Honorary Degree for depriving Habeus Corpus?

Now I get to something serious. And yes, I'm issuing a commentary on a situation six hours away from me.

This weekend John Ashcroft, formerly Governor of Missouri (1985-1993) and later U.S. Attorney General (2001-2005), will address the graduating Class of 2009 at Truman State University, my alma mater. And boy are members of the faculty and student body less than thrilled. Not only will Ashcroft address many of my one-time classmates, but he will receive an honorary degree from the University. Also receiving honorary degrees from the University will be former University president Charles McClain and the late Mel Carnahan, who succeeded Ashcroft as governor and posthumously defeated him for U.S. Senate in 2000.

Last week, the University's chapter of the American Association for University Professors hosted a forum aimed at discussing the virtue of Ashcroft receiving an honorary degree. Most present, according to the Index article covering the forum, expressed disapproval of Ashcroft receiving the degree, citing his role in the prior Administration with regards to the detainment and treatment of suspected terrorists. Also bashed was the lack of faculty and student input into the commencement speaker selection and subsequent decision to confer honorary degrees, leaving it in the hands of Truman's Board of Governors.

The efforts to express the disapproval of Ashcroft's presence this weekend strike me as disingenuine. For starters, when looking at the three honorees of these degrees, it's apparent that the University wants to recognize top figures who facilitated the conversion of Northeast Missouri State University, a regional school largely vacant on the weekends with the average trip to a student's hometown just over an hour, to Truman State University, the state's public liberal arts and sciences university, with the state's most rigorous coursework standard. Ashcroft was governor in 1985 when he signed the bill that changed the school's mission. McClain was president of the University when Ashcroft signed this bill. Carnahan was governor in 1995 when he signed the bill changing the school's name. Jack Magruder, who graduated from the University in 1957, was president when Carnahan signed this bill.

Had the bill Ashcroft signed not come into law, most of the professors and students who are protesting Ashcroft's presence in Kirksville this weekend would probably be at different schools. (Seeing as I'm a fourth-generation alumnus, I probably would have still attended school there, but that's beside the point.) Now granted, someone else could have signed it as governor, and a similar bill passed during a different session of the General Assembly could have done the trick, but the fact remains that Ashcroft signed the particular bill that changed the University's mission. And he happened to be elected to a second term as governor, one full term in the U.S. Senate, and George W. Bush's Attorney General when 9/11 happened.

While I'm publicly making otherwise baseless speculations, I would fathom to guess that most people disapproving of Ashcroft's presence might also be opposed to the death penalty. It is true that Ashcroft was governor when the death penalty resumed in Missouri, shortly upon the start of his second term. (All figures listed here are from missourideathrow.com, a blog maintained by the Missourinet.) During this term, seven men were executed by lethal injection. During the years Mel Carnahan served as governor, 37 men were executed, and a 38th convicted man just one month after Carnahan's fatal plane crash. This amounts to almost five executions per year during Carnahan's tenure. In fact, 39 people (including one woman in 1953) were executed in Missouri between the years of 1937 and 1965, when the gas chamber was the state's standard.

During Carnahan's terms as governor, Missouri trailed only Texas and Virginia in number of executions, a point that was reportedly brought to his attention when Pope John Paul II visited St. Louis in January 1999. If that point was brought up by His Holiness, it didn't last long, as the State's Supreme Court scheduled an execution the day after JP2 returned to the Vatican, which was then carried out on 24 February. More stunning is that 1999 was the busiest year for the execution chamber in Potosi, with nine executions that year. Currently, Missouri has the fifth most active execution chamber since 1976, trailing Oklahoma and Florida along with Texas and Virginia.

For the record, let me stress that I am not advocating the abolition of the death penalty in Missouri; I am illustrating a critical point here. Carnahan could have prevented these executions by granting clemencies, much as Ashcroft could have curtailed or prevented subjecting suspected terrorists to torture, extraordinary rendition, indefinite detainment, etc. And yet, even as Missouri is about to execute its first inmate in 3½ years, all the disagreements concern Ashcroft receiving an honorary degree. If the University community were to prevail in Ashcroft not receiving such an honor, should they not do the same to the late Carnahan, under whose watch Missouri proliferated the practice of a judicial sentence Amnesty International and most of the developed world view as barbaric? If arguments suggest that the University's leadership issuing this diploma to Ashcroft is tantamount to condoning his role in detaining suspected terrorists, would that not also mean that the University supports the death penalty in Missouri?

However, these honorary diplomas mean one thing and only one thing: recognition of service to the University. This is the second time in the University's history that honorary degrees are being conferred; the first was in 2002 when Harry Truman was posthumously awarded a diploma. I seriously doubt that the Board of Governors or interim president Darrell Krueger intend to, nor wish to, convey a sense of support for the actions and policies of Ashcroft or Carnahan outside their role in transforming the University from a regional commuter campus into the state's only highly selective public university. A role Ken Rothman or Bill Webster's successor could have fulfilled had they won the elections prior to the respective bills being signed.

So I suggest one simple thing to everyone in attendance: just hear the guy speak. Clap, shout, whoop, etc. when a graduate receives his/her case that will eventually hold his/her diploma. And let the politics surrounding Ashcroft and Carnahan stay outside Stokes Stadium (or Pershing Arena if the field's not suitable for the ceremonies), provided Ashcroft and Carnahan's representative do the same.

And at the very least, the row raised the past month should serve as a springboard for the University to include student and faculty input in commencement speakers. Considering that prior commencement speakers for the spring ceremonies include the guy who ran several Westlake ACE hardware stores (nothing against him, but not even I can remember his name!), allowing a joint student/faculty committee to field names from the University community and suggest the best options to the Board of Governors could mitigate some of the concerns raised, provided their suggestions aren't controversial in nature.

On a lighter note, at least the Class of 2009 have a significant political figure speaking to them. My commencement speaker was alumna Linda Miller, who broke through several glass ceilings at Ford Motor Company. And we didn't get our diplomas until two weeks later in the mail. Maybe just to placate the faculty, Ashcroft ought to wait two weeks for his honorary diploma to arrive in the mail.