Oxford to honour Clinton

(First Edition)

OXFORD UNIVERSITY is to offer a Degree by Diploma to the US president, Bill Clinton - an even higher honour than the honorary doctorate which dons denied to Baroness Thatcher, writes Colin Hughes.

Congregation, formed of the university's entire staff, is expected to approve the award when it next meets on 9 March. The president will join a select band of royalty and heads of state.

Mr Clinton was a Rhodes scholar at University College, Oxford, and was recently elected an honorary fellow of that college. The president, who will have to appear in person to receive the honour from Lord Jenkins of Hillhead, the university's Chancellor, attended Oxford from 1968 to 1970 when he was an anti-Vietnam war protester.

Dons turned out in their hundreds to vote down a proposal in 1985 to award Lady Thatcher an honorary doctorate. The academics' gesture - made in protest at severe cuts in university funding during the mid-Eighties - genuinely hurt her. She read for her first degree, in chemistry, at Somerville College.