The University of Oxford will reconsider its decision to award an honorary degree to the Sultan of Brunei after his country made gay sex punishable by stoning to the death.
Strict new Islamic laws came into force in the small south-east Asian nation earlier this week, which also advocate punishment for theft by amputation.
The move has prompted a backlash around the globe.
In a statement on Saturday, the university said it shared the "international revulsion" of the laws and that the decision to confer the honorary degree of civil law by diploma to Sultan Hassanal Bolkiah in 1993 would be reconsidered through its "established process".
But it stressed no one had the right "summarily to rescind it" and added: "We also believe in due process. Just as nobody has a right to confer an honorary degree, nobody has a right summarily to rescind it.
"The decision to confer this degree 26 years ago was recommended by a committee and approved by council and by congregation at the time.
"We will reconsider this decision through our established process in light of the information now available, as other British universities are doing."
Students at Oxford had called on the university to strip the Sultan of his 1993 honorary degree.
A petition to rescind his honorary degree has gained more than 56,000 signatures.
Brunei introduced the laws after years of delays, ignoring global criticism from politicians, human rights groups and celebrities including actor George Clooney.
Homosexuality was already illegal in Brunei by a jail term up to 10 years, but under the new laws - which apply to children and foreigners, even if they are not Muslim - those found guilty of gay sex could be stoned to death or whipped.
Adulterers risk death by stoning too, while thieves face amputation of a right hand on their first offence and a left foot on their second.
