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Bill Gates to Finally Receive His Harvard Degree

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the better-late-than-never dept.

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."

5 of 336 comments (clear)

  1. Good for him by delirium+of+disorder · · Score: -1, Flamebait

    Gates will join the ranks of other honorable Harvard grads:
    Theodore Kaczynski (unibomber)
    Jeffrey Skilling (corporate criminal)
    Lawrence Summers (world bank neoliberal, economic neoimperialist)
    Jack Valenti (MPAA bully)
    Henry Kissinger (war criminal)
    Robert McNamara (war criminal)
    George W. Bush (war criminal)
    Alberto Gonzales (war criminal)
    Barack Obam<i>Iran</i> (wanna be war criminal)
    Alan Dershowitz (apologist for Israel's war crimes)
    Charles Murray (right wing pseudoscientist)
    Ted "series of tubes" Stevens
    Antonin Scalia (third branch of the Republican party)

    but then again, Harvard also produced:
    Russ Feingold (the only Senator to vote against the PAT RIOT act)
    Ralph Nader (the best alternative to corporate rule we've had over the past 20 years)
    Irene Khan (Secretary General of Amnesty International)
    Samuel Adams (held a nice tea party)
    Alfred Kinsey (dared to study sex)
    James D. Watson (DNA!)
    EO Wilson (sociobiology)
    William S. Burroughs (digg the words, man)
    Marvin Minsky (managed to do something useful with AI)
    Daniel Ellsberg (exposed the Viet Nam war from the inside)
    Edward Said (tells the trust about Palestine)
    Paul Farmer (tireless humanitarian MD)
    Al Franken (makes fun of the war criminals)
    Paul Graham (hacker and painter)
    Robert Tappan Morris (hey! the worm was a neat proof of concept!)
    Helen Keller (deafblind radical iww)
    Tim O'Reilly (probably the reason you know anything about software)
    Richard Stallman (our prophet)
    Henry David Thoreau (civilly disobedient)

    and of course....
    Natalie Portman (hot grits!)

    (I'm sure I left plenty of interesting folk off either list, but I don't know everyone who went to Harvard ;-) )

    --
    ------ Take away the right to say fuck and you take away the right to say fuck the government.
    1. Re:Good for him by belmolis · · Score: 1, Flamebait

      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.

  2. The "programming whiz" ha ha ha ha by gig · · Score: 0, Flamebait

    > 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.

  3. Re:Rich man's GED by jmyers · · Score: 0, Flamebait

    "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.

  4. Sort of a slap in the face... by Etherwalk · · Score: 0, Flamebait

    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