President George W. Bush will be the principal speaker and the recipient of an honorary doctor of laws degree at the University of Notre Dame’s 156th Commencement exercises May 20 (Sunday). The ceremony will begin at 2 p.m. in the Joyce Center on campus.p. President Bush is the seventh U.S. president to be awarded an honorary degree by the University and the fifth to be the Commencement speaker, following his father in 1992, Ronald Reagan in 1981, Jimmy Carter in 1977 and Dwight Eisenhower in 1960. Gerald Ford in 1975 and Franklin Roosevelt in 1935 received honorary degrees at special academic convocations. President John F. Kennedy was the University’s 1961 Laetare Medalist.p. President Bush has made three previous visits to Notre Dame, twice for football games and, most notably, on March 7, 1980, when he spoke on behalf of his father’s presidential candidacy at the University’s Mock Republican Convention. (The elder Bush won the Notre Dame vote but lost the national nomination to Ronald Reagan, whom he served eight years as vice president.)
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