This spring honors have cascaded on Philip Caldwell, 59.

Climaxing a 26-year Ford Motor Co. career, he was formally named chief executive. In the fall, when Henry Ford II steps down and Caldwell takes over, he will be the first non-Ford in 73 years to run the world's second largest automaking company. Boston University recognized this last week by making Harvard business school Graduate Caldwell an honorary doctor of laws. The citation sounded more like a Ford brochure: lauding Caldwell as an eloquent spokesman for the free enterprise system, it also stressed his success at selling Ford trucks and bringing the Fiesta minicar to market.

Georgetown University, noted for its school of foreign service, was evenhanded in drawing up awards. Last year the university honored the Israeli ambassador, Simcha Dinitz. So this year the nod went to Ashraf Ghorbal, 54, Cairo's Ambassador to Washington. Ghorbal was hailed by Georgetown as "a genuine member of the international cathedral of ideas." The ambassador, who stands a slight 5 ft. 3 in., was diplomatically not paired in the academic procession with fellow doctor of humane letters and former Boston Celtics Player-Coach Bill Russell, who towers at 6 ft. 10 in.

Atlanta's Spelman College harmonized with an apt duet of famous singers as it granted honorary fine arts degrees. One was to Opera Soprano Mattiwilda Dobbs, 53, a Spelman alumna who polished her coloratura with a Marian Anderson Scholarship. The other, fittingly, was awarded the legendary Anderson herself, now 77. Hailed as "the most famous and best loved contralto of our time," Anderson received a standing ovation for her long, path-marking career. Responded she in a brief, upbeat acceptance: "It's all waiting for you out there, and you can make your lives what you want them to be. God bless you and be with you, because he can help you when no one else can."

Ballet Star Mikhail Baryshnikov journeyed to Yale last year to watch his friend Soviet Poet Joseph Brodsky receive an honorary degree. This year Misha was back to receive an honorary doctorate of fine arts. He very nearly did not make it, however. His plane was diverted to Bridgeport because New Haven was fogged in. Baryshnikov had to be rushed to the campus by police escort, arriving barely in time to hear Yale President A. Bartlett Giamatti declare: "You have brought classical dance to millions as you made your grands jetes into their lives. With the courage of your conviction that artistic growth demands adventure, you have dared to let 'push come to shove' as you moved from Petipa to Tharp and Balanchine."

On the Record

Some commencement-speech samplings:

Ellen Goodman, prizewinning columnist, at Mount Holyoke: "Options are a lot easier than decisions. You're living in a time when women are being told they can have it all, and we know we can't."

Art Buchwald, humorist, at Georgetown University: "I know many of you are bitter at our generation for using all of the oil reserves. But I would like to remind you of one thing. It was our oil and our gas, and we could do anything we wanted with it. Your generation has to find its own oil and gas reserves."

Joseph A. Califano Jr., HEW Secretary, at Notre Dame: "Of all the judgments of history and God we should fear, it is their judgment on our continued failure to use the means at hand to end the hunger of the world that we should fear most."

John Kenneth Galbraith, economist, at Yale: "I can't ask you to go out and comfort the afflicted; that would be considered eccentric. But perhaps you can afflict the comfortable."

S.I. Hayakawa, California Senator (who earlier had maintained that the poor do not require gasoline because they are not working), at Pepperdine: "Who are these people waiting in the long lines at the gas stations? Well, virtually all of them are people who need gas to get to work, and they need to work in order to pay their taxes so that the poor will be supported."

Lee A. lacocca, president of Chrysler Corp., at George Washington University: "There is no free lunch. The consumer pays for it all."

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