Temple University on Friday rescinded an honorary doctorate it had awarded to Bill Cosby, a longtime fund-raiser and graduate of the Philadelphia school, where years later he met the victim of the sexual assault that resulted in his conviction this week.
Temple joined at least three other major US universities that have taken back honorary degrees since Thursday’s verdict, reflecting a broader reappraisal of the 80-year-old comedian’s place in American culture.
The announcement by Temple followed withdrawals by Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Notre Dame in South Bend, Indiana, and Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh. All of the schools embraced Cosby years ago when he was celebrated as a beloved black comedian who had transcended racial divides to become “America’s Dad.” Before his conviction in a Pennsylvania court, at least 15 schools had withdrawn honours from Cosby, as dozens of women went public with accusations of sexual assault, some of them dating to the 1960s.
“In 1991, based on his career achievements, Temple awarded an honorary degree to William Cosby,” the school said in a statement on Friday. “Today the Temple University Board of Trustees has accepted the recommendation of the University to rescind the honorary degree.”
As a Temple trustee, Cosby first met Andrea Constand, at the time a university employee that he would drug and sexually assault in 2004 at his nearby home, 14 years before his conviction for the crime.
Constand was an administrator of the Temple women’s basketball team, and Cosby, a Philadelphia native who maintained close ties to the university as one of its most prominent alumni, befriended her and invited her to dinners.
The University of Massachusetts, where the one-time high school dropout earned a doctorate in education, cut ties with Cosby in 2014.
Boston College, in contrast, said its policy was not to rescind honorary degrees, and would not make an exception for Cosby despite his conviction, the Boston Globe reported on Friday.
A question mark also hovers over the presence of the actor-comedian at the National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington. Before his conviction, the museum had already grappled with how best to highlight Cosby’s impact on the culture while acknowledging the accusations against him.
The museum said on Friday at least two Cosby-related items will remain on display: a comic book from the 1960s Cosby series I Spy and a cover from Cosby’s 1964 comedy album I Started Out as a Child. But museum director Lonnie Bunch and curators will review and possibly change the display’s label, which now reads: “In recent years, revelations about alleged sexual misconduct have cast a shadow over Cosby’s entertainment career and severely damaged his reputation.” The museum, which opened in 2016, had initially decided against explaining Cosby’s legal problems in the exhibits but reversed course before its public opening and mentioned the allegations of sexual assault in the display material.
“This is not an exhibition that ‘honours or celebrates’ Bill Cosby but one that acknowledges his role, among many others, in American entertainment,” Lonnie Bunch, the museum’s founding director, said in 2016.
The Cosby Show, the sitcom that cemented Cosby’s standing as one of the country’s best-loved stars, already has become harder to find. After the guilty verdict, the Bounce television channel said it would pull reruns of the show from its schedules, Deadline Hollywood reported.
Wesley Morris, a critic for the New York Times, wrote on Thursday that Cosby had been a role model for a generation of young black men like him.
“Mr. Cosby told lots of jokes,” he said. “This was his sickest one.”
