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Bill Gates to Finally Receive His Harvard Degree
coondoggie writes "It's not like he needs it to beef up his résumé, but the world's richest college dropout finally is getting his degree. Bill Gates, chairman of Microsoft, will speak at Harvard University's commencement ceremony in June and, like all commencement speakers, will receive an honorary degree from the institution. It's hard to guess if Gates, the wealthiest person in the world and co-founder of a company that brought in $44 billion in revenue last year, cares. But the programming whiz who once dropped out of Harvard will likely feel some sense of satisfaction."
I think you've swapped Dershowitz and Said. Said's academic claim to fame was his stupid book on Orientalism, which revealed his ignorance of the history and scholarship of the Arab world. His political claim to fame was his defense of terrorism and bigotry. Dershowitz on the other hand is a distinguished civil libertarian as well as one who has told the truth about Arab bigotry and terrorism and has defended the only free, democratic country in the Middle East.
Nader is a curious case. He did indeed do some great work in exposing corporate misbehaviour, but I lost respect for him when his hopeless runs for President took votes away from the Democratic candidates that might have saved us from Bush.
> But the programming whiz who once dropped out of Harvard will likely feel some sense of satisfaction.
The "programming whiz" part of Bill Gates resume is pure padding.
"A college degree (earned, not necessarily honorary) is valuable in that it shows that you can dedicate yourself to something and accomplish it."
A college degree (or any other certification) only shows that you had X amount of time and X amount of money and are reasonably literate.
You'd think it would be sort of a slap in the face to everybody in the audience who'd actually spent four years *working* for their diplomas. Yes, Gates did all this cool stuff, but he didn't actually complete the requirements of a single major, did he? Well, maybe computer science, one would hope, in terms of how much he learned over the years. Still... a slap in the face, really.
Except, of course, that a good set of the kids at Harvard are smart enough to realize that a diploma's just a piece of paper, and I'm sure that the graduating students have already been asked to donate to the school, so they're not all caught up in the illusion that the school's above giving honorary diplomas to rich drop-outs.
"In all fairness to Mr. Mellon, it was a very big check." --Dean (of the college) Martin, Back to School