There will be no honorary degrees awarded at this year’s commencement ceremony, per University Senate Executive Committee members at Monday’s meeting. Attendees also discussed the future of the process after University alum and billionaire Shahid Khan’s second and public honorary degree denial in December 2024.
“As a reminder, until a solution is established, no honorary degrees will be awarded,” said Angela Lyons, SEC Chair and professor in ACES. “And given where we are at in the academic year, that window has now passed.”
These updates come in spite of the Senate Committee on Honorary Degrees — also known as HD — approving and forwarding at least one honorary degree candidate to the Office of the Chancellor as recently as Feb. 17.
After Khan’s second denial, then-Chancellor Robert Jones and UI System President Timothy Killeen requested the process to be reviewed. Jones told The News-Gazette in March 2025 that he paused the University’s honorary degree process. The Office of the Chancellor has not approved any of HD’s nominations since.
Both HD and the Ninth Senate Review Commission — referred to as SR9 — have submitted recommendations to the Senate in recent weeks for altering the current honorary degree process. Senators said the process has “the potential to be highly embarrassing” for nominated candidates after Khan’s 2013 nomination failure. Jones called the process “flawed” after Khan’s second denial.
Get The Daily Illini in your inbox!
In February, SR9 officially recommended two routes to the SEC for changing the honorary degree process: model A and model B. SR9’s unanimously preferred choice was model A: creating a Joint Advisory Committee on Honorary Degrees to evaluate and recommend nominees to the University of Illinois Board of Trustees in private.
Model A puts the authority to recommend candidates into the hands of the joint advisory committee. Nominees would be sent directly to JACHD as opposed to going through HD. From there, JACHD members would research, discuss and vote on the recommendations. Then, the nominee would go to the Office of the Chancellor and subsequently the Board of Trustees for each of their approvals.
Based on prior meeting minutes and SEC talks, model A seems to have two main benefits: It strengthens candidate privacy and eliminates part of the current “very restrictive” bureaucratic environment. Senators would hold some of the seats on JACHD, along with representatives from other administrative bodies on campus.
Currently, the Open Meetings Act in Illinois requires all Senate and Senate committee meetings — including HD — to be public. As a body separate from the Senate, JACHD would remain a private decision-making entity.
Model B, on the other hand, would keep the final Senate vote in place, but have JACHD vet nominees before being forwarded to the Senate for a vote.
Senate meetings would also see a “first reading” of candidates, in which the Senate would receive and discuss candidate information, giving feedback on each nominee. Then, senators would hold a public vote at the following meeting. After Senate approval, the honorary degree nominee would go through the Office of the Chancellor and culminate in a Board of Trustees vote.
“Of the two options before us, option A was the clear majority preference of the commission,” Lyons said. “Option B was not, and it still includes a vote in the Senate. As a result, it does not structurally prevent what happened to a previous nominee from happening again.”
The second model maintains the Senate’s ability to ultimately recommend candidates to the Board of Trustees, while clarifying the process to incorporate more feedback before the final vote.
Regardless of which option is ultimately adopted by the Senate, honorary degrees will likely remain on hold until the University’s honorary degree process is changed. Any official changes to the process may also need Senate or SEC approval before being implemented.
Future SEC meetings will determine how the body chooses to inform the Senate of its next steps and options.
“Ultimately, a more structured approach protects not only the individuals we nominate, but the Senate’s own integrity and the confidence that our broader University community places in our judgment,” Lyons said.
The next Senate meeting is Monday at the Illini Union, and the next SEC meeting is April 13.
