'd like to add. Please BE RESPECTFUL. I honestly think this was more of a bureaucratic snafu than anything, and then ASU just didn't know how to avoid the PR nightmare. Friends of mine at the university are getting undeserved hatemail just for doing their jobs, and they had nothing to do with any decisions -- so please, be respectful if you write in to the university.
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2009/4/9/181311/9...
Arizona State, keep your little political diploma and put it where the sun won't get to it. It's a pity the republicans can't get beyond their partisanship. I have never seen such poor losers. Children, all of them.
As if being the first Black president is just chopped liver. What really gets me is that they deny Obama an honorary degree when they would have no hesitation to award one to Bush, the first cockroach president. Yeah, I guess that is quite an accomplishment considering that Obama is a human being and has more than just a nodal cord for a brain. Then again, Obama didn't lie us into an unnecessary, illegal war against a nation that did nothing to us, brutally slaughter 1.3 million heathen, infidel, darkie, terrorist enemies of this nation, butcher 4,300 American soldiers, create the second Great Depression, destroy the Constitution, Bill of Rights and laws of our nation, make our nation the most hated in the world, embezzled trillions from our Treasury ... Perhaps when Obama has a list of accomplishments to match Bush, and no longer can speak English as his mother tongue, maybe then Obama will be deserving of an Arizona State honorary kindergarten degree.
We're Number One! Merka!
Obama became a great man the day he was nominated for President. He became a stellar person in our history when he was elected President. From an historical perspective, he's already up there with the Roosevelt, Lincoln, Washington (and in my mind, other greats like Benjamin Franklin, Alexander Hamilton and Fredrick Douglas).
The rest of us are mere mortals.
ASU makes it's self look like Horace Greeley. A peon.
Why bother with this relatively rinkydink school grad ceremony at all, President Obama?
I'd find something more important to do that day, maybe having to do with being the leader of the free world, while they're stuck at Arizona state.
Barack Obama attended Occidental College, but received his undergraduate degree in political science from Columbia University, an Ivy League member currently ranked 9th in the country by U.S. News and World Report. Obama also graduated Magna Cum Laude from the Harvard Law School, where he also served as President of the Harvard Law Review. Harvard Law School is ranked the best Law School in America.
Columbia University - B.A. political science with a specialization in international relations.
Harvard - Juris Doctor (J.D.) Magna Cum Laude
Sure doesn't say much for their university.
Reading the comments on that piece, all was revealed: Arizona State is a second-rate party school, and the usual recipients of toilet paper honorary degrees are, aside from a few names like Barry Goldwater (!), fatcat nonentities who either have already ponied up big cash for the community college, or the college has hopes they will.
They're also still miffed the American public didn't join them in having the wool pulled over their eyes by electing John "Walnuts" McCain.
Surely you have something better to do on May 15, President Obama.
It is a trite and nonsensical social mannerism. Who's resume was ever wrecked by not receiving a fake and useless degree? LOL!
Honorary degrees are cheesy party favors.
Jesus, even Cindy McCain left the state to go to USC. (Not that Cindy McCain is stupid - she's not - but her Dad was about as Arizona centric as you can get)
Like Obama, I have a degree from Columbia. If I ever wear a univerity T-shirt here, I am routinely asked when I visited South America and how I liked it.
No one has heard of Swarthmore, Bryn Mawr, Williams College, Mt. Holyoke, etc., and anyone with a shred of education is viewed as suspect.
The fact that ASU, with 100,000+ students will take a pass on Obama is laughable. It is a fourth rate school at best, a fall-back for people applying to third tier schools.
Fuck them next time they call asking for money. I'm glad my son's at U of A now. Seriously.
Or as we used to like to say to ASU folk when I went there "At least we have some standards."
Apparently ASU has to accept everyone that applies to attend there.
They should give him the fake degree because he is the President of the United States, what other reason do they need?
ASU's defense of their decision is laughable. Why not just say "We're very conservative here and just don't like the President"?
U of Airzona is a great school. But ASU is a glorified 4-year community college. any high school grad can get in that school, even with bad gardes
Author of two best selling books.
Columbia University
B.A. Political Science with specialization in international relations
Thesis topic: Soviet nuclear disarmament
Graduate
Harvard Law School
J.D. magna cum laude 1988-1991
President, Harvard Law Review
1983-1984 Writer/Researcher for Business International Corporation. Helped companies understand overseas markets.
1984-1985 Community Organizer for New York Public Interest Research Group (PIRG), promoting personal, community, and government reform at City College in Harlem.
1985-1988 Director of the Developing Communities Project (DCP), a church-based community organization originally comprising eight Catholic parishes in Greater Roseland on Chicago's South Side. While director grew the DCP staff from 1 to 13 and their budget from $70,000 to $400,000.
1992 Led Chicago's Project Vote! push. This resulted in a record number of voter registrations, over 600,000 in Chicago.
1993-2004 Visiting Law and Government Fellow, then Senior Lecturer, in Constitutional Law at the University of Chicago Law School. Taught courses on the due process and equal protection areas of constitutional law, on voting rights, and on racism and law.
1993-2002 Worked as an associate attorney with Davis, Miner, Barnhill & Galland. Represented non-profits and private individuals in urban development projects, voting rights cases, and wrongful firings. Filed major suit that forced the state of Illinois to enforce the Motor Voter Law and successfully argued a wrongful firing case before the U.S. 7th Circuit Court of Appeals.
November 4, 2008- Elected 44th POTUS!
Come to think of it, my decision of 45 years ago to never set foot in AZ again was a wise one...
"What, seriously?"
"Yes, sir."
"Bummer. I needed that for my résumé."
Here you go julio-
http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2009/04/no-h...
"Incidentally, John McCain himself has not received an honorary degree from ASU."
Fucking slacker! What does he have to offer? It's not like he's ever been successful at anything or is able to motivate or inspire people.