Two years after the CIA's 1953 coup in Iran, Columbia University also gave an honorary "Doctors of Law" degree to Iran's "Great Dictator": the Shah of Iran. Then, in 1977, the dictatorial Shah of Iran's wife, Empress Farah Pahlavi, was given an honorary presidential citation by former Columbia University President William McGill, despite the protests of the Confederation of Iranian student demonstrators about the human rights situation in Iran prior to the 1979 Iranian revolution.