[WikiEN-l] Congrats for Jimbo

[Andrew Gray]

On 25/04/06, Anthere <Anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> Mathias Schindler wrote:
> > http://www.register-mail.com/stories/042406/LOC_B9J6O93V.GID.shtml
> >
> > Monday, April 24, 2006
> >
> > GALESBURG - Knox College has announced the names of the 2006 honorary
> > degree recipients.
> >
> > Stephen Colbert, star of "The Colbert Report"; Shirley E. Barnes,
> > former U.S. Ambassador to Madagascar; and Jimmy Wales, the founder of
> > Wikipedia, will all received the award at Knox's 2006 commencement
> > ceremony at 10 a.m. June 3.
> >
> > - Wales will receive the honorary doctor of laws degree.
> >
> > http://www.knox.edu/x12198.xml
>
> I understand nothing of these honorary degree.
> Jimbo is not a lawyer, nor does he have any special knowledge on legal
> issues. What does that mean to receive a degree in a topic you know
> nothing about ?

An honorary degree is a degree "honoris causa", "for the sake of
honor". The idea is that the university is recognising the
achievements of an individual made outside of their system, but which
they feel compelled to honour. (Think of it as like the academic
equivalent of a governmentally-awarded medal)

Historically these were simply recognitions of intellectual work by
someone not involved with the university; of late, it's become more
common to award them for general achievements. For example, in the
1750s Benjamin Franklin recieved one from Oxford for his scientific
works; two hundred years later, his fellow-countryman Eisenhower was
awarded the same degree by them for having won WWII. Some institutions
give them to mark a visit by an important figure:

http://www.gustavus.edu/events/nobelconference/nobelfoundation/degrees.cfm

(It's also not unknown to award them to senior members of the faculty
who unaccountably failed to ever actually study at the university, or
to give them to people like governors or Visitors either when they
take office or when they retire. But I digress.)

Traditionally, honorary degrees are chosen from a small set of
degrees; in the US, the "doctor of laws" degree is one of these, and
it's rarely if ever awarded as an actual PhD-level award. (In the UK,
the common one is the "doctor of letters"). Generally, a given
institution will pick the most appropriate, but they're pretty broad
groupings. (Again using Oxford, since I have their Calendar on my
desk, it generally falls into "politicians", "artists/writers/actors",
"scientists", with rarely awarded doctorates in Music or Divinity)

In the case of Knox, they're awarding honorary doctorates of Fine Arts
and of Laws, and have in the past awarded them in Humane Letters and
in Science. This doesn't leave much to choose from - he's not a
creative artist, and he's not a scientist.

So it's "doctor of laws" or "doctor of humane letters". The
definitions here are vague and fuzzy - they can vary from place to
place, and are rarely explicitly written down - but you could make a
decent case that "laws" is for contributions to society, and "humane
letters" for contributions to the humanities. (In the example
mentioned above, Eisenhower, the leading commanders in 1945 were
awarded doctorates in Civil Law...)

And is the project a contribution to society, or one to scholarship?
Ay, there's the rub.

--
- Andrew Gray
  andrew.gray at dunelm.org.uk