Republican Rep. Relinquishes Honorary Degree Before School Can Take it
“in response to his objection to the certification of the Electoral College votes for the next president of the United States”
Grinnell College was considering rescinding an honorary degree from Rep. Tom Cole of Oklahoma. He responded by giving it back before they reached a decision. Good for him.
The Washington Free Beacon reports:
House Republican Gives Up Honorary Degree Amid Pressure on School to Rescind It
Rep. Tom Cole (R., Okla.) gave up an honorary degree from his alma mater on Tuesday as the college considered rescinding it after he contested the Electoral College results.
Cole, the deputy whip for House Republicans and an Oklahoma representative since 2003, gave up his honorary doctorate from Grinnell College. Cole graduated from Grinnell, a small liberal arts college in Iowa, in 1971.
Harris said she was evaluating the degree and its consistency with the school’s values following complaints from the college community over Cole’s challenge of the electoral results.
“On Sunday evening, the College received a petition asking for the revocation of the honorary degree awarded to U.S. Representative Tom Cole ’71 in 2016 in response to his objection to the certification of the Electoral College votes for the next president of the United States. Members of the Board of Trustees, campus leaders, and I prepared to review Grinnell’s honorary degree processes and principles, as well as the historical and constitutional context within which Rep. Cole acted,” Harris wrote in a public letter. “This review was to inform the necessary deliberations of the governing bodies that would be involved with a decision to revoke an honorary degree.”
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Comments
As someone familiar with the College, I can say that while many, if not most, Grinnell graduates consider themselves “left,” they are, in fact, conventional thinkers (with. albeit, narrow and peculiar conventions) incredibly vulnerable to the vice of group think. I doubt if the graduates of many liberal arts colleges are much different these days. Of these conventional thinkers, few have been exposed to thinking other than that consonant with their own ideas and don’t seek or particularly want a broader exposure. They are content within their self-affirming bubbles. This is a different sin than mere bias, and makes them blindly factional and reactionary. While not a universal traits among liberal arts graduates, this focussed. self-righteous, blindness is a material and perhaps dominant presence in the liberal arts. And it, more than mere bias, is why liberal arts programs are endangered.
Good for him. The University of Minnesota can have my EARNED degree back if they want it too.
Sell it to them. Hell sue them for loss of value and serviceability. You did your part, under their terms. Make them honor that agreement or purchase a dispensation from you and anyone else who relied on your training.
IIRC there was a time when they were a credible institution.
Heh. That’s a good one. There’s nothing I did in life that I couldn’t have done without that degree, so I wouldn’t have much standing in that regard.
And yes, back then the U of M WAS a credible institution, even if they haven’t been to the Rose Bowl since 1961.
Yep, I was saying this yesterday in another chat about Harvard degrees.
Return to sender.