Suu Kyi could lose honorary doctorate
Carleton U’s senate to discuss degree on Friday
OTTAWA • After Canada made international headlines by revoking the honourary citizenship it had bestowed on Myanmar’s Aung San Suu Kyi, at least one Canadian university is considering whether to strip her of an honorary doctorate.
Carleton University’s senate will consider the matter at a committee meeting this Friday. The three other Canadian schools that have awarded Suu Kyi an honorary law degree — the University of Toronto, Queen’s University and Memorial University — say they have no such plans.
Questions in Canada over what to do about Suu Kyi’s honours come amid a global reconsideration of the former human rights icon. As independent senator Ratna Omidvar explained it in the federal Senate on Tuesday, after moving to revoke Suu Kyi’s honorary citizenship: “She has been complicit in stripping the citizenship and security of thousands of Rohingya, which has led to their flight, their murder, their rapes and their current deplorable situation. It is an appropriate message to send to her, to Myanmar and to the world.”
The de facto political leader of Myanmar has not publicly denounced the actions of its military, which also holds considerable power within the country’s leadership structure. Hundreds of thousands of people from its Muslim minority population, concentrated in the Rakhine state, have fled to refugee camps in neighbouring Bangladesh due to violence. The UN recently completed a factfinding mission that found overwhelming evidence of systematic ethnic cleansing.
“Aung San Suu Kyi was awarded an honorary doctorate by Carleton in 2011. The citation noted her distinguished contribution to people throughout the world striving to attain democracy, human rights and ethnic conciliation by peaceful means,” said Steven Reid, a spokesman for the Ottawa university. “The committee will deliberate the issue and consider whether or not to make a recommendation to the university’s senate on revoking the degree.”
Reid said Carleton has developed a policy on revoking honorary doctorates, which states that such a move can be made “in rare and exceptional circumstances, where the behaviour of an individual has caused significant concern.” The university has already taken such action in one case by revoking the honorary degree of Norman Barwin, an Ottawa doctor embroiled in a class-action lawsuit involving 150 former patients who allege malpractice at his former fertility climate, including in some cases inseminating women with his own sperm.
Three other Canadian universities had previously honoured Suu Kyi, lionized until the past few years for her efforts to bring democratic reform to her country. She was awarded an honorary doctorate of laws by the University of Toronto in 1993; by Queen’s University in 1995; and by Memorial University in 2004.
Elizabeth Church, a spokeswoman for the U of T, said the university “does not have a process for reviewing or revoking honorary degrees,” but “we are monitoring the events in this case.”
The university secretary and corporate counsel at Queen’s, Lon Knox, said in a statement the Kingston, Ont. university has never rescinded an honorary degree, and there is no process for it. “The selection of candidates for honorary degrees occurs with careful thought and review,” Knox said. “Equal care and appreciation of any compelling evidence and a full appreciation of the facts would need to be reviewed by the Honorary Degrees Committee of the senate before any potential revocation recommendation would be made.”
David Sorensen, a spokesman for Memorial University in Newfoundland, said the school likewise hasn’t revoked an honorary degree and doesn’t have a process to do so. “It’s possible that this discussion could be taking place at the senate committee level, but until it comes to the floor, it’s not a public discussion,” he said.
Organizations around the world are facing pressure to denounce Suu Kyi. The head of the Nobel Foundation, Lars Heikensten, told media on Tuesday that she would not be stripped of her Nobel Peace Prize, which was awarded in 1991. However, in March the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum rescinded its Elie Wiesel Award, which had been granted to Suu Kyi in 2012. And in November last year the city councils of Glasgow, Sheffield, and Oxford, in the United Kingdom, stripped Suu Kyi of their respective “freedom of the city” awards. Dublin followed suit in December, and Edinburgh this August.
The House of Commons had passed a unanimous motion from Bloc Québécois MP Gabriel Ste-Marie revoking Suu Kyi’s honorary citizenship last week, an honour that is usually awarded by both houses of Parliament. The Senate followed suit on Tuesday but not without the requisite grumbling about simply rubber-stamping a House decision.
Before unanimous consent for Omidvar’s motion was received Tuesday another independent senator, Marilou McPhedran, tried amending it. “The Senate need not be an echo chamber to the other place,” she said, calling the text of Omidvar’s motion, which did echo the House’s endorsement of the UN factfinding mission, “weak.”
There were a few testy exchanges. “I am sure there is another chapter to be written in this book sometime, and I’m sure, Senator McPhedran, you will have a hand in writing that chapter,” Omidvar said at one point, before getting backup from Sen. Mike Duffy. Then the amendment was defeated and the motion passed, putting both houses of Parliament on the same page and formalizing the first-ever revocation of Canadian honorary citizenship.