The Dilemma of a Queen & her Honorary Doctorate

Queen & The Dilemma of Honorifics

July 30, 2005, The Star, page 16

Honorary doctorate for Queen

The Raja Permaisuri Agong Tuanku Fauziah Tengku Abdul Rashid will be conferred an Honorary Doctorate of Law from USM on Aug 8. The Queen is also the USM Chancellor.


The star.com.my News, July 27, 2005

Honorific titles not recognised

BY GAVIN GOMEZ

Individuals conferred honorary doctorates have been barred from using the title “Dr”. Higher Education Minister Datuk Dr Shafie Mohd Salleh said the Cabinet made the decision as some with such honorific titles had misled the people. “The Government has decided that honorary doctorates cannot be used (as titles),” he told reporters after opening the National Conference on Tertiary Education organised by Universiti Teknologi Mara (UiTM) here yesterday. Dr Shafie, a PhD holder said, the public could not distinguish the difference between a genuine PhD and an honorific doctorate award, the Government had decided not to recognise the honorary awards.

A senior ministry official said there was “nothing legally wrong” in using the title. “Some individuals with honorary doctorates put their “Dr” title in parenthesis. This is more of an ethical issue,” he said.

COMMENTS:

What is Dr. Shafie trying to tell us? That the public cannot distinguish his doctorate with those honorary ones?

Mahathir has a doctorate in medicine, tens of honorary doctorates from almost all Malaysian Universities, plus Japanese Universities, and many others ...

The Queen is going to get her honorary doctorate, and according to Dr. Shafie, she cannot put that title in parenthesis, if she so desires?

If that's the case, the government should ban all universities from granting these honorary doctorates; and maybe, substitute it with a Datuk Maharaja, Tan Suriya, or Tun-academia ...

Anyway, we have millions of Datuks and Datuk Seri, Tan Sri, JP, etc, etc such that we have been rubbing shoulders with them almost everyday at Pasar Malam, Coffee shops, Petaling Street, Massage Parlour, Karaokes, hawker centers......

see the nice pic below....


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