Obama and ASU
President Barack Obama is the 2009 commencement speaker at Arizona State University on May 13th, but he will not receive an honorary degree. His accomplishments thus far are insufficient to merit such.
Let’s see. What has BHO done?
Magna cum laude graduate of Harvard Law School where he was also President of the Harvard Law Review.
Only the second graduate of Harvard Law School to be elected President of the United States (Rutherford B. Hayes, who ended the Reconstruction and ushered in Jim Crow, was the other graduate)
Professor at the University of Chicago Law School
Author of two best-selling books.
Raised almost a billion dollars to support his presidential campaignmore, by far, than any candidate in history.
Generated grass-roots enthusiasm like no other candidate in modern times.
Best orator to assume the presidency since John F. Kennedy.
Incidentally, he is the first African American to be elected President of the United States.
These laurels, notwithstanding, he is deemed unworthy of an honorary degree from Arizona State University, an institution so academically chaste that these accomplishments must surely pale before its lofty standards.
David Evans