ABSTRACT
Families strolls the grounds, visibly filled with a mixture of pride, happiness, and perhaps relief that warm spring day has finally come. Some of the most familiar aspects of the modern commencement ceremony are in fact relatively recent innovations. A college or university degree is one of the highest goals of modern life, and something to which students and families devote enormous energy and resources to achieve. Most histories of Western higher education begin with the founding of the University of Bologna in the year 1088. The conferral of degrees formally occurs only at the moment when the university president pronounces a ritualized sentence, not unlike the administration of sacraments such as baptism and marriage. Although academic respect for free speech has come under severe pressure in our polarized times, large university campuses remain among the few enduring institutions where one might have even hope of finding serious diversity of opinion and genuine exchanges of ideas.
