Degrees of honor
Pepperdine's adventures with the last shah of Iran
I recently told a story about Pepperdine refusing to sell an honorary degree for a million dollars. The college received nationwide acclaim and deserved every word of it. But the same administrators who won praise for their principled stand in 1966 were later criticized for granting a degree to the shah of Iran and receiving from him a million-dollar endowed chair in the late 1970s. By exploring the archival record of Pepperdine’s interactions with the shah, this essay will attempt to answer one question: whether Pepperdine engaged in an explicit quid pro quo, exchanging an honorary degree for financial reward.
Setting the scene
In order to understand both sides of this story, it helps to have a grounding in the geopolitical history of Iran, the economics of Iranian oil production in the 1970s, and also the difficult financial position in which Pepperdine found itself toward the end of William Banowsky’s presidency. I’ve done my best to compress this part as much as I can so as not to bore you with unnecessary tedium.
Mohammad Reza Pahlavi became shah (king) of Iran in 1941 when the Allies deposed and exiled his father Reza Pahlavi both because they worried the elder Pahlavi was too friendly with Nazi Germany and because they needed to keep open the Persian Corridor, which the Americans were using to supply the USSR with Lend-Lease materiel during the second world war.
During the younger shah’s reign, Iran modernized its education system, building Western-style universities and sending many Iranian students to study abroad. By 1967, the shah felt that the country’s progress under his leadership had earned him the title of Shahanshah (“king of kings” or “emperor”), which he claimed in a lavish coronation ceremony, along with his other titles like Aryamehr (“Light of the Aryans”).
Indeed, his efforts had made a difference: by the late 1970s, more of Pepperdine University’s international students came from Iran than from any other country. Iranian students at Pepperdine gained a reputation around campus for their “obvious wealth.”1 Ironically, Iranian students who were educated in the West due to the shah’s reforms came to be some of the shah’s most vocal critics, alleging that he was a puppet of Western powers and demanding democratic representation.
Iranian modernization efforts were funded in large part by oil revenues. When the shah succeeded his father, Iran’s oil fields were controlled by the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company, which became British Petroleum (BP). Over the course of the next three decades, Iran gradually asserted its right to control its own oil exports, forming the National Iranian Oil Company (NIOC) to oversee oil production. By 1973, Iran wrested control of its own exports from its Western partners in the Sale and Purchase Agreement. That year, Iran’s oil revenues rose sharply as it finally became the sole beneficiary of its exports just as oil prices were spiking.2
Eager to use this newfound wealth to bolster Iran’s academic reputation, the shah made gifts to several American universities, endowing chairs like one at the University of Southern California called the Shahanshah Aryamehr Pahlavi Chair in Petroleum Engineering. The first professor to hold the chair when it was established in August 1974 was George V. Chilingar, who would later become a member of the Pepperdine Associates.3
The Pepperdine Associates is a group of friends of the university who commit to donating at least a thousand dollars a year. The organization was established at the first annual Associates dinner on February 9, 1977, sometimes called the Founding Four Hundred dinner because the initial membership of the Associates included over four hundred donors.
The Associates were just one of the university’s many fundraising schemes in the 1970s. Pepperdine spent years paying off the debt incurred during the initial phase of construction on the Malibu campus, and additional funds were needed for ongoing capital projects like the McConnell Law Center and Smothers Theatre. So the university’s fundraisers were always casting about for new sources of donations, and I suspect that Iran’s gift of an endowed chair at USC caught their attention.
Honoring the shah
Pepperdine’s fundraisers must have hoped they could get in line for future gifts from Iran because in 1977 they arranged a trip to Tehran to grant honorary degrees to the shah and his former prime minister (and then-chair of the NIOC) Manouchehr Eghbal. The Pepperdine delegation included chancellor Norvel Young, president William Banowsky, School of Education dean Olaf Tegner, donor Richard Seaver, and their wives.4 The visit had been arranged with help from Dr. Chilingar, who held the shah’s chair at USC. Banowsky later remembered traveling in one of the shah’s private jets, and archival photographs show the party sightseeing around Iran.5
In a 35-minute audience at the royal Sahebgharaniyeh Palace on April 14, 1977, Pepperdine’s representatives bestowed an honorary doctor of laws degree on the shah in recognition of his contributions to Iran’s educational system.6 During the same audience, they presented him with a proposal for a million-dollar grant to establish at Pepperdine’s School of Education an endowed chair named for his wife, Shahbanou (“Empress”) Farah Pahlavi.7
Norvel Young and the rest of the Pepperdine party came away with the impression that the shah had agreed to their proposal, and they went back home to Malibu fully expecting to receive a check from the National Iranian Oil Company.8 News of the shah’s gift was reported widely in the media.9 Still waiting for payment, the university upheld its end of the bargain by naming Dr. Irving Melbo, former dean of USC’s school of education, the first holder of the new chair.
