These honorary doctorates have to stop! They are just a way for schools to kiss celebrities’ rich asses and to attract the attention on themselves. Kanye West has just received one on Monday, from the School of the Art Institute in Chicago and I am not impressed. Why? Because he didn’t do much to get this prestigious diploma, I know because I worked very hard to get mine, 8 years of my life, 8 years of hard work, effort, sacrifice and sweat… and you have to write a big fat memoir to get it, it’s not a cakewalk, except for these damn celebrities!
Of course, Kanye was very happy, and a bit nervous during the ceremony, since, you may remember, he is a college dropout! During his speech he said:
‘When I was giving a lecture at Oxford, I brought up this school because when I went on that mission to create in other spaces, apparel, film, performance, it would have been easier if I could have said that I had a degree at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.’
Well, now he has one, with no sweat, no precious years wasted his head buried in books, getting sleep depraved and anxious over impossible exams… All Kanye had to do was a little discourse, and voila, he gets a doctorate! His wife obviously tweeted the shit out of the event, his wife, who was promoting a book of selfies for god’s sake!
But Kanye is far from being alone to have received this kind of phony degree, rapper Sean Diddy Combs received an honorary degree of Doctor of Humanities, Oprah Winfrey received two, one from Havard and one from Duke University, Aretha Franklin has four of them, from the University of Pennsylvania, Berklee College, Case Western Reserve University and Yale, and even Mike Tyson got one from the Central State University in Ohio… what a joke!
But what are the requirements exactly? According to Complex, the school awards ‘influential individuals’ who earned ‘this distinguished award through their work, which is always imaginative and aesthetically rich, and sometimes also provocative and controversial, shifting the cultural landscape in significant ways.’ And since everyone thinks Kanye West is a genius… but I thought we already had awards for this kind of criteria, aren’t what the Grammys are for? Why does Kanye also needs an academic price? Does a student who graduates from SAIC also gets a Grammy? So why not?
Lisa Wainwright, who decides who gets honorary degrees, said she has basically decided to give one to Kanye after reading an interview in which he said that he would have loved to attend SAIC. See, it works like this in this world, he said the school is cool, he gets the doctorate! Talking about encouraging self-indulgent narcissism, but it’s a very good deal for a guy who is ‘a proud non-reader of books.’
Still, the Guardian reports that some students saw the irony: Arts journalist Corinna Kirsch, wrote ‘As an alum of SAIC, I am offended that the school’s exorbitant tuition and fees will help fund this nonsense.’ The A.V. Club also reported a few weeks ago that many students took to social media to express their unhappiness, suggesting someone should rush the stage during Kanye’s Speech! Brilliant! And nobody did it?
So I want these honorary doctorates to stop, but then I read that Kermit the Frog got one from New York’s Southampton College… oh so isn’t it just a muppet degree after all?