Today it seems like anyone can get an honorary degree. Even Pats owner Robert Kraft got one at this year's UMass-Boston graduation. But some honorary degrees get sticky. For example, twenty years ago, Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe received an honorary degree at UMass. Today, UMass trustees are reconsidering their decision today.
According to the Globe, "the Undergraduate Student Senate at UMass-Boston unanimously passed a request to retract the degree."
And for good reason. Although he started off opposing apartheid, his rule of Zimbabwe has been oppressive, and the bottom has dropped out of the nation's economy and food supply thanks to crop failures, high inflation, and the "turmoil" resulting from the seizure of white-owned farms by the government.
The economic troubles and hunger aren't the end of it. The BBC profiled a young refugee of the Mugabe regime, who paints a horrifying picture of his time at a "youth camp": "Rape is a common feature of life in the camps … [the camps] exist to indoctrinate the youth with pro-Mugabe propaganda, and that torture techniques are part of the syllabus." He witnessed his best friend being beaten to death after they tried to escape.
Michigan State University and the University of Edinburgh also want to revoke their honorary degrees to Mugabe.
Image of Robert Mugabe from the State Department.
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