The next month, Richard Seaver was honored by a representative of the shah with the Order of the Crown, Iran’s highest honor for foreigners, at Pepperdine’s annual alumni banquet.10 The shah’s interest in Seaver was due to the important role his Hydril Company had played in providing oil drilling technology to Iran.11 President Banowsky also took the occasion to announce the shah’s endowment of the new chair. The university’s relationship with Iran seemed to be flourishing.
But the money still didn’t come. It’s not clear exactly what happened. Had the shah not agreed to their proposal? Did the NIOC not have the money? Dr. Young later speculated that the delay might have been related to the death of NIOC chairman Manouchehr Eghbal in November 1977.12 But Pepperdine’s fundraisers were evidently concerned about the missing check long before that.
Honoring the shahbanou
In July, nearly three months after Pepperdine’s audience in Tehran, the shah’s wife Empress Farah visited Southern California to receive an honorary doctorate from USC. President John R. Hubbard cited Her Majesty’s “magnificent service to your country.” The ceremony was attended by former governor Ronald Reagan and mayor Tom Bradley. Some 500 protestors, many of them Iranian students, picketed the event, calling the honor a “degree for fascism” and burning the shah in effigy.13
Chancellor Young may have also attended the event at USC. He later reported having been moved by the empress’s “words of concern for the dignity and welfare of mankind” during her trip to the United States.14
Perhaps seeking a polite way to remind the shah of his unfulfilled commitment to fund the endowed chair, Pepperdine’s fundraisers took inspiration from USC’s attention to Empress Farah. In October, a delegation led by chancellor Young returned to Tehran, this time to grant an honorary degree not to the shah but to his wife. Dr. Young and Donald Sime, dean of the School of Business and Management, awarded the degree of Doctor of Humane Letters to Her Imperial Majesty Shahbanou Farah Pahlavi in a ceremony at the Saadabad Palace on October 10, 1977.15
During the ceremony, Dr. Young praised the empress for “increasing opportunities for women to full participation in the life of your nation.” He also reminded her at some length about the endowed chair approved by the shah in her honor, explaining that Dr. Melbo had already been appointed to hold the new position.16
During this second visit, Dr. Young again received assurances from Manouchehr Eghbal that the NIOC would be supplying the funds “right away.”17 But Dr. Eghbal died of a heart attack some six weeks after the visit, and the check still did not come.
Securing payment
Early in 1978, Iran was hit with a series of protests led by Shia clerics, which the shah quelled with force. Tensions were building toward the revolution that would lead to his exile in January 1979 and the installation of Ayatollah Khomeini as Supreme Leader.
