We, the students of the Master of Arts in International Relations Degree with the Committee on International Relations (CIR) in the Social Sciences Division at The University of Chicago, demand the Division of the Social Sciences allow graduating M.A. students in CIR to wear Master’s hoods at graduation. We make this demand in support of our colleagues in the MAPSS program at the University as well, from whom much of this petition has been borrowed. This is a logistically uncomplicated demand, and this petition has several supporting claims.

The University of Chicago adorns Master’s graduates with hoods in most departments (e.g., Booth, Graham, Harris, Humanities, Law, SSAD). The University of Chicago considers our program to be an “intense, intellectually transformative one-year program”, yet despite being an accelerated program, CIR is not currently treated to be at the same caliber as other departments, as apparent through our lack of hood recognition at convocation, nor does it seem to carry the same weight. In turn, it is basic acts such as not providing well-earned hoods to our graduates that entrenches us in such othering hierarchies of M.A. programs within a single university. We, as CIR students, are aware of articles circulating that question the legitimacy of our one-year Master’s along with others in the division and whether the program itself prioritizes students sufficiently. To deny CIR or MAPSS graduates a Master’s graduation regalia—one that not only defines Master’s graduates across the country but across our university—lends credence to these claims. It is an act by the University and Division that inherently weakens the very name of their own degree-granting graduate programs. We are calling on the Department of the Social Sciences and of CIR to take the stance that our degree program is indeed equally legitimate to any other Master’s degree at the university and allow us to wear our hood.

School is, at once, both a space of critical disruption AND inhibitory to deep change (a paradoxical dialectic that makes schools even more contentious as a site of power struggles). Yet, the University continues to divide its own programs, knowing that it will only leave graduates from programs such as CIR and MAPSS, that much less likely to recommend and represent their program. All M.A. graduates deserve a physical marker that this graduation is a step beyond their last graduation–not a repeat. Moreover, it needs to be understood that time does not equal rigor, especially when it comes to the simple length of a program.  Graduate regalia is not only meaningful in the context of a ceremony. The CIR program also has unused activities budgets that could easily assist students in purchasing a hood for our small yet mighty spring and summer cohorts.

This demand is a minor one, but it rights a major wrong. CIR students should be afforded the same privileges as other Master’s graduates across the country, if only out of respect for our completion of an intensive program. We are calling on the Division of the Social Sciences at the University of Chicago to allow students to purchase and wear Master’s hoods at commencement. We are willing to agree on a standard hood through either a third-party seller or the university’s bookstore, should time permit for its production before June 3rd, 2023. Regardless of whether the hoods get here in time or the logistics of the demand, it is a principle that will affect many class years of our colleagues to come, and thus, our urgency remains nonetheless.

With Respectful Urgency,

Dani Jones, 

On Behalf of

The Class of 2023 Graduates of the Master of Arts in International Relations Degree Program, with The University of Chicago's Committee on International Relations