The push for honorary degrees followed a similar path as the movement for Japanese reparations in the 1970s and 1980s, and represents another key point in rectifying past wrongs.

Honorary degrees are to universities what reparations were to the federal government: an opportunity to acknowledge and atone for the role the institutions played in violating the rights of a marginalized community. During internment, the Issei lost property and livelihood, whereas many Nisei had their education interrupted or ended. Reparations are a symbolic way to address the former, whereas honorary degrees are a symbolic way to address the latter.

The importance of honorary degrees to universities generally indicates the importance of conferring honorary degrees to Nisei students specifically. Honorary degrees are a good way to measure the general values of universities conferring them. They offer for universities a way to recognize achievements and individuals important to their community, but also to entice celebrity and media attention, encourage donors, and improve the reputation of the institution. Because of those goals, the decision to confer honorary degrees to Nisei students not only acts as a symbolic gesture for the students themselves, but also as a public statement of a university’s stance on Japanese internment and the marginalization of their students.


For those reasons, Japanese activists and their allies formed coalitions and lobbied the California government to pass legislation conferring honorary degrees to Nisei students at California colleges when internment began. As with the organizing efforts for reparations, Japanese activists worked with Japanese lawmakers. In October 2009, California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger signed AB 37 into law. The bill required CSUs and community colleges to issue honorary degrees to Nisei students whose studies had been interrupted by internment. The degrees had to be given to both students still alive and posthumously to those who were no longer alive. The UCs and private schools were encouraged to issue honorary degrees as well, though they were not required to. Within a year of AB 37 going into effect, every community college, CSU, and UC, along with several private schools, had issued honorary degrees to their former Nisei students, or to their families if the Nisei student had already passed away. For more information on activism for honorary degrees at USC, click here.



Sources:
Karen W. Arenson, Recognizing Achievement, Adding Glitz, NY Times (May 31, 1999), https://www.nytimes.com/1999/05/31/nyregion/recognizing-achievement-adding-glitz.html?pagewanted=1.

Assem. Bill 37, 2009-2010 Reg. Sess., ch. 7, 2009 Cal. Stat., https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient.xhtml?bill_id=200920100AB37.

UC Honorary Degrees, https://honorary.universityofcalifornia.edu/htmlversion.html.

The CSU Nisei Diploma Project, The California State University, https://www2.calstate.edu/impact-of-the-csu/alumni/Honorary-Degrees/Nisei-Diploma-Project