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Ironically, ASU apologizes . . .

... for not doing enough to properly honor President Obama during his commencement speech at Arizona State. In fact, after they said that they were not conferring an honorary degree because, they said, the president did not yet have a body of work sufficient to merit it, they heard howls of outrage from people who thought this was an insult and completely inappropriate. It now turns out that ASU's policy is simply to not give honorary degrees to sitting politicians (hey, that would solve some of our problems right there), but they already backpedaled hard to show the proper amount of deference to Obama. Their president assures that Arizona State "will honor President Obama in every way" (!) and they even created a "Barack Obama Scholars" scholarship program in his honor. ASU has no institutional or moral reason to oppose the president's policies, of course, while ND does. The contrast between the two schools and who has been outraged by each is (or should be) instructive, however.

I'm sure others have suggested this, but can't ASU and ND just switch? They can give the honorary degree, and we can decline to confer one. Then all the right people should be happy.

Full post as published by Irish Law on April 20, 2009 (boomark / email).