Carter to collect honorary Oxford degree

Alexandra Smith

EducationGuardian.co.uk Monday February 5, 2007

Nobel laureate and former US president Jimmy Carter is one of nine figures set to receive an honorary degree from the University of Oxford this year.

Mr Carter, who won a Nobel peace prize in 2002 for his "untiring effort to find peaceful solutions to international conflicts", has been marred by controversy since the release of his bestselling book on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Palestine: Peace not Apartheid.

The book traces the ups and downs of the Israeli-Palestinian peace process beginning with Mr Carter's 1977-1981 presidency and the historic peace accord he negotiated between Israel and Egypt in 1978.

Although the book is critical of all sides in the conflict, it pays particular attention to the role of Israeli governments, prompting accusations that it is anti-Israel and anti-semitic. After its publication 14 members of the advisory board of his human rights organisation, the Carter Centre, resigned in protest.

Last month, Mr Carter, 82, defended his book at a three-day symposium on his presidency at Georgia University. He told the assembled group: "Not one of the critics of my book has contradicted any of the basic premises ... that is the horrible persecution and oppression of the Palestinian people and secondly that the formula for finding peace in the Middle East already exists."

Oxford said during his presidency, Mr Carter, who in 1982 became university distinguished professor at Emory University in Atlanta, had made significant achievements in foreign policy, including the negotiation of the Panama Canal treaties, the Camp David Accords and the SALT II nuclear limitation treaty with the Soviet Union.

Other recipients of this year's honorary degrees are Lady Hale of Richmond, a barrister and judge who in 2004 became the first woman to join the House of Lords as a law lord, Dame Antonia Susan 'A. S.' Byatt, the Booker Prize-winning author and critic, and Sir Clive Granger, a Nobel prize-winning economist.

The acclaimed stage and film director Ariane Mnouchkine and the musician Daniel Barenboim will also receive honours.

Honorary science doctorates will be awarded to Richard A Lerner and Chintamani Nagesa Ramachandra, both research chemists, and Lord May of Oxford, the former president of the Royal Society.