The University of Notre Dame has faced accusations of timidity and partisanship since the news broke last week that neither President Donald Trump nor Vice President JD Vance will be delivering this May’s commencement address, apparently bringing to an end a decades-long tradition of inviting the incoming president (or at least his vice) to graduation.

Count the Sycamore Trust among the critical voices. The alumni group, which is devoted to promoting Notre Dame’s Catholic identity, ribbed the university’s administration on social media for making the apparent snub for self-serving reasons, especially after Notre Dame had no problem inviting pro-abortion politicians like Barack Obama and Joe Biden in previous years.

And yet, despite concerns that Our Lady’s university might be not inviting Trump or Vance for the wrong reasons, Sycamore’s founder, Bill Dempsey, is glad that the practice of platforming and honoring U.S. presidents at graduation is apparently over.

“I think the policy should be interred with a spike through its heart so it will never rise again to divide and anger,” said Dempsey.

Some student groups, such as Notre Dame’s College Republicans and the editorial board of the student newspaper, disagree with this assessment, as they had urged university administrators to invite Trump (after skipping over him 2017) prior to March 18’s announcement.

But Dempsey’s view has some popularity on the South Bend, Indiana, campus, including among conservative Catholic faculty members.

This position isn’t a call for Notre Dame, or Catholic colleges writ large, to shy away from engaging with prominent elected officials and inviting them to campus. Instead, it’s a call to disentangle intellectual dialogue from graduation speeches and honors.

And it’s an opportunity, these voices contend, for the university to get back to the basics of what makes for a good commencement address at a Catholic university.

George Weigel has some thoughts on the matter. The public intellectual and former fellow at Notre Dame’s Center for Ethics and Culture has given his fair share of commencement addresses, a collection of which will be published on March 27.

“Seems to me that commencement addresses at Catholic colleges and universities should be given by someone who has demonstrated, through their scholarship or public service or personal witness (or all of the above), a firm commitment to the truths of the Catholic faith, even at some cost,” Weigel told the Register.

Weigel’s criteria aligns with guidance the U.S. bishops have given on honors and platforms at Catholic universities. And it can easily be applied to what’s unfolding across the street from Notre Dame, where Saint Mary’s College has invited former Irish president Mary McAleese to receive an honorary degree and give the commencement address this spring.

As a pro-abortion activist who has devoted her post-political life to overturning Church teaching on matters like male-only holy orders and sacramental marriage, McAleese seems like a poster child for someone who should not be honored and given a platform at a Catholic university.

But at Notre Dame, the situation is arguably less straightforward. After all, sitting presidents have addressed the graduating class beginning in 1960, when President Dwight Eisenhower was invited to campus, apparently as a last-minute suggestion of Father Theodore Hesburgh’s secretary.

The practice went on for several decades without much of a hitch, until 2009, when the invitation of the aggressively pro-abortion Obama was met with significant outcry, including public condemnation by 83 U.S. bishops.

Holy Cross Father John Jenkins, then Notre Dame’s president, defended the decision to invite and honor Obama by referring to St. John Paul II’s call for Catholic universities to be a place “for fruitful dialogue between the Gospel and culture.”

As many pointed out at the time, however, the commencement dais is not exactly the ideal place for exchanging ideas. And the impression that the university is endorsing, or at least not contesting, a figure’s problematic views and actions is only compounded by awarding him or her an honorary degree.

Furthermore, things are different than they were in 1960, when the U.S. president’s presence on campus could arguably go a long way to counteract American Catholics’ marginalized social status. Now, Catholics occupy important roles in every branch of government, and Notre Dame is perennially recognized as a top-20 university.

Politics have also changed. And with things as polarized as they are today, Dempsey and those who share his views see inviting a partisan leader to commencement activities as a surefire way to turn a day that should be about celebrating graduates into an acrimonious affair, “and, importantly, to no good purpose.”

Some of the same campus voices that are glad that the practice of presidential commencement speakers may be over still want Notre Dame to invite prominent figures to campus for an exchange of ideas. In particular, there is significant interest in hearing from Vance, the nation’s second Catholic vice president who has an unusual interest in the political implications of Catholic theology.

If the university wants to pursue its “bridge-building” mission in a way that avoids the pitfalls that come with the platform and honors of a commencement address, they could take a page out of the book of Notre Dame’s own Center for Citizenship and Constitutional Government.

When the center’s director, Vincent Muñoz, introduced Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis for a talk this past fall, he made clear that the Republican politician had been invited with the requirement that he would take questions from the audience, consistent with the academic and not honorific character of the event.

Ironically, Notre Dame’s actual pick for commencement speaker this year, Adm. Christopher Grady, hasn’t escaped controversy. A recent student commentary protested the invitation of the acting head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, given his role in executing U.S. military operations in Afghanistan, Iraq and Palestine that the author contends “contradict Catholic values.”

As for whom Notre Dame invites to give commencement addresses going forward? Weigel sees this year’s brouhaha as an opportunity for the prestigious, though often problematic, Catholic university to engage in a deeper reorientation.

“When its head stops spinning, I hope it’s pointed toward the grotto and what that means for the school’s Catholic identity.”