News of the protests and the shah’s response raised the profile of Iran on the world stage. Accusations of human rights abuses were levied against the shah, and Pepperdine students expressed discomfort at the university’s friendly stance with a government they saw as oppressive. A reporter for The Graphic pressed university officials about the honorary degrees and the endowed chair but received no comment from chancellor Young, president Banowsky, or board chair D. Lloyd Nelson. Vice president Howard White clarified that the honorary degrees “should not be interpreted as a moral condonement,” and John Nicks tried to fend off accusations of an explicit quid pro quo, saying, “It’s not a straight one-doctorate-for-$1 million.”18
An unsigned editorial in the same issue of The Graphic compared Pepperdine’s decision to honor the shah with Judas’s betrayal of Jesus: “Judas Iscariot accepted 30 pieces of silver. Pepperdine University accepted $1 million.”19
By April the unrest in Iran—together with the approaching anniversary of the shah’s honorary doctorate—must have made Pepperdine’s fundraisers impatient to see the deal concluded. Chancellor Young wrote a letter to Ardeshir Zahedi, Iran’s ambassador to the United States, explaining that the shah had approved a grant that had not yet been received, and asking for his assistance in resolving the matter. Young’s letter makes no explicit mention of the honorary degrees but does thank Zahedi for having helped to arrange the October visit honoring the empress.20
There must have been some additional back-and-forth that didn’t make it into the archive, because the next evidence available is from August 1978 when chancellor Young and the Iranian ambassador signed a contract, making explicit the terms of the endowed chair and the government’s willingness to make a grant of $1 million.21 A few weeks after the contract was signed, ambassador Zahedi sent a personal check for $1 million.22
Just four months after Pepperdine received the promised grant, the shah’s government was overthrown and he went into exile. The Graphic published a cartoon joking that he would expect space in the Malibu dorms after having donated so much money to Pepperdine.23 In fact, the exiled Pahlavis bounced around a few countries over the course of the next year, dealing with the shah’s health problems including leukemia and gallstones. He briefly visited the United States to undergo gallbladder surgery in October 1979 and died an exile in Egypt in 1980. Dr. Young sent his condolences to the shah’s widow, praising “His Majesty’s wise leadership and his many humanitarian advances.”24
Assessing the shah debacle
After combing through all the evidence I’ve been able to get my hands on, I have not found a smoking gun demonstrating that Pepperdine’s bestowal of honorary doctorates on the shah and his wife was conditioned on receipt of a gift from Iran. Student journalists at The Graphic certainly jumped to that conclusion, but the timing of the degree ceremonies relative to Iran’s grant suggests that the honors were given in an attempt to get the shah’s attention, not withheld until money was forthcoming.
Pepperdine, and particularly chancellor Young, did doggedly pursue a donation from the shah, but it seems to me that the university operated in good faith at every point in the process—as far as I can tell, the doctorates were awarded before the proposal for an endowed chair was ever presented, and the chair was established and fulfilled before money ever changed hands.
Back in the 1966 Smoot affair, Dr. Young won praise for saying “the academic process precludes awarding a degree based upon the contingency of any gift,” and I’m not aware of any contingency attached to the degrees that Pepperdine awarded to the Pahlavis in 1977. So unless further evidence reveals something new, it looks like Pepperdine was not guilty of hypocrisy in the shah debacle.25
Epilogue
The visits to Iran in 1977 were not the last time Norvel Young would use academic honors to build relationships with potential donors. In fact, he developed an unfortunate habit of sprinkling “distinguished diplomas of honor” on elites all around the Pacific Rim, getting the university into a tight spot on more than one occasion by ignoring repeated rebukes of this practice from the president and the board. I may write about these episodes in greater detail in the future, but for now I’d like to distinguish them from the Iran case in two ways. First, the degrees granted to the shah and his wife were legitimate honorary doctorates, not the invented “diplomas of honor” that Young later used. Second, the Pahlavis’ degrees were approved through appropriate university channels in a way that his later awards were not.
Observant readers may note that Pepperdine’s Graduate School of Education and Psychology (GSEP), the heir of the School of Education, no longer makes any mention of The Chair of Her Imperial Majesty Shahbanou Farah of Iran. Indeed, after appearing in a few academic catalogs between 1978 and 1985, the chair has disappeared from the public record,26 despite chancellor Young’s assurances to Her Majesty that the chair had been “a permanent memorial to the friendship between Iran and Pepperdine.”27
Conny Romero, “View of life for Iranian students at Pep-Malibu,” The Graphic, 8 Feb. 1979: 1. See also Debbie White, “Foreigners’ expectations unfulfilled,” The Graphic, 22 June 1978: 2.
Mohammad Hassani, “Performance of Iran’s Oil Sector: Oil Revenues and Developmental Challenges, 1970–2003,” India Quarterly 62.1 (March 2006): 146–173.
“IRAN: Oil, Grandeur and a Challenge to the West,” TIME, 4 Nov. 1974. Following the shah’s exile, the chair was renamed the National Iranian Oil Company (NIOC) Chair in Petroleum Engineering. As of the time of writing, the chair is held by Muhammad Sahimi.
Steve Alder, “Banowsky, Young travel abroad; confer honorary degrees in Iran,” The Graphic, 8 Apr. 1977: 1.
William S. Banowsky, The Malibu Miracle: A Memoir, Pepp. Univ. Press (2010): 145.
