Hillsdale College Grants Honorary Degrees at Commencement Ceremony
Bishop Robert Barron, Elizabeth Ailes, and Alan N. Taylor received honorary degrees in public service
HILLSDALE, Mich. — At its 171st annual Commencement ceremony on May 13, Hillsdale College awarded Honorary Doctorate of Public Service degrees to Bishop Robert Barron, who addressed the graduating class of 2023; Elizabeth Ailes; and Alan N. Taylor. Hillsdale College President Dr. Larry P. Arnn awarded the honorary degrees.
Robert Barron is bishop of the Diocese of Winona-Rochester (Minnesota) and founder of Word on Fire Catholic Ministries. He received his B.A. and M.A. from the Catholic University of America, his S.T.L. from Mundelein Seminary, and his Ph.D. from the Institut Catholique de Paris. Bishop Barron was ordained a priest in the Archdiocese of Chicago in 1986 and appointed to the theological faculty of Mundelein Seminary in 1992. He has taught as a visiting professor at the University of Notre Dame and the Pontifical University of St. Thomas Aquinas and was twice scholar in residence at the Pontifical North American College at the Vatican. He served as the rector/president of Mundelein Seminary University from 2012-15. Ordained a bishop in 2015, he served as auxiliary bishop of the Archdiocese of Los Angeles from 2015-2022. He is the creator and host of the documentary series Catholicism and has written numerous books, essays, and articles. Episodes of his podcast, The Word on Fire Show, have been listened to over ten million times. More than 500,000 subscribers receive his daily email reflections.
Elizabeth Ailes’ award-winning media career began as a researcher and booker for “NBC News at Sunrise” and “Before Hours,” a daily business show she co-produced with the Wall Street Journal. She was the first producer hired to launch the financial network CNBC, and later was responsible for its on-air merger with the Financial News Network. Mrs. Ailes became the youngest female vice president at NBC and was responsible for launching the cable network America’s Talking, the forerunner to MSNBC. Mrs. Ailes also owned and published two newspapers in New York’s Hudson Valley. She now lives in Palm Beach, Florida, and is involved with non-profit organizations focused on social welfare and workforce development.
Alan N. Taylor is the president of Hart Enterprises, Inc., in Sparta, Michigan, the leading OEM supplier of special application needles and custom medical devices for the healthcare industry. Mr. Taylor is an avid sportsman whose passion for the outdoors led him to form the Nimrod Society in 2003 with a group of dedicated sportsmen. The Nimrod Society protects the privileges of the nation’s sportsmen while continuing and advancing conservation and wildlife management education programs by educating non-sportsmen users of public lands and the general public about the positive role sportsmen play in wildlife conservation. Thanks to a generous gift from Mr. Taylor, Hillsdale College established the Nimrod Education Center in 2020. The Center’s purpose is to teach the societal benefits of hunting and fishing to Hillsdale students, non-hunters, and non-fisherman alike.
Awardees join the ranks of an esteemed list of honorary degree recipients, including poet Will Carleton (1876), cryptologist Elizebeth Smith Friedman (1939), entrepreneur Malcolm Forbes (1984), novelist Mark Helprin (2011), philosopher Sir Roger Scruton (2012), Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas (2017), and author and psychologist Jordan Peterson (2022).
View photos of the honorary degree recipients here.
For a high-resolution copy of the Hillsdale College clocktower logo, click here.