An excessive deference to figures in authority and an unhealthy obsession with titles, especially academic ones, are traits not necessarily confined to the Caribbean.
German education minister Annette Schavan resigned last week, after Düsseldorf’s Heinrich Heine University found her guilty of plagiarism and stripped her of her doctorate. Ms Schavan maintains that she did no wrong and has vowed to clear her name. She is, however, the second member of Chancellor Angela Merkel’s government to resign over such a scandal, following in the footsteps of defence minister Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg, who stepped down in 2011, after he was also found to have plagiarised large parts of his doctoral thesis.
According to a BBC report on Ms Schavan’s resignation, “These cases occur in Germany partly because of the German obsession with titles. German politicians take them very seriously, seeing them as a mark of intellectual respectability. It is not uncommon, for example, for a professor with two doctorates to expect to be called ‘Professor, Doctor, Doctor.’”
Now, there may be more than a hint of schadenfreude in the BBC’s tone at the discomfiture of the German government and not a little enjoyment at the prospect of making fun of the Germans – almost a national sport in Britain – but the reporter in question seemed ironically unaware of his own country’s enduring love affair with rank and title. The silliness does not end there though.
The Italians are so status conscious that almost anyone holding a university degree can be addressed as ‘Dottore.’ Latin Americans suddenly acquire the title ‘Doctor’ when they become lawyers or senior civil servants. And, in the Caribbean, there is a tendency to address the recipients of honorary doctorates mistakenly as ‘Doctor’ in spite of the honorary nature of the award. Such practices can perhaps be attributed to cultural norms or changes in societal attitudes over time, whether born of ignorance or genuine admiration for the accomplishments of the worthies amongst us.
The recent German examples, however, in spite of the fact that the degrees were genuine at the time of being awarded, should serve as a warning that a high academic title alone is no guarantee of personal achievement or, indeed, integrity. Nor should we, for that matter, take anyone’s curriculum vitae at face value.
Only on Monday, the St Lucia Star reminded readers of a disgraced former minister in the Kenny Anthony administration elected in 1997 and 2001, who had made much of his having a PhD in his election campaigns and during his time in office, until exposed as a fraud and forced to resign in tears on national television.
In Trinidad and Tobago, in 2011, a government minister was reported by the Guardian newspaper as having got his doctorate “by distance education from an institution incorporated in Hawaii and closed down by the US authorities” in 2004. Nothing wrong with distance education but such unaccredited institutions are known as degree mills and are seemingly more prevalent nowadays in the age of the Internet.
Public exposure, however, was not sufficient to warrant the gentleman considering his position. It is unclear why he, the holder of a first class honours degree from the University of the West Indies, would have felt the need to acquire a doctorate in this manner, but perhaps he was simply in a hurry to attain intellectual respectability in a competitive, status-conscious and generally unquestioning environment.
This attitude in the twin-island republic probably explains the behaviour of one Hafizool Mohammed, a member of the commission of enquiry into the 1990 coup attempt in that country, who according to the Guardian, “holds a doctorate of science from the unaccredited Atlantic International University,” another degree mill. To date, the soi disant doctor has refused to step down from the commission and has gone so far as to explain other discrepancies on his CV as mere “errors.”
Such examples serve to remind us in the Caribbean that it behoves us all to be more discerning, even as public institutions should be more rigorous in exercising due diligence, particularly with regard to persons elected or appointed to high public office, who may have doctored their CVs – if you will excuse the pun – in pursuit of intellectual respectability.
