Channel 4 newsreader Jon Snow returned to university today to receive a degree 40 years after being expelled.
Snow studied law at Liverpool University from 1968 to 1970, but was kicked out after a rooftop protest against the university’s investment in South Africa during apartheid.
The protesting students demanded the removal of Liverpool University’s chancellor Lord Salisbury who they accused of sympathising with white regimes in South Africa and what was then Rhodesia, now Zimbabwe.
Snow – who went straight from volunteering in Africa to university – was one of hundreds of students who occupied the institution’s Senate House.
The infamous newsreader says that he is glad he was expelled, as it prevented him from becoming an “extremely mediocre and wonky” lawyer.
He wrote today:
To this day, I have not had a degree. I was studying law. Academe had not been an easy path for me, but my studies were going well. Whilst in some ways eviction served me well in that I didn’t become a fifth-rate lawyer, in other ways it left me questioning whether I would ever have got the degree.
But today Liverpool University and I buried the hatchet. I had the honour of hearing the pro vice-chancellor read out a eulogy about me – or rather, about a man I didn’t really seem to recognise, some character who reported for Channel 4.
From henceforth, no more ‘Mr’ Snow. I am Dr Snow, honorary Doctor of Laws (Liverpool University). Coming back on the train, I had relished the experience. But Somalia beckoned, the Murdoch mayhem beckoned. Another day, another dollar.