Academic Rituals: When to Haggle

Universities are ritual places. The academic year is punctuated by ritualized gatherings: convocations and commencements. We have ritualized titles such as “professor” and forms of address. At times we were funny, impractical outfits and arrange ourselves in largely arbitrary hierarchies meant to invoke historical order that communicates the mystery and traditions of learning. Universities also like to create new rituals from time to time and are replete with invented traditions. These both lean into already existing ideas that academic traditions are ancient (if not almost timeless), but also that each generation finds meaning in them in new ways. In this way, universities use rituals not only to provide the sense of enduring significance, but also as a discourse through which to articulate certain values. Many of the rituals at universities are outward facing and seek to represent the university as a community. There are, however, some that are inward facing: “reading and review…