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Published 5 March 2021
A fortnight ago, the news broke that Distinguished Humanities Scholar of the University of Texas, Austin, Prof. Toyin Falola, has been awarded a Doctor of Letters degree by the Postgraduate School of the University of Ibadan. Were the latest academic memento an honorary degree, it would have caused little or no stir, especially as the recipient is already bedecked with laurels of recognition from across the globe. However, the statement posted online made clear that this is an earned degree being awarded by the University of Ibadan for the first time.
A Doctor of Letters can be described simply, as a Higher Doctorate degree, patterned in the Anglophone University tradition on the Oxford University, England’s prototype. Initially called the ‘Doctor of Literature’ at Oxford, the degree became known by the broader and more significant ‘Doctor of Letters’; some countries apply the name, ‘Doctor of Humane Letters’ to emphasise the Province of the Humanities. When you leaf through the regulations empowering the Senate to award higher doctorates, they specify, in the case of Oxford, for example, that the recipient of the degree possesses intellectual output of the highest quality, substantial in scale and in contribution to knowledge. Furthermore, such contributions must have been kept up over a period of time, contain as well as demonstrate impact on the work of other scholars in the discipline. Obviously, this is not a degree to be awarded flippantly, accidentally or as an afterthought, as only a tiny proportion of scholars meet the rigorous criteria. Perhaps, this is why Ibadan, evidently one of our best institutions of learning with an appreciable niche in postgraduate education, took its time to make such a seminal award. Checking through the records, it was discovered that the cognate degree of Doctor of Science in 2019 was awarded by Ibadan to the renowned and endowed Professor of Medicine and translational research at the University of Tennesse, Health Science Centre, Memphis, Tennese, Prof. Samuel Dagogo Jack.