Northwestern University withdrew an invitation for the Reverend Jeremiah Wright to receive an honorary degree at this year's commencement.
Wright, former pastor to Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama, was selected to be honored at the June ceremony in Evanston, Illinois, on the recommendation of faculty committees, Alan Cubbage, vice president for university relations, said in a statement.

``In light of the controversy around Dr. Wright and to ensure the celebratory character of commencement not be affected, the university has withdrawn its invitation to Dr. Wright,'' Cubbage said.

Obama, an Illinois senator, has repeatedly denounced Wright's statements, which have included praise for Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan and a suggestion that the U.S. government was capable of developing AIDS to infect black people.

Wright's statements ``offend me, they rightly offend all Americans and they should be denounced and that's what I'm doing very clearly and unequivocally today,'' Obama said in a news conference in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, on April 29.

Obama's relationship with Wright came under renewed scrutiny when his former pastor repeated some of his statements, including that U.S. policy was partly to blame for the Sept. 11 attacks, during a speech at the National Press Club in Washington on April 28.