I recently attended a lecture given by Jon Meacham at Chautauqua Institution where he was introduced as “One of America’s leading public intellectuals.” Meacham responded with his trademark self-effacing humor and a quip to the effect that just by being a public intellectual these days qualifies you as a leading one.

We certainly have a surplus of pundits, or at least talking heads promoted as subject experts across the spectrum of news outlets and media feeds, but Meacham may be right in recognizing that we are experiencing a time in which the recognition and value of public intellectuals has ebbed.

This would align with the precipitous decline in Americans’ faith in institutions. A recent Gallup poll showed that across parties, Americans are expressing record low confidence in institutions ranging from congress to newspapers to medical systems and public schools. In Meacham’s talk, he noted that in 1965 76% of Americans believed the U.S. government would do the right thing most of the time, and now, that number is 9%. If we don’t trust institutions, it should be no surprise that we may feel the same way about high-profile individuals.

What I find intriguing is that at the same time, campus communities seem to want their leaders to speak out on a wide range of topics.

When I was student in the 1980s, I don’t recall the president of my alma mater publicly opining on any major issues of the day. That was typical across higher education. In recent years however, students, faculty and staff, and more and more alumni have expressed a desire for their institutions to articulate a position, typically through the voice of the president, on major events and issues.

College presidents do have the luxury and the curse of possessing some of the few remaining bully pulpits outside of social media. As I have written before, we can and should be political, advocating for our institutions, our students, our employees, and our alumni, but we can’t be partisan

Like many of my peers, I have made public proclamations about Pell funding, DACA students, research funding, and academic freedom, but I stay far away from endorsing candidates or parties. Public partisanship from campus leaders could jeopardize an institution’s access to Title IV funding, but lobbying and advocating for policies and programs that benefit our constituencies is part of our jobs.

Often, we are called upon to make statements that are less directly aligned with our duties as institutional advocates, including topics of social justice, human rights, geopolitical conflicts, and legal issues. Determining when to speak and when to remain silent can be a challenge. We want to be responsive to members of our communities in need of support, but that can run the risk of alienating others, or creating new institutional lightning rods. It is also important to recognize that expressing one’s personal beliefs may be incongruent with articulating an institutional message.

According to a recent survey from the Chronicle of Higher Education, fear of sparking controversy has led many presidents to become less inclined to speak out on pressing current issues. That survey revealed that the following percentages of respondents indicated these topics are “so controversial that you self-censor your public remarks to avoid creating controversy for you or the institution.”

National politics	83%
State politics	66%
Gender/sexual identity	41%
Racial justice	37%
Diversity, equity, and inclusion	32%
Free speech	20%
Covid-19 policy	15%
Academic freedom	13%

An institution’s mission, and in some cases, its religious affiliation, as well as if it is public or private, all affect whether a president can or should make proclamations on specific issues.

Universities are built on principles that create institutional identity. One of the duties of president is to foster and promote that identity. Another is to cultivate meaningful discourse on topics of consequence on our campuses and beyond. That is a core foundation of our enterprise.

A number of my colleagues at sister institutions have created decision trees and/or guidelines to help them determine when to comment and when to defer. I use our institutional Mission Statement and our board’s Statement on Ethical and Inclusive Living as touchstones in making that determination. When the conclusion remains ambiguous, I consult board leadership.

Most of the time, that works. There will always be members of our extended community who take exception with any position I articulate. That’s what one should hope for in an intellectually diverse community.

Fifty years ago today Title IX and the Pell Grant came into being. These programs are two of the most important and effective efforts to expand access and equity in higher education. 

Title IX laid the groundwork for gender equity in education. We need to continue our progress on these important efforts, but these 37 changed American education for the better, forever.

“No person in the United States shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any education program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance.” 

— Title IX Education Amendment of 1972 

During the past 50 years, over 80 million American students have been able to attend college because of the Pell Grant. Today, doubling Pell would make a college degree affordable for every American.

Below, I have pasted a message from Barbara Mistick, President of NAICU (National Association of Independent Colleges and Universities) about the Pell Grant anniversary, and a copy of our campus announcement celebrating the anniversary of the adoption of Title IX.

June 23, 2022

“No person in the United States shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any education program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance.” 

— Title IX Education Amendment of 1972 

Today, June 23, marks the 50th anniversary that those 37 words forever changed the landscape of the education system across the United States.  

