Howard University has revoked the honorary degree it gave to Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs in 2014, discontinued a scholarship program named after the rap mogul, and refunded a $1 million donation from him. The university cites the video, which showed Diddy violently attacking singer Cassie Ventura in the hallway of a Los Angeles hotel.
“Mr. Combs’ behavior is so fundamentally incompatible with Howard University’s core values and beliefs that he is deemed no longer worthy to hold the institution’s highest honor. The university is unwavering in its opposition to all acts of interpersonal violence,” Howard has said in a statement.
Diddy, 54, attended Howard for two years before dropping out in 1990. He served as the revered, historically Black institution’s commencement speaker the same year that it bestowed an honorary doctorate upon the three-time Grammy winner. Two years after that, in 2016, Combs revealed he had donated $1 million to Howard so that the university could create a scholarship fund for undergraduate business students in need of financial aid. This amount has since been refunded to him.
But that same year (2016), the music producer and businessman manhandled and kicked singer Cassie (his girlfriend at the time) in view of surveillance cameras at a hotel in the Century City neighborhood of Los Angeles.
