LatinLanguage.us

Around 1960, US college diplomas started changing from Latin to English (my mother earned her BA and MA in English from the same midwestern college around this time; the BA was in Latin, the MA from two years later was in English). The Ivy League has (naturally) always been a holdout, but this op-ed by classics professor Christopher Francese argues it’s time to retire this pretentious and obsolete practice.

It’s a point I’m sympathetic to. The only reason to write a diploma in Latin today is to overawe with faux-erudition–face it, if you can’t read your own diploma, what’s the point of having it? There’s something ironic about insisting on a token of education that demonstrates your own ignorance. Worse, defending the practice simply encourages students to see Latin as an “ivory tower” subject, which means fewer students taking up the subject in school.

And before you ask, yes I wish my diplomas were in Latin, but then again I can easily read a Latin diploma–at least the ones that don’t have some unusual Neologism (hmm…what’s the Latin for “Marketing” or “Los Angeles"?).