This story originally ran on Columbia News.
The mace—a silver-plated cudgel adorned with acanthus leaves, historically carried by knights marching into battle—features prominently in Columbia’s Commencement ceremonies. With mace in hand, its bearer descends the steps of Low Library just ahead of the University’s president. Their entrance to the stage signifies the University’s “authority to confer degrees on the students of Columbia.”
This year, there will be two mace bearers because there will be two ceremonies, one for graduate students in the morning and one for undergraduates in the afternoon. The honor has been bestowed on professors Michel Sadelain, director of the Columbia Initiative in Cell Engineering and Therapy, and Kristina Douglass, associate professor of Climate at the Columbia Climate School.
A recipient of numerous academic and professional awards for his work and breakthrough research, notably in CAR T-cell therapy, Sadelain will carry the mace at the University’s graduate schools ceremony.
Douglass, an archaeologist, is a 2025 MacArthur Fellow. Her work is grounded in ethical, collaborative partnerships with local, Indigenous, and descendant communities to address global challenges such as climate change, biodiversity conservation, and sustainability planning. Douglass will carry the mace at the University’s undergraduate schools ceremony.
The role of mace bearer came about in 1933, when John Munro Woolsey, a federal judge, donated the mace, an 18th-century reproduction of a mace designed in a style fashionable in England during the reign of James I (1603-1625). Woolsey, who is best known for his ruling that James Joyce’s “Ulysses” was not obscene and could be published in the United States, was moved to make the donation because the mace was topped with a crown, a symbol of his alma mater’s founding as King’s College.
Columbia’s mace bearers wear a red and white robe and a black tam. According to Stephen Wolgast, an expert on the history of Columbia University’s academic dress, this distinctive costume was first worn in 1966, when Samuel M. Devons, a British physicist and Columbia professor, was asked to carry the mace. He initially declined the honor because his academic robes had been destroyed in the London Blitz. To address the situation and convince Devons to accept the role, a University official provided him with the gown and hood that you see today, which was made by Harcourts of Toronto and now hangs in the University closet that holds the trustees’ robes. Devons served more than a decade as mace bearer before it was decided that the honor should be rotated among the faculty each year.
In 2018, George Deodatis, vice dean for research at Columbia Engineering and this year’s Faculty Mentoring Award recipient, recalled being nervous as he carried the mace down Low steps several years before. “I was extremely careful to look mostly at the steps rather than the crowd in front of me,” he said. “I was relieved when I reached its resting location.”
Words of wisdom for Douglass and Sadelain!