Building upon the language and momentum of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, Representatives Edith Green, Shirley Chisholm, the first Black U.S. congresswoman, and Patsy T. Mink, the first woman of color elected to Congress, collaborated on the authorship of Title IX, one of several education amendments passed in 1972.   

Shortly after its passing, Susquehanna University moved quickly to comply when President Gustave Weber appointed a seven-member task force, the Committee to Review Compliance with Title IX, and charged it to audit four areas: athletics, instructional affairs, employment/personnel policies and student affairs.  

Below are several of SU’s notable gender-equity achievements to date:  

• Athletics: 1960–1961 marked the first intercollegiate schedule for two women’s sports teams: field hockey and basketball. Today, SU hosts 12 women’s/co-ed sports teams.
• Admission: Susquehanna became coeducational in 1873, sooner than many of its peers. Today, 56% of students enrolled at SU are women.
• Academic Programs: Prior to Title IX, many institutions barred women from majoring in the sciences. The curriculum was constructed around men’s experiences — even at SU, which in 1970 implemented a Core Program geared toward the “man’s total experience.” Fast-forward to 2022, where 60% of students enrolled in our sciences are women and our women’s and gender studies minor, which launched in 1990, is one of the largest academic minors at the institution.
• Support for Survivors of Violence: Dating back to the 1970s, the Association of Women Students offered information pamphlets for survivors of violence to seek local support and resources. Today, we have a robust partnership with Transitions of PA. It provides a 24/7 hotline available to our students as well as a full-time on-campus victim advocate housed in our Violence Intervention and Prevention Center, which opened in 2018.
• Parenting Support: Launched in 1969, the Association of Women Students began offering babysitting services for women faculty and staff. This fall, we will open two campus lactation rooms and help employees temporarily retrofit their offices for breastfeeding.
• Title IX Staffing: SU recently added a full-time, standalone Title IX coordinator to its staff. While many similarly sized institutions attach this role’s responsibilities to other positions and have even defunded some of their Title IX offices, SU remains dedicated to the work with a full-time director of Title IX compliance and a robust team, which includes seven university employees and three external partners.   
• Employee Demographics: Like much of academia, early roles for women at Susquehanna were often relegated to administrative support and there were few to no women faculty or administrators. Now, 50% of faculty and 64% of full-time staff are women. Additionally, five of the seven (71%) executive board of trustee members and six out of 14 (43%) senior leadership team members are women.

We uphold the legacy of Title IX on this anniversary and every day because we truly believe that no one should be excluded from opportunities to fully participate in educational experiences based on their gender.

---

---

Throughout graduation season, I have had a variety of conversations about the traditions, pageantry, and symbolism connected to commencement ceremonies and the trappings of the academy.

I thought it would be timely to share some of the arcana that arises most frequently in those conversations.

Academic Regalia

During formal academic gatherings, faculty and often students will appear in academic regalia. There are different robes for each degree. There is an Intercollegiate Code on Academic Costume, which was established in the 1895 and has been amended a number of times since. Many institutions have in-house practices that deviate from these standards.

Robes

• Bachelor’s robes have closed sleeves.
• Master’s robes have extended oblong sleeve that hang below the wrist. I have been told that this is a vestige from a time when early scholars had a nook in their sleeves to keep their hands warm in unheated medieval environments.
• Doctoral robes in the U.S. typically have bell shaped sleeves with three velvet stripes. Those stripes may be black, or the color of the discipline. Presidents of colleges and universities may have four stripes on their sleeves. I still wear my 30-year-old three-striped model, which was a graduation present from my wife.

Hoods

• There are hoods associated with each degree as well. They combine satin in the institution’s colors with velvet or velveteen in the color of the discipline.
• Bachelor’s hoods are no longer the norm, but many institutions, including Susquehanna still use them. These are 3 feet long with 2-inch wide trim.
• Master’s hoods are 3.5 feet long with 3-inch wide trim. These have an oblong extension that mirrors the dangling sleeve of the master’s robe.
• Doctoral hoods are 4 feet long with 5-inch wide trim.
• Part of commencement at many institutions involves the “hooding” of graduate-degree candidates. At large institutions, this is sometimes done on the school level independent of the graduation ceremony.

