I can’t remember who(it might have been Robert Smiegel), but some comedian used to say, “I’ll give $10,000 to anyone who can show me footage of Whoopi Goldberg being funny.”
My conclusion then, and still my conclusion now, is that someone long ago somehow wrongly decided that Whoopi Goldberg had a Ph.D. in literature. They mentioned this in some website. Other people copied it and put it in their own websites. It’s not true.