Comments on: Arizona State should give Obama honorary degree

By: Betty Ward

Betty Ward — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 20:08:07 +0000

In President Obama’s commemcement address he mentioned the young lady receiving 4 degrees. No one mentioned her name or asked her to stand. I have since read the address and it is not printed in the address, WHY not!!

Should ASU at least print her story in the newspaper???

By: ASUmind

ASUmind — Fri, 24 Apr 2009 20:08:57 +0000

Great story. I am an ASU grad (BS and MPA) and the university totally blew this one. Then they came out with some bogus excuses for not giving the President an honorary degree.

The lack of a portfolio excuse is pathetic and stupid. I don’t need to go into the details. President of the US is portfolio enough for 99.9% of the world’s population to justify an honorary degree from ASU. Remember it’s an “honorary” degree, i.e. is simply says we respect you and the importance of the work you do. By not awarding it to the President of the US, ASU is just saying that they do not respect the man or the office.

The other excuse floating around is that ASU stopped giving honorary degrees to politicians while they were in office in 2002. The problem with this excuse is that ASU gave an honorary degree to a political official from China a few years later. ASU needs to work on its timeline or qualify their political rule to only apply to officials from non-communist countries. It is obsurd either wau around.

Of course Obama is above ASU’s petty political back biting. After all he has honorary degrees from major universities like Northwestern, Notre Dame (forthcoming), and a host of other major universities. So, ASU just thrusts itself in the pariah university category. ASU also has insulted its students and alumni with this calous and unpatriotic action. Alumni giving is down, many Alumni have boycotted the university until Crow is no longer in charge, and student transfers are up.

Obama got snubbed by Crow and his cronies in an undemocratic smear campaign. It is no surprise that African American are not represent in the fake process ASU has adopted to distribute honorary degrees. It is a university run like a bananna republic.

Shame on you ASU. Crow must go.

By: Debra J. White

Debra J. White — Fri, 24 Apr 2009 14:42:55 +0000

That Mr. Crow denied an honorary degree to our first African American doesn’t surprise me. Crow has a long history of mistreating minorities, stretching back to Columbia where he served as vice provost. He tried to crush prominent Prof. Graciela Chichilnisky. Due to Crow unyielding bigotry the case dragged on for 16 years at considerable expense to Columbia and to the professor. She won a huge settlement after a trial. Crow carried his unapologetic bigorty to ASU. For example, he fired 1/3 of the minority faculty at ASU West in recent years for no good reason. He fired a tenured African American despite the unanimous ruling of a faculty committee that the prof. be reinstated. No African American served as dean or vp under Crow. Despite his claims to welcome diversity, ASU’s own records show the opposite. In 2002 the year Crow was hired 13 African American women held tenure. In 2007 that number had not changed. I could go on and on but what’s the point. Crow’s behavior shows that he does not like African Americans.