“Dr.” Spio Garbrah, Please Set the Records Straight

The Ghanaian public has been misinformed about the fact that Mr. Spio Garbrah is a doctor and we would like to use this medium to ask Mr. Spio Garbrah to come out and set the record straight. Some of us are of the view that when you get an honorary Degree (honoris caus) you don’t use the Doctor as if you wrote a dissertation. To prove the point, a link is provided to the citation from Middlebury College, the college that honored Mr. Garbrah with the honorary Degree. For the records, Middlebury College is a four year liberal arts college with only one graduate program; Language Schools Graduate Program. The citation from Middlebury College, Vermont, USA reads: “The College will present Ekwow Spio-Garbrah with a Doctor of Laws degree. He is chairman and chief executive officer of S, G & A, a public relations and financial consulting firm based in Ghana. Spio-Garbrah has served his native Ghana as a public servant in many positions, including minister of education from 1998-2001, minister of communications from 1997-1998, and ambassador to the United States and Mexico from 1994-1997. He is the father of Koby Sebastian Spio-Garbrah, a senior at Middlebury College, and the uncle of Ben Gyepi-Garbrah of the Middlebury class of 1993.” This citation can be found at the last but one paragraph of the link below: (http://www.middlebury.edu/about/pubaff/news_releases/news_2001/commencement_01.htm).

Mr. Garbrah’s only link to the college appears to be the fact that his son and nephew both attended the college. The citation makes no reference to academic or scientific contribution, the usual yardstick for awarding honorary degrees. This implies that the award was for other reasons: Maybe service to Ghana, maybe business acumen, but definitely it was not for academic or scientific contribution.

A quote from Wikipedia reads: “Recipients of an honorary doctorate do not NORMALLY adopt the title of "doctor." In many countries, including the United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, and the United States, it is not usual for an honorary doctor to use the formal title of "doctor," regardless of the background circumstances for the award. Mr. Garbrah has been acting and passing himself as someone who wrote and defended a dissertation, and therefore earned a doctorate.

We would like Mr. Spio Garbrah to come out to make it clear to Ghanaians that he only has an honorary degree. As such, he should not be called “Dr.” and he should also advise his supporters to desist from addressing him as such. If he actually has the Doctorate degree then we want him to show us the University from which he obtained the degree and the title of his dissertation, when he defended it and possibly provide names of his committee members. It is pitiful, pathetic, and shameful when people arrogate themselves impressive titles and the Ghanaian public do not take them to task. This practice of self aggrandizement is nothing more than an egoistic response to low self esteem. Calling yourself something that you are not is cheating and it is about time we come clean on this issue. One can call himself/herself a doctor if he/she has gone to medical school and finished the program or has obtained a Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) in whatever field of study. The salutation Dr should not be used just “by heart”. We need to respect the fact that people with doctorate degrees spent years working to write numerous tests including difficult qualifying examination and spent at least two years doing independent research. After the research one needs to write and defend the dissertation and pass before one can be called a doctor. By passing himself of as Dr. Spio-Garbrah, Mr. Garbrah and his sycophantic supporters as well as ignorant elements in the Ghanaian media are demeaning Doctorate Degrees. Also to set the record straight we don’t call ex-president Rawlings and his wife Nana doctors even though they have two honorary degrees. It is on record that the University of Cape Coast awarded ex-president Kuffour an honorary degree (Doctor of Laws) but he too does not call himself Doctor. Mr. Spio-Garbrah is an honorable man and we are calling upon him to do the honorable thing. His resume is impressive without the borrowed title of Dr. He does not need to garnish nor embellish his resume with a title he has not earned. Also, he does not need to diminish or demean his achievements in life by adding a hollow title he has not earned.

By Drs. Kwame Appiah and Kwaku Asamoah, on behalf of “Friends of Spio Garbrah Does not have a PhD”.