Middlebury College is considering revoking the honorary degree it awarded to Rudy Giuliani, according to its president, Lauri Patton. An honorary Doctor of Laws degree was given to Guiliani when he spoke at the university’s commencement in 2005.
Giulani, former mayor of New York City and more recently personal lawyer for President Donald Trump, has been a lead proponent of many of the election fraud conspiracy theories that Trump and his followers have championed since his defeat in November by President-elect Joe Biden.
Last Wednesday, at a rally held before insurrectionists stormed the nation’s Capitol and seized it for hours, he urged the crowd to engage in “trial by combat” as an element in the president’s continuing attempt to overturn the election of Biden.
Patton viewed those and other Giuliani remarks last Wednesday as encouragement of “an insurrection against democracy itself.” In a Facebook post yesterday, she stated,
“In light of the role that presidential attorney Rudolph Giuliani played in fomenting the violent uprising against our nation’s Capitol building on January 6, 2021—an insurrection against democracy itself—Middlebury’s leadership has initiated the process we have put in place to consider revoking an honorary degree.”
“This institution awarded a degree to Mr. Giuliani in 2005. We will have more to communicate to you about this in the days ahead.”
Middlebury’s president appears to have support for revoking the degree. In a January 10, 2021 editorial in the student newspaper, The Middlebury Campus, the editorial board wrote the following: “In light of Giuliani’s role in these violent events, Middlebury must act on such condemnation by revoking his honorary degree... A symbolic degree has nothing but symbolism to offer. It represents the acknowledgment of a college’s values embodied by individuals and their work. For Middlebury to continue to bestow this honor upon Giuliani — whose actions directly endangered lives while instigating insurrection — would betray its values as an institution. To revoke it would be to fortify them.”
Whether Middlebury rescinds Giuliani’s degree or not, the issue is sure to spread to other institutions that have also bestowed honorary degrees on him. Included in the list are:
- Loyola University (Maryland) in 2005
- The Citadel in 2007
- Drexel University in 2009
Last week, universities took fast steps to rescind the honorary degrees they had awarded to Donald Trump, as a form of symbolic protest against what they believed to be incendiary rhetoric and behavior by the president. Lehigh University and Wagner College were quick to act. However, Liberty University, which has awarded two honorary degrees to Trump, has not yet announced any decision on the status of those degrees.
And now the purge of prior honors granted by American universities appears likely to expand. The major questions are: To whom? And how soon?
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