Columbia appoints – Columbia will feature two mace bearers in 2026—Michel Sadelain for the graduate ceremony and Kristina Douglass for the undergraduate ceremony—expanding a tradition rooted in a 1933 donation from Judge John Munro Woolsey.
Just ahead of Columbia’s president on Commencement day, the mace bearer makes a quiet descent down the steps of Low Library—silver-plated cudgel in hand, crown and acanthus leaves catching the light—an entrance that marks the University’s authority to confer degrees.
This year. Columbia will have 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 will be bestowed on professors Michel Sadelain and Kristina Douglass. each carrying the tradition into a different part of the day.
Sadelain. director of the Columbia Initiative in Cell Engineering and Therapy. will carry the mace at the University’s graduate schools ceremony.. A recipient of numerous academic and professional awards for his work and breakthrough research. notably in CAR T-cell therapy. he steps into a role that has long symbolized institutional authority at the start of the academic moment.
Douglass will carry the mace at the University’s undergraduate schools ceremony.. An archaeologist and 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.
The mace itself traces back to the University’s own history.. In 1933. John Munro Woolsey—a federal judge best known for his ruling that James Joyce’s “Ulysses” was not obscene and could be published in the United States—donated the mace to Columbia.. The piece he gave was an 18th-century reproduction of a mace designed in a style fashionable in England during the reign of James I (1603–1625).. Woolsey was reportedly 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.
The ceremonial look has its own backstory.. Mace bearers at Columbia wear a red and white robe and a black tam.. Stephen Wolgast. an expert on the history of Columbia University’s academic dress. said the costume was first worn in 1966. when Samuel M.. Devons, a British physicist and Columbia professor, was asked to carry the mace.. Devons initially declined the honor because his academic robes had been destroyed in the London Blitz.. To resolve the problem. a University official provided him with the gown and hood used today; that set was made by Harcourts of Toronto and now hangs in the University closet holding the trustees’ robes.
Devons served more than a decade as mace bearer, and eventually the practice shifted so the honor should be rotated among the faculty each year.
The tradition keeps producing the same small tension in different decades: 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.”
The sequence of details has stayed consistent through the changes: the mace procession down Low steps signals “authority to confer degrees. ” the crown-topped mace came to Columbia through John Munro Woolsey’s 1933 donation because it reflected his alma mater’s founding as King’s College. and the ceremonial costume—first used in 1966 after Devons’s robes were lost in the London Blitz—has been sustained even as mace bearing has rotated among the faculty.
For Douglass and Sadelain, the message that comes with the moment is practical as well as symbolic.. A tradition carried with care will return twice this year—once for graduate students in the morning. and again for undergraduates in the afternoon—keeping the crown. the acanthus leaves. and the ceremony’s signal of authority in step with Columbia’s two-part Commencement.
Columbia University Commencement mace bearer academic tradition Michel Sadelain Kristina Douglass CAR T-cell therapy MacArthur Fellow John Munro Woolsey Low Library