Medary.com

Which reminds me, I must post a review of "The Trouble with Physics" one of these days . . .

Anyway, esteemed blogger Tigerhawk (well, esteemed in these here parts) has a word or two about the issuing of honorary degrees to African thug Robert Mugabe, and the subsequent reconsideration of said honorary degrees.  Thus wrote Tigerhawk:

I come from an academic family, grew up in college towns, and thought seriously about going to graduate school and becoming a professor. I decided against it because I did not much like most of the academics I knew. The older guys -- those who were born before, say, 1925, were pretty normal, interesting, and tough in their own way. A lot of them had stormed ashore at D-Day or manned a machine gun against the Japanese, and even those who were left wing did not twist their hanky over silliness. They knew the difference between serious and, er, not-serious.

There are few such people running Anglo-American universities today. Take, for example, the mass confusion over whether or not to revoke the many honorary degrees accidentally given to Robert Mugabe, one of the biggest dirtbags on the planet. Years after it has become obvious that the guy is an evil, genocidal maniac, the University of Edinburgh has pumped itself up and pulled his degree, which exceedingly belated and fundamentally bureaucratic act the Guardian regards as all part and parcel of the great campaign to reign in his tyranny:

International efforts to isolate Zimbabwe's president, Robert Mugabe, intensified yesterday after he was stripped of an honorary degree by Edinburgh University and faced similar action by academics in the US. The university said its senate had unanimously accepted a recommendation by a panel of three senior professors to revoke the degree because details of Mr Mugabe's links to atrocities in Matabeleland in the early 1980s had emerged.

I bet Mugabe is quaking in his boots.