Just the other day I got this information – and I congratulate Oxford University for it; perhaps this will be the only congratulations they will receive. In England, as in every country, there are conventions. Every prime minister in England conventionally gets an honorary doctorate from Oxford. This time – this is unprecedented in the whole history of England – Oxford university has decided not to give the degree to Margaret Thatcher. I congratulate them, because this is how every university in the whole world should act.
Of course the reason why they have stopped is not very great, but that is irrelevant. At least they have shown enough courage. And Margaret Thatcher will also be an historical person because no prime minister of England has gone without an honorary doctorate from Oxford. The reason they decided this was that she had cut the budget for Oxford university, particularly for research in literature. The reason is not very great, but still it is significant. A woman who thinks that literature does not deserve any research certainly does not deserve any doctorate from the university.
I would like all the universities of the world to think again; just don’t go on conventionally honoring stupid, idiotic politicians with doctorates. In this way you are simply insulting yourself. In this way you are degrading the status of education.
On the contrary, I would like all the universities – first of just one state – to call a convention of all the vice-chancellors and the eminent professors; of the eminent intelligentsia who may not be part of the university: painters, artists, poets, dancers, actors, musicians. It would include all kinds of people who have attained a certain eminence and have shown their caliber – excluding politicians completely.
All the Nobel prize-winners should be invited – excluding the politicians again, because within these past few years a few politicians have managed to get Nobel prizes, and this has degraded the value of the Nobel prize.
It has not added any value to the politician; he still remains in the gutter, and he will remain in the gutter because that’s where he belongs. He cannot live out of the gutter – he would die. And if you give him a Nobel prize he will drag the Nobel prize also into the gutter: of course wherever he lives he is going to take the Nobel prize, doctorates, and all kinds of degrees with him.
Every state should call a convention of all the intelligentsia who are part of the universities or not part of the universities – writers, novelists, all dimensions of talents – and they should choose a delegation for the national convention. So from all the states a national convention meets and goes into details of how the meritocracy can work.
From the national candidates there can be an international convention of all the universities of the world and the intelligentsia. This would be the first of its kind because never has the whole intelligentsia of the world come together to decide the fate of humanity.
They should write the first constitution of the world. It will not be American, it will not be Indian, it will not be Chinese – it is going to be simply the constitution of the whole of humanity. There is no need for different kinds of laws. There is no need all human beings need the same kind of laws.