Every week, Hillsdale College President Larry Arne joins Hugh Hewitt to discuss great books,

great men, and great ideas. This is Hillsdale Dialogues, part of the Hillsdale College

Podcast Network. More episodes at podcast.combe.hillsdale.edu or wherever you find your audio.

Morning, glory, and evening, Grace, America.

Thanks to Mark Davis for sitting in for me a little bit.

I am so pleased to welcome back, Dr. Larry Arn, president of Hillsdale College.

It's commencement season everywhere.

Some commencements are done.

Hillsdale's is done.

Some are this weekend, some are next weekend, some go into the middle of June.

But I wanted to spend some time on that.

It's not really a Hillsdale dialogue, but it's really all Hillsdale dialogue.

First of all, Dr. Arne, what is the whole purpose of a commencement?

Is it a unique American tradition, or does it go back to the founding of Oxford and Cambridge?

It's old.

First of all, to understand it, you know, of course, what have I done?

I've done 27 commitments now, isn't that crazy?

And it starts with the oddness of the name, commencement.

You know, it is about starting out your life, right?

But the mood and the tone is all farewell. You know, you could call

it valediction. You know, farewell, goodbye. This is the end. And that's, you know, the talk is heavily

involved in that. It's called commencement. Now you have to ask yourself the question, what unites

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