Vijay Prashad employs an especially nimble means of comparison in The Boston Globe today. It seems that the University of Massachusetts is about to grant Andrew Card an honorary degree. Prashad objects to this, on a variety of grounds. That’s not surprising. University honors bestowed on any political figures (especially those rightward) tend to inspire spirited objection – the establishment of a Rehnquist Professorship at Middlebury was dubbed a “symbolic act of violence” by a professor. Presumably, due to his greater proximity to Asmodeus, Andrew Card would stand as an even more dangeous symbol.
Objections such as Prashad’s are not surprising – it’s the method of argument that he uses that is singular. His article sets up a contrast between the University’s iniquitous granting of the Card degree, and its recent, virtuous revocation of… Robert Mugabe’s degree. At the end of the piece, I gained the strong feeling that he felt, in a moral sense, that U. Mass had come out at best even in the degree exchange. In the scales of honorary degree evil only a murderous tyrant could hope to balance out a Bush administration member…
