Editing Jacques Derrida (section)

==== Cambridge honorary doctorate ====
In 1992 some academics at [[Cambridge University]], mostly not from the philosophy faculty, proposed that Derrida be awarded an honorary doctorate. This was opposed by, among others, the university's Professor of Philosophy [[David Hugh Mellor|Hugh Mellor]]. Eighteen other philosophers from US, Austrian, Australian, French, Polish, Italian, German, Dutch, Swiss, Spanish, and British institutions, including [[Barry Smith (academic and ontologist)|Barry Smith]], [[Willard Van Orman Quine]], [[David Malet Armstrong|David Armstrong]], [[Ruth Barcan Marcus]], and [[René Thom]], then sent a letter to Cambridge claiming that Derrida's work "does not meet accepted standards of clarity and rigour"<!-- original spelling --> and describing Derrida's philosophy as being composed of "tricks and gimmicks similar to those of the [[Dada]]ists". The letter concluded that:

{{blockquote|... where coherent assertions are being made at all, these are either false or trivial. Academic status based on what seems to us to be little more than semi-intelligible attacks upon the values of reason, truth, and scholarship is not, we submit, sufficient grounds for the awarding of an honorary degree in a distinguished university.<ref name="BarrySmithEtAl">Barry Smith et al., "Open letter against Derrida receiving an honorary doctorate from Cambridge University," ''The Times'' [London], 9 May 1992 [http://ontology.buffalo.edu/smith/varia/Derrida_Letter.htm].</ref>}}

In the end the protesters were outnumbered—336 votes to 204—when Cambridge put the motion to a formal ballot;<ref>John Rawlings (1999) [http://prelectur.stanford.edu/lecturers/derrida/ Presidential Lectures: Jacques Derrida: Introduction] at [[Stanford University]]</ref> though almost all of those who proposed Derrida and who voted in favour were not from the philosophy faculty.<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Richmond |first1=Sarah|title=Derrida and Analytical Philosophy: Speech Acts and their Force|journal=European Journal of Philosophy |date=April 1996 |volume=4|issue=1|pages=38–62 |doi=10.1111/j.1468-0378.1996.tb00064.x}}</ref> Hugh Mellor continued to find the award undeserved, explaining: "He is a mediocre, unoriginal philosopher — he is not even interestingly bad".<ref>{{cite web |title=Professor Hugh Mellor obituary |work=[[The Times]] |date=29 June 2020 |url=https://www.thetimes.com/article/professor-hugh-mellor-obituary-hft23p3d0 |url-access=subscription}}</ref>

Derrida suggested in an interview that part of the reason for the attacks on his work was that it questioned and modified "the rules of the dominant discourse, it tries to politicize and democratize education and the university scene". To answer a question about the "exceptional violence", the compulsive "ferocity", and the "exaggeration" of the "attacks", he would say that these critics organize and practice in his case "a sort of obsessive personality cult that philosophers should know how to question and above all to moderate".<ref name="Derrida 1995pp409-413">{{cite book| last1=Derrida| first1=Jacques| title=Points ...: Interviews, 1974–1994| edition=1st| year=1995| publisher=Stanford University Press| location=New York| isbn=978-0810103979| chapter='Honoris Causa: "This is also very funny{{"'}}| pages=409–413| chapter-url=http://prelectur.stanford.edu/lecturers/derrida/interviews.html#cambridge}}{{blockquote |If it were only a question of "my" work, of the particular or isolated research of one individual, this wouldn't happen. Indeed, the violence of these denunciations derives from the fact that the work accused is part of a whole ongoing process. What is unfolding here, like the resistance it necessarily arouses, can't be limited to a personal "oeuvre," nor to a discipline, nor even to the academic institution. Nor in particular to a generation: it's often the active involvement of students and younger teachers which makes certain of our colleagues nervous to the point that they lose their sense of moderation and of the academic rules they invoke when they attack me and my work.<br/><br/>If this work seems so threatening to them, this is because it isn't simply eccentric or strange, incomprehensible or exotic (which would allow them to dispose of it easily), but as I myself hope, and as they believe more than they admit, competent, rigorously argued, and carrying conviction in its re-examination of the fundamental norms and premises of a number of dominant discourses, the principles underlying many of their evaluations, the structures of academic institutions, and the research that goes on within them. What this kind of questioning does is modify the rules of the dominant discourse, it tries to politicize and democratize the university scene.&nbsp;...<br/><br/>In short, to answer your question about the "exceptional violence," the compulsive "ferocity," and the "exaggeration" of the "attacks," I would say that these critics organize and practice in my case a sort of obsessive personality cult which philosophers should know how to question and above all to moderate.}}</ref>