Honorary doctorate

An honorary doctorate is usually awarded at five-year anniversary events or on special occasions. It earns the laureate an elaborate bit of paper drafted in Latin and the title doctor honoris causa.

The honorary doctorate is different than a doctoral degree and is abbreviated as “dr.h.c.” Since 1947, Tilburg University has awarded 49 honorary doctorates to the likes of former UN Secretary Kofi Annan, Al Gore (“I used to be the next president of the United States”), Liberian president Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, alumnus Herman Wijffels and in 1952 (pictured at the left) the French Prime Minister Robert Schuman, spiritual father of the EU. An honorary doctorate is awarded in recognition of exceptional scientific of social merit.

The procedure is quite elaborate. The Faculty concerned ‒ in its turn or by virtue of a special occasion ‒ is requested to present a recommendation. The Dean then performs an in-house search for names of eligible candidates that the faculty means to submit to the Doctorate Board, consisting of five Deans and the Rector Magnificus. This Board then decides who will be invited to receive the honorary doctorate. This enterprise sometimes fails: at the beginning of this century, when Turkish author Orhan Pamuk was to be the prospective honorary doctor, his problems with his government meant he proved to be untraceable. The very first honorary doctorate was awarded in 1947 by the then College to a bishop, Monsignor Poels. The last honorary doctorates to date went in 2019 to Anita L. Allen, professor of Law and Philosophy at the University of Pennsylvania en John P.A. Ioannidis, professor of Medicine, of Health Research and Policy and of Biomedical Data Science at Stanford University.