Why Professors at One University Want It to Revoke Trump’s Honorary Degree

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If a student were repeatedly to make racist, sexist, or offensive public statements at Lehigh University, the student would be punished.

That’s the reasoning Lehigh faculty members offered when they passed a motion this week to rescind President Trump’s honorary degree, which the university awarded in 1988. “If a member of Lehigh’s on-campus community made one of these statements, he/she would be subject to disciplinary action; taken in their entirety, he/she would be at risk of dismissal,” the motion says.

But on Friday the university’s Board of Trustees decided to take “no action” on the motion, according to a board statement.

The Pennsylvania university’s 1988 graduating class voted to invite Trump to speak at commencement, and it was standard practice to grant the speaker an honorary degree, Lori Friedman, the university’s director of media relations, explained in an email.

In January, when faculty members were returning from winter break, Trump reportedly asked why American policies protected immigrants from countries like El Salvador and Haiti, using a vulgar, four-letter word to describe those nations. Though unsuccessful petitions circulated in 2016 and 2017 to revoke Trump’s degree, the new comments moved faculty members to draft a new motion for the Board of Trustees to consider, said Michael L. Raposa, a religion-studies professor and one of three authors of the motion.

In an email he told a group of colleagues that faculty members should not be bystanders to the comments and behavior, and the idea for the motion quickly developed, he said.

Unlike the previous two petitions, this one came directly from the faculty, said Douglas M. Mahony, an associate professor of management and chair of a faculty steering committee.

Peter K. Zeitler, a professor of earth and environmental sciences and another co-author of the motion, said he questioned how students and colleagues would react if faculty members didn’t speak out about the statements. “It comes down to the bystander argument,” Zeitler said. “This has happened, and we can say, ‘OK, awkward,’ or we can simply make a statement.”

3 Pages of Offense

And that statement was clear. About 82 percent of faculty members who voted approved the motion to ask the Board of Trustees to rescind the degree, according to an email announcing the results of the electronic ballot. About 14 percent voted no, and 76 percent of eligible voters participated, so the yes votes amounted to nearly two-thirds of the faculty.

Anne Meltzer, a professor of earth and environmental sciences and another co-author of the motion, said that it also served to state the faculty’s values. Meltzer spent time documenting Trump’s statements in three pages of bullet points filled with racist and sexist comments and four-letter insults.

“We thought, ‘Well, these are statements in the public domain,’” Meltzer said. “They don’t adhere to our institutional core values, and you know they don’t help respectful discourse on issues that people will disagree about.”

The motion’s authors said they wanted to emphasize that it wasn’t about politics but about Trump’s statements, which speak for themselves.

Meltzer said she hoped the motion also sparked talk about what a Lehigh honorary degree means. Dozens of colleges and universities have contemplated that question, most recently when allegations of sexual assault were made against Bill Cosby. But the issue has flared up again amid the #MeToo movement.

An honorary degree is ultimately a symbolic gesture, Raposa said. But that symbolism is still important. “I’m a professor of religion studies, and I believe that symbolism really matters. It’s really powerful,” Raposa said. “The words we use in our speech and the symbols that universities consider significant — that’s important.”

And in accepting an honorary degree, a recipient becomes a member of the Lehigh community, and with that comes responsibility, Zeitler said.

In its statement on Friday the board said it had previously discussed revoking Trump’s degree and stood by those past deliberations.

“During the meeting of the board today, having previously considered a petition with respect to the honorary degree, the board reaffirmed the prior decision to take no action,” the statement said.

In an October 2017 statement the board cited its “commitment” to free speech in saying it had decided to take “no action” on an earlier petition to rescind Trump’s degree. The trustees also said they had “engaged in lengthy, full, and robust discussions” about the petition.

Speaking before the board’s Friday decision, Zeitler said that if the trustees rejected the petition, they should meet with faculty members about it.

The motion directly calls for that. “If the Board of Trustees decides to take no action, we request an explanation of how these statements square with our values and the principles of our equitable community, and are consistent with the character and high standards expected of honorees,” the motion says.

“It’s easy to feel like, ‘Well, I can’t have an impact, I’m one person, or I don’t adhere to this, but I myself am not saying these things,’” Meltzer said. “But when you stay silent, that’s an issue in the academy.”

Fernanda Zamudio-Suaréz is a breaking-news reporter. Follow her on Twitter @FernandaZamudio, or email her at fzamudiosuarez@chronicle.com.