University of Glasgow to award honorary degree to Gordon Brown

LONDON: Britain's former Prime Minister Gordon Brown will be conferred an honorary doctorate degree by the prestigious University of Glasgow for his contributions to public life and global education.

Brown, 64, will be awarded an Honorary Degree of Doctor tomorrow after delivering a public lecture at the varsity.

"We look forward to conferring an Honorary Degree on Gordon Brown and to the lecture that he will deliver," said Professor Anton Muscatelli, Principal and Vice Chancellor of the University of Glasgow.

"The decision by Senate to confer the Honorary Degree of Doctor of the University on Gordon Brown continues the long tradition at Glasgow of recognising major contributions to public life from across the political spectrum," Anton added.

An MP from 1983 until he decided to stand down this year, Brown was the longest serving Chancellor in modern times - from 1997 to 2007 - before being Prime Minister from 2007-2010.

"It is indeed fitting that we recognise him as a political statesman and as an advocate for global action to ensure education for all," Anton said.

"I feel privileged to have been invited to become part of the Glasgow University community. It is a distinguished university where Adam Smith came from my home town of Kirkcaldy to lecture, and where my late friends John Smith and Donald Dewar studied," Brown said.

Every child in the world has the right to education and that it is the key to unlocking better health, greater social stability, more rights and opportunities for women and a higher standard of living, Brown had said earlier as the UN Special Envoy for Global Education.