Integral Annihilation

A curious feature of Imperial academia is the antidegree (occasionally and unofficially referred to as the dishonorary antidegree).

One cannot, of course, simply revoke a degree obtained without fraud; it is a time-bound certification of ability which stands as testimony to the competence of its holder at that time. However, it cannot be denied that there are those who, in later life, fall from the path of wisdom, and who do not respond to the gentle correction of their peers.

Let it be stated first that our institutions of learning are chary of awarding antidegrees. It is not their purpose to harass those whose knowledge has become obsolescent with the passage of time and who no longer practice in their field, save that they continue to opine on current matters; nor are they intended to be other than a last resort when gentler measures have failed. Perhaps most importantly, they must not and will not be used as a stick to beat unconventional hypothesists and heterodox thinkers, from whom so much of our advancement ultimately proceeds.

But in those rare cases when one willfully leaves the path of wisdom and the quest for truth, be it for petty reasons of ideology, utility, or personal advancement, or for some imagined grander cause, and in the worst cases does so with the support of actual fraud, the antidegree stands as a last resort to prevent the propagation of lies and false paradigms under the color of abandoned integrity.

Apart from its direct effects (the antiqualification being deemed to cancel out the initial qualification), the antidegree carries with it social censure, including effective expulsion from the academic exultancy, and in legal terms immunizes the awarding institution from potential suits over the awardance of the initial qualification to a presumably unworthy candidate, unless it can be demonstrated that this could reasonably have been established at the time.

Rarely, an institution may issue an antidegree to an individual that was never awarded a degree in the first place (the ridiculously named honorary dishonorary antidegree) as a particularly pointed criticism of some unusually noteworthy proclamation of unwisdom. Such has no legal effect, but where the Imperial intelligentsia are concerned, has all the social function of the old custom of judicial incredibility.