KINGSTON, ONT.

Maybe some day an institution of higher learning will give me an honorary degree to fill that blank space on the wall where an earned degree should be hanging. Never graduated, never got it, too busy already working as a teenage sports writer at the Star. And, okay, flunking Economics 101 three years in a row, then twice more at night school.

Couldn’t wrap my brain around the concept, as I tried explaining to the editor who recently dispatched me to Greece to write about that country’s debt crisis — which required an Economics for Dummies crash course, self-administered, thus proving yet again that reporters need hardly have any knowledge about the subjects they’re covering. In faking it, I have a PhD.

Degree honoris causa — “for the sake of honour’’ — is the formal description of doctorates invested by universities on an often eclectic assortment of recipients, a practice dating back to the Middle Ages in England.

William Shatner was thus recognized by McGill in Montreal, the octogenarian’s hometown, in June. His advice to students: “Don’t be afraid of making an ass of yourself. I do it all the time and look what I got.”

One needn’t actually have attended the school doing the awarding, merely approved for investiture by internal committees, perhaps for lifetime achievements. Sometimes candidates seem to have been chosen simply for their celebrity or a local connection, an exercise in quid pro quo (see, I can talk Latin, too) that draws a whiff of associated panache.

Those so recognized run the gamut from Samuel Johnson (dropped out of Oxford because of financial hardship) to Hunter S. Thompson and Stephen Colbert. They have the right to call themselves Doctor — some insist on it — though scholastic honorifics are not used in, say, the Star.

Dolly Parton got hers from the University of Tennessee. The tyrant Robert Mugabe was inexplicably deemed worthy by the University of Massachusetts, Jack Nicholson from Brown and Mike Tyson from Central State University in Ohio. Even Kermit the Frog copped one from Southampton College. This year, Harvard settled a doctorate of music on Placido Domingo.

So, merit is a fluid principle.

Why not, then, Don Cherry?

At least the provocative TV personality and former NHL coach has bona fides as stauncher supporter of the Canadian military, a true friend to soldiers and sailors and airmen (and airwomen, lest anyone accuse me of being sexist). It was the Royal Military College (RMC) that had voted to grant homeboy Cherry an honorary doctorate, surely a tickling distinction for someone who sounds like he dropped out of school in Grade 9.

But Cherry, as he confirmed on Hockey Night in Canada over the weekend, has decided to decline the honour, citing concern that the convocation ceremony would turn into a three-ring circus should it proceed, deflecting attention from the two other individuals selected by the RMC.

I’m not a Cherry fan, or un-fan for that matter. But I do know that he’s beloved by troops, visited them in Afghanistan, has significant ties to the college — his mother worked there — and can boast a grandfather who enlisted with the Canadian Expeditionary Forces, wounded at Vimy Ridge in 1917. He is, undoubtedly, a patriot.

That should have been good enough and, indeed, still is despite the exaggerated objections of one (1) faculty member.

French professor Catherine Lord criticized the decision to honour Cherry in an open letter to the local newspaper as well as other media outlets. Wrote Lord: “On many occasions, he publicly expressed his contempt for many groups of the Canadian population, notably for the French-speaking Canadians, for the (lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgendered) community and for the immigrants.’’

A devotee of Coach’s Corner I am not. But I’m fairly sure that, if Cherry had waxed bumptious about gays, transgendered, etc., or immigrants, I would have heard or read about it. Somebody’s connecting dots that simply aren’t there. And, while Cherry has certainly been less than flattering about some francophone and foreign hockey players — ridiculing the former for wearing face shields and the latter for their alleged soft, Euro-style — these allegations, however narrow-minded, relate to narrow observations about the game, views shared by a whole lot of North American fans.

If Cherry’s opinions are so radical and objectionable, then he shouldn’t be provided a platform on the CBC, the quantifiably left-leaning national broadcaster. But Cherry is nearly as much of a draw as hockey itself, clearly. The network turns itself inside-out justifying his continuing bully platform.

Cherry is catnip for a coterie of usual suspects who can’t abide free speech imperatives, a constituency overly represented on college campuses. If unconventional thinking can’t be tolerated in our universities, then where? I detest the Apartheid Week nonsense that annually contaminates campuses with anti-Semitism but I would never condone shutting them up or withholding tributes for their chosen demagogues.

To its credit, RMC has brushed off Lord’s whinge (which purportedly is shared by some other faculty members). Lord is entitled to her opinion, as further stated: “RMC is increasingly representative of the diverse society in which we live. RMC is a strong and unifying place; it makes Canadians proud and attracts year after year dynamic and intelligent young adults. These students certainly feel Canadians first, regardless of their spiritual beliefs, their political allegiance, their sexual orientation, their mother tongue or their cultural background.’’

Well, bully for RMC. But none of that is remotely undermined by giving Cherry a doctorate. Go ahead, ask some of those students. So who’s really being the bigoted, illiberal harpy here?

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Take the degree, Mr. C.

If only because so we can see you in that floppy velvet hoodie.

Rosie DiManno usually appears Monday, Wednesday, Friday and Saturday.

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