Did Celine deserve an honorary doctorate? Dave Gordon - Monday, 25 August, 2008 (2442 views, Comment on this article)

 Honorary doctorates used to be considered symbolic accolades for one’s scholarly contributions, innovations, and oeuvre of literary contributions. Laval University has added new criteria: Put out a collection of CDs and have a few top 40 hits.   

Pop diva Celine Dion received an honorary doctorate from Laval University last week, coinciding with Quebec’s 400th anniversary celebrations.

The National Post printed the announcement on Friday, August 22 (A6), where a story about Dr. Robert Ouellet, the new director of the Canadian Medical Association, was also featured on the same page.

He was one of the first doctors in Canada to successfully implement a for-profit plan in the public system, delivering CT scans and MRIs to paying patients at five Montreal-area clinics since 1987. It was a fascinating juxtaposition. If anyone deserves additional honors, it is this man.

Dion, most known as the singer of the Titanic movie theme song, might represent the limitless opportunities open to those who succeed at the American commercial pop music scene, but there is nothing doctoral about her music, legacy, or career. Rather, if there is any “educational” merit to the songs she is supplied to sing, it is learning what formulaic and saccharine pap the masses will ingest.

Denis Briere, the university’s rector, praised her as “an exceptional artist and an outstanding ambassador for Quebec. You are an inspiration for every one of us and for all of our students.”
She is hardly an example for university students at Laval University to look up to. Hard work and getting good grades might get you a real doctorate, but anything goes, apparently, for an honorary one.

This Celine Dion stunt had its desired effect for Laval University: to make headlines. There would otherwise be a plethora of more qualified choices.

There are plenty of Quebec born and raised household names whose work would never be associated with the likes of Dion’s ephemera; Leonard Cohen, to name one. It may not have the “glam” factor if Romeo Dallaire, UN peacekeeper in Rwanda, was honored. Or any of the Montreal Bronfmans, for their business acumen and philanthropy. There’d be yawns if an honorary doctorate were bestowed upon Rudy Marcus, from Quebec, who won the Nobel for chemistry.

But how about any of three living Prime Ministers from Quebec? Or Montrealer Moses Znaimer, who built a thriving media empire?

If a pop culture ‘icon’ is what they were looking for, I’d have even elected William Shatner, forty five year veteran of acting, author of 25 books, and who recently created the William Shatner/Jewish National Fund Therapeutic Riding Consortium Endowment for Israel. This makes Celine Dion, at age 40, look like she’s on Tiny Talent Time. How low can the bar go?

Give her a “Special Achievement Award.” Give her a “Recognition of Great Accomplishment” award. But an honorary doctorate? No doubt it takes work to record songs in a studio, perform for two hours nightly warbling off the tourist strip in Las Vegas, and come up with a concept for a restaurant, called Nickels, with seventeen locations across La Belle Province.

But, her fame and fortune, to be sure, is really attributable to the good folks at Sony records, who make the pretty CD packages, write the songs, promote her shows, and make the prudent business decisions that make her her millions.

When Hollywood actress Jodie Foster gave a commencement speech at University of Pennsylvania two years ago, quoting, of all people, rap star Eminem, did it solidify for me how these “pop culture icons” are elevated to heroic proportions for a whole generation. Foster received an honorary doctor of arts degree, and soon enough, I predict, these kinds of tributes will with equal frequency be accorded to winners of American Idol. The upper echelons of ‘higher learning’ have become cesspools for the worship of superficial accomplishment.

To confer such educational-based honors onto Hollywood actors and bubblegum pop singers diminishes the distinction of the honorary doctorate.

The likes of Celine Dion and Jodie Foster already have their awards for achievements within their professions. If there were as many awards shows for the medical profession as there are in the arts, doctors would never get anything done. Writer Dennis Prager said it best when he said that the famous are never important, and the important are almost never famous.

As for Dr. Robert Ouellet, from Longueuil, Quebec, who holds a real doctorate since 1970 – now you know his name and the great work he does, and that in itself is worth infinitely more than Celine Dion’s honorary doctorate.