CMU to revoke honorary degree awarded to Cosby

Pitt also among schools to do so

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

Carnegie Mellon University said late Thursday it has decided to revoke an honorary degree awarded in 2007 to entertainer Bill Cosby, confirming its move in a brief statement hours after his conviction outside Philadelphia on sexual assault charges.

The university previously said the matter was being examined on campus but opted for more than two years not to join the growing ranks of colleges and universities that earlier had decided to pull back such degrees as Mr. Cosby stood accused but not convicted.

The two-paragraph statement from Carnegie Mellon read, in part:

“Carnegie Mellon University has long had a clear and unwavering commitment: The university will not tolerate sexual violence, intimate partner violence, stalking or sexual harassment. These acts are against the law and violate our core values.

“In order to fulfill that commitment and in light of Bill Cosby’s criminal conviction for aggravated indecent assault, Carnegie Mellon University has decided to revoke an honorary degree it awarded to Mr. Cosby.”

Carnegie Mellon first confirmed in fall 2015 that it was revisiting the award but had not made a decision.

In November of that year, the University of Pittsburgh announced that it was stripping an honorary degree that Pitt had awarded to Mr. Cosby at the school’s Johnstown commencement in 2002.

It said it did so after a campus honorary degree committee unanimously recommended the action.

The panel found that “certain actions on Mr. Cosby’s part — unknown to the public at the time and subsequently admitted by him — were in conflict with the stated basis for awarding the degree and inconsistent with the core values and principles of the University,” Pitt said.

Mr. Cosby at the time had not been charged with a crime.

The month before Pitt’s announcement, the publication Inside Higher Ed examined the question of whether to revoke or not and included a list that already was growing nationally of schools that had revoked degrees were considering it.

At Carnegie Mellon, Mr. Cosby received an honorary doctorate of humane letters in 2007, the same year he gave the school’s commencement address.