President Banowsky remembers in his memoir that the ceremony took place at the “historic Winter Palace,” which I can’t identify. Metadata on photographs in the University Archives identify the ceremony’s setting as the Golestan Palace in Tehran. However, a careful comparison of photographs has convinced me that the ceremony took place at the Sahebgharaniyeh Palace, part of the Niavaran Palace Complex. See Banowsky, supra note 5: 145. Cf. Crest of a Golden Wave, Pepp. Univ. Press (1987): 209.
See M. Norvel Young, “A Proposal to His Imperial Majesty Shahanshah Arya Mehr Mohammed Reza Pahlavi,” Box 19, “Iran Proposal” file, Young papers, Pepperdine University Special Collections and University Archives (SCUA).
See M. Norvel Young to Ardeshir Zahedi, 11 Apr. 1978, Box 18, “Iran Correspondence” file, Young papers, SCUA.
See, e.g., “Shah’s gift to Pepperdine,” (Long Beach) Press-Telegram, 24 May 1977: A-2; “Shah helps Pepperdine,” (Ontario) Daily Report, 24 May 1977: 3; “Notes on People”, New York Times, 25 May 1977: 54. Newsweek also reported on the piece, labeling Pepperdine’s deal with the shah “the simplest of quid pro quos.” Merrill Sheils, “Petrogrants,” Newsweek, 4 July 1977: 75–76. The shah’s gift was sometimes reported as the largest gift ever received by Pepperdine, but this was the result of a misunderstanding. In fact, it was the largest gift toward a particular academic program at that point in the university’s history.
“Toward Decade Five,” Pepperdine People, summer 1977: 14–15; cf. "Shah donates faculty chair," The Graphic, 19 May 1977: 2.
Mr. Seaver was later quoted saying that Iran had “always been one of Hydril’s best customers.” See Zan Thompson, “Richard C. Seaver: His Vision and Industry,” Pepperdine People, summer 1978: 4.
Young to Zahedi, 11 Apr. 1978, supra note 8.
“Honor for shah’s wife spurs protest,” (Bakersfield) Californian, 6 July 1977: 3.
M. Norvel Young, “Remarks to Her Imperial Majesty Shahbanou Farah Pahlavi,” 10 Oct. 1977, Box 19, “Iran Proposal” file, Young papers, SCUA.
“Iranian Empress Farah granted Pep degree,” The Graphic, 13 Oct. 1977: 1. My tentative identification of the site as Saadabad Palace is from a machine translation of a clipping of the Persian-language newspaper Kaihan, 11 Nov. 1977: 28 (see Box 18, “Iran photographs and clippings” file, Young papers, SCUA). Other sources say “her palace in Northern Tehran,” which is consistent with Saadabad. See “College Honors Wife of Shah,” (Lubbock) Avalanche-Journal, 11 Oct. 1977: 16-A (ibid.).
Young, “Remarks,” supra note 14.
Young to Zahedi, supra note 8.
Scott Grant, “Pep and the shah,” The Graphic, 23 Feb. 1978: 1. Note that Grant was later fired from the student newspaper. See “Thirty-four editorials later,” The Graphic, 18 Jan. 1979: 8. It is not clear to me whether (or to what extent) the firing of Grant and his colleagues was related to their pointed coverage of the shah debacle.
Unsigned editorial, “The price of blood,” The Graphic, 23 Feb. 1978: 6.
Young to Zahedi, supra note 8.
A copy of the check is attached to Ardeshir Zahedi to M. Norvel Young, 13 Sept. 1978, Box 18, “Iran Correspondence” file, Young papers, SCUA. See also Young’s response confirming receipt, dated 19 Sept. 1978, ibid.
The Graphic, 11 Jan. 1979: 6.
M. Norvel Young to Her Imperial Majesty Shahbanou Farah Pahlavi, 29 July 1980, Box 18, “Iran Correspondence” file, Young papers, SCUA.
As of the time of writing, I have an outstanding request to the Hoover Institution for copies of Pepperdine correspondence from their archival collection of the papers of Iranian ambassador Ardeshir Zahedi. If I learn anything new from that repository, I will update this essay.
See W. David Baird, Quest for Distinction: Pepperdine University in the 20th Century, Pepp. Univ. Press (2016): 236.
Young, “Remarks,” supra note 14.