Special Robes

Many institutions have customized robes for their graduates. The bodies of these robes are typically in a color(s) associated with the institution and often include an insignia, often the shield, of the university on the front velvet panels of the robe.

Here is an example from Boston University:

The Intercollegiate Code standardized colors for each academic discipline, which can be used for all of the velvet portions of the regalia. The default velvet color is black. Dark blue, which is aligned with philosophy is often the stand in for Ph.D. degrees is a variety of disciplines, but that is usually the choice of the consumer.

Here is a list of colors aligned with academic disciplines from Wikipedia^[1]

Faculty	Color
Agriculture	Maize
Arts (liberal arts), letters (literature), humanities	White
Commerce, accountancy, business	Drab
Dentistry	Lilac
Economics	Copper
Education	Light blue
Engineering	Orange
Fine arts, architecture	Brown
Forestry, environmental studies, sustainability	Russet
Journalism	Crimson
Law	Purple
Library science, Information science	Lemon
Medicine	Green
Music	Pink
Nursing	Apricot
Oratory, communications studies, broadcasting	Silver gray
Pharmacy	Olive green
Philosophy	Dark blue
Physical education, manual therapy, physical therapy	Sage Green
Public administration, public policy, foreign service	Peacock blue
Public health	Salmon
Science (social, natural and formal)	Golden yellow
Social work	Citron
Theology, divinity	Scarlet
Veterinary science	Grey

Baccalaureate

The word baccalaureate mean’s bachelor referring to the undergraduate degree. The word is derived from bacca lauri meaning laurel berry, referring to laurel wreaths placed upon the heads of individuals honored for their achievement in ancient times.

In modern times, baccalaureate is also the name for a ceremony, often religious, held at educational institutions before commencement. These typically include a “valedictory,” which is literally a farewell speech to the graduating class. The term valedictorian has come to be used to identify the graduate with the highest GPA because historically they gave that address to the class.

Much of the early history of grades in American higher education was associated with creating a way to determine which student would give that speech.

Honorary Degrees

Colleges and Universities often confer honorary degrees to individuals of extraordinary accomplishment or service. The earliest known example of this practice was at Oxford University. In 1479, Oxford awarded an honorary degree to Lionel Woodville in recognition of his meritorious service as Chancellor of the University. He later became the Bishop of Salisbury.

Pomp and Circumstance

The British composer, Sir Edward Elgar, composed 5 Marches, which comprise his opus 39. The first was completed in 1901. It was premiered along with No. 2 on a concert in Liverpool on 19 October 1901 and was an immediate success.

In 1905, the trio section was played at the commencement ceremony at Yale University where Elgar was the recipient of an honorary degree. This portion of the march has since been played at many graduation ceremonies in the U.S. and Canada.

In England, that trio is known as “Land of Hope and Glory.” Elgar adapted it for choir as part of his Coronation Ode for King Edward VII.

Mace

At most higher education institutions, a Faculty Marshall will lead academic processions carrying a symbolic mace designed specifically for that institution. The practice began in the 17^th century in England. The mace was modeled on ancient battle clubs, but now represents the power of academic freedom and intellectual autonomy.

At many institutions, the Marshall / mace bearer is an appointed or elected position. At some, it is an honor bestowed on the longest-serving faculty member. At one institution where I worked, the mace bearer was the previous year’s winner of the outstanding professor award.

The mace at Susquehanna was a gift of the Class of 1963. It was first used at our 108^th commencement on 30 May 1966. It was made by Hurst, Franklin & Co., Ltd., metalsmiths of London.

Around the edge of the silver bowl which tops our mace is the University’s motto, Ad Gloriam Maiorem Dei (To the greater glory of God). There are four rondels portraying: an itinerant preacher on horseback, the Seal of Pennsylvania, Selinsgrove Hall, and Martin Luther’s Coat-of-Arms. There are also 32 stars representing the states in the U.S. at the time of the University’s founding in 1858. The top of the mace is a three-dimensional rendering of the University’s Seal.

The same Seal is at the center of the ceremonial chain, or President’s Seal of Office, that I wear at all formal academic events. It was first worn by President Weber at the same ceremony at which the mace was introduced.^[2]

---

^[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Academic_dress_in_the_United_States#Intercollegiate_colors

^[2] Special thanks to Carl Moyer for sharing a copy of the official guide to The Mace and President’s Seal of Office – Susquehanna University.