After weeks of pro-Palestinian protests and campus unrest, another powerful symbol of higher education faces disruption: commencement ceremonies, with all their iconic images of tassels turned around and caps tossed jubilantly into the air.
Now, parents and guests from all over the world are weighing whether to travel in to attend watered-down, smaller commencement ceremonies on campuses with armed guards, student demonstrators, potential graduation interruptions and arrests during protests against the Israel-Hamas war.
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Columbia University canceled its main ceremony, some colleges have moved commencement away from campus and students at others are refusing to remove tent cities and protesting outside the homes of college presidents. Police are clearing a student tent encampment at the University of Chicago, while students at MIT are being arrested and refuse to budge from theirs, as are students from Rhode Island School of Design.
Emory College last week was described as “a war zone” by one professor, with 26 faculty and students arrested, and moved its commencement ceremonies off-campus. Pro-Palestinian protesters interrupted graduations at the University of Michigan and college presidents elsewhere are being booed, while some students are walking out in the middle of ceremonies.
“These are awful images for higher education,” former Vassar president Catharine Bond Hill told me. “It’s distressing and will push us in the wrong direction. We could end up with some bad federal policies and reduced support, right when we need it most.”
Graduation ceremonies, while not always entirely peaceful, have long been the symbolic, feel-good ending many students and parents believed was worth waiting for, and, for the colleges, an important moment for relationship-building with parents and recent graduates who might one day be donors.
The disruptions come amid souring public sentiment over the value of a college degree, with many colleges shutting their doors due to declining enrollment and a public concerned over years of high tuition costs and student debt loads.
Still, not all graduations have been canceled or disrupted by arrests, raids and protests from students and faculty who support Palestinians in Gaza and are demanding divestment from Israel. Some colleges have held or are planning smaller, student-led ceremonies or are moving their graduation to venues far from campus.
At many others, students will be expressing their views peacefully, as they always have – with ribbons on their caps, in what they are wearing beneath or over their robes and in banners they’ll be hoisting, noted Ted Mitchell, president of the American Council of Education.
Related: Across the country, student journalists are covering protests of their own classmates and reaction by their own administrators
Mitchell nonetheless sees this moment as yet another warning sign to higher education, “a dark time” that calls for clear protocols – starting with college orientation – around free speech issues. College presidents and administrators should also be constantly calling out the value of a college education, he said, saying “this is how we are preparing people for the world of work and how we help students graduate with low or no debt.”
The war and resulting protests are creating a climate on many campuses where no one can win: Presidents who have called in police to quell protests may not survive, while those trying to uphold free speech are also under fire for not protecting students and faculty from antisemitism, Mitchell noted.
Since April 18, more than 2,600 people have been arrested at more than 50 college campuses, The Associated Press reported. Some colleges are finding ways to come to agreement with students and maintain peace, but it’s becoming increasingly fraught: Even the University of Chicago, with its legacy of protecting free speech, sent university police officers in riot gear to block access to the school’s quad.
Graduation ceremonies scheduled for May 19 at Morehouse College, the 157-year-old historically Black college in Atlanta, are also creating fear, as President Joe Biden is the keynote speaker. Many students and faculty members complained that the president should not get an honorary degree because of his steadfast support for Israel. Some are planning a protest, others have said they will not sit on stage and one activist group is calling for the invitation to be rescinded.
And uncertainty remains about what will happen on campuses that have been particularly volatile, including USC in California, where the school first canceled the valedictorian’s speech, later called police to campus after students set up a tent city (93 people were arrested), and then canceled the main stage graduation ceremony altogether.
The school will now host a major event for graduates instead at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum.
At UCLA, where police tore down a pro-Palestinian encampment, the college created a new safety position as it reopened campus and arrested dozens. Commencement, so far, is still scheduled for mid-June, amidst continued unrest and calls for the chancellor’s resignation.
Many Columbia students have reacted angrily to the cancelation of the main ceremony, but the decision remains firm. (The Hechinger Report is an independent unit of Teachers College, Columbia University.)
Nationally, some groups of students are likely to be more hurt than others by the current unrest, including those who missed their own high school graduations and began their freshman year online during the pandemic.
Others, as Hill points out, are among the many first-generation students who have never experienced a graduation ceremony. Hill, now the managing director of the Ithaka S + R research and consulting service, recalls the excitement and goodwill that flourished at the many commencements she presided over during her tenure at Vassar, which paid special attention to such students, along with the proud family members lined up taking photographs.
“It was just so exciting and validating and hopeful for the future,” Hill said.
As the protests and unrest continue, that symbolic moment suddenly holds far less promise.
This story about colleges canceling graduation was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for our higher education newsletter. Listen to our higher education podcast.
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