Thursday, 4:30 PM
UMass rebukes Mugabe, but doesn't revoke honorary degree
By Claire Cummings, Globe Correspondent
More than two decades after the University of Massachusetts gave President Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe an honorary degree, trustees at the school voted today to give him an official rebuke – but not strip him of the award.
The board of trustees met at the Amherst campus to review a petition from the university’s student senate that asked officials to take back the honorary degree awarded in 1986.
Bill Wright, a UMass spokesman, said the university has no policy for taking back the degrees.
"At that particular time that it was awarded by the university, there was tremendous hope for what Mugabe would do in the future that was based on the information available," Wright said.
Since that time, however, Mugabe has descended to the “depths of a brutal and bloody regime,” according to the board’s resolution.
"In the intervening and particularly recent years his actions have prompted his being scorned worldwide as a tyrannical dictator whose rule has been marked by intimidation, violence, fraud, and robbery," the resolution said.
Earlier this month, the University of Edinburgh began the process of stripping Mugabe of an honorary degree that the school gave him in 1984. Zimbabwe's information minister, Sikhanyiso Ndlovu, told the Agence France-Presse news agency that the school’s action was "meaningless to [Mugabe] and to Zimbabwe." Ndlovu described Mugabe as "an accomplished scholar."
