Winter 2023 Stories

By Madeline Ahmed Cronin

Lecturer
Department of Philosophy

What is the purpose of higher education? What is the distinctive purpose of Jesuit higher education?

Furthermore, in the midst of an ongoing fight for racial justice, sharpening inequality, and the moral crises created by the corporatization of the university (to name just a few facets of our current context), how can we best present this mission to our students? These are some of the questions that animated our seminar on the Jesuit and Catholic intellectual traditions.

Perhaps because we were so taken with the question of the distinct mission and purpose of Jesuit education, a piece that inspired substantial reaction— ire even—was Agnes Callard’s “The Real College Scandal.” I suspect that an underlying concern animating many criticisms was the way in which she sometimes appeared to conflate her own account of the value of being ensconced in the university with the point of the university more generally. In doing so she quite intentionally downplays the social justice objectives, the formation of citizens, and oppressive social structures that might lend shape to the university. For instance, she dismissively concludes, “if I had to measure the worth of my classes in my students’ subsequent civic virtue or life satisfaction, I couldn’t afford to lose touch with most of them after graduation.”¹ While she is right that these elements of university mission are not easily quantified or even tracked, this difficulty does not diminish the aim itself. Instead of dealing with these lofty purposes, she wants to narrow our focus on the real goal of the university, to make “the highest intellectual goods” possible through a community of learners—a community not of autodidacts but what she calls “heterodidacts.” I would wholeheartedly agree a college is a community of learners. The problem is that a Jesuit university must have a richer account of its purpose if it is to successfully address our students and the plural lenses through which they might consider the purpose of their education.

It is precisely because I found Callard’s description of a community of learners so compelling, that I was frustrated by the limits she seems to place on this objective. Callard gives an ingenious insider view into the hidden collaborative elements of classroom discussion. She describes herself preparing to teach a part of Aristotle with which she is unfamiliar, cramming secondary literature minutes before arriving to class with half- formed conclusions. Only then does she use the confused facial expressions of students to refine her own understanding. It was an account of teaching that I found riveting and deeply true. This is why I was so disappointed by Callard’s failure to articulate how this kind of learning experience might benefit students outside the confines of the university. For instance, she laments, “[i]f I had left the university after college, I believe the intellectual life I occasionally glimpsed as an undergraduate would have faded into a nostalgic memory.” No doubt, building an intellectual life outside of the university is often self-charted territory. Reading Aristotle demands discussion partners, and discussion partners can be hard to come by in a world that demands so much of workers and that is so rich in distractions. It is hard. However, emphasizing these barriers without indicating a substantive concern for how these undergraduate experiences will be successfully translated into the future lives of students seems callous. Furthermore, such a treatment of the university as the unique home of the highest intellectual goods perpetuates the marginalization of a history of intellectual communities not approved by the university. In doing so it also fails to sufficiently recognize the barriers to intellectual goods embedded in the walls of the university itself. How can we elevate the goods without recognizing the real way in which racism, classism, sexism, ableism, and so many other oppressions often impede the accessibility of the university and therefore the claim that it is strictly rich soil for cultivating intellectual goods?

Egalitarian Access to Ignatian Goods?

