The presidents at commencement

1865 — 2009 · the University of Notre Dame

The standing note: Notre Dame stands in the unincorporated community that bears its name, beside the city, and this history prints that plainly wherever the university appears; its commencements were nevertheless among the largest recurring gatherings in the city's orbit, and six times the speaker was a sitting president of the United States — gatherings the whole region turned out for, told here as events. The line has a prologue: at the commencement of 1865 the guest of honor was General William Tecumseh Sherman, whose sons Willy and Tommy had been Notre Dame's and whose daughter Minnie was Saint Mary's; Willy had died of camp fever in 1863, and the New York Tablet reported the students gave the general a "hearty cheer." John F. Kennedy came first as a congressman, delivering the winter commencement address of 1950 and receiving an honorary degree; as president he took the university's Laetare Medal at the White House in 1961. Franklin Roosevelt and Gerald Ford received honorary degrees at special convocations, not commencements — the university's own list keeps the distinction, and so does this section.

The presidential six: The first presidential commencement speaker was Dwight Eisenhower, on Sunday, June 5, 1960 — the university's 115th commencement, held on the Mall before 10,000 people, the president interrupting the 45th reunion of his West Point class to come, taking an honorary Doctor of Laws and speaking twenty minutes; Cardinal Montini, the future Pope Paul VI, received a doctorate at the same exercises and celebrated the Baccalaureate Mass. The university magazine estimated 200,000 people along the seven-mile motorcade route from the airport — the magazine's estimate, printed as its estimate. Jimmy Carter's address at the 1977 exercises is the one the university calls the key foreign-policy address of his presidency, on human rights and a changing Soviet threat. Ronald Reagan came in 1981 in his first public appearance after the attempt on his life that March, under exceptional security, and was reunited with Pat O'Brien, his co-star in Knute Rockne, All-American, who also received an honorary degree; he told the graduates the West would not contain Communism but transcend it. George H. W. Bush addressed the sesquicentennial-year exercises of 1992 on the American family. His son George W. Bush spoke in 2001 — the fifth president to address a Notre Dame commencement and the eighth to receive its honorary degree.

The sixth: Barack Obama delivered the address at the 164th commencement on May 17, 2009 — the sixth president to speak, the ninth to be awarded an honorary degree — in the most argued-over of the six visits: the invitation drew criticism from at least seventy bishops, Ambassador Mary Ann Glendon declined the Laetare Medal over it, and the diocesan bishop, John M. D'Arcy, boycotted the exercises. Obama opened by granting the point — "I know it has not been without controversy" — and spoke on common ground. The controversy is part of the event's public record and is printed as such; the university president, the Rev. John I. Jenkins, was neither fired nor resigned over it and was elected to a second term that year.

Sources:

1. University of Notre Dame News, "Notre Dame Commencement Speakers" (2001, updated 2021) — the presidential line whole: Eisenhower's first, Carter's address, Reagan's return, the elder Bush in 1992, the younger in 2001, and the Sherman prologue of 1865.
2. University of Notre Dame, the 1960 commencement program and the university magazine's account — June 5, 1960: the Mall, the 10,000, Cardinal Montini, and the magazine's 200,000 motorcade estimate.
3. University of Notre Dame, Joyce Center at 50 — "President Obama: Notre Dame Commencement 5-17-2009": the 164th commencement, the sixth speaking president, the ninth honorary degree.
4. The White House (Obama administration archives) — the commencement remarks of May 17, 2009, as delivered; Catholic News Service year-end review, 2009 — the Glendon refusal and Bishop D'Arcy's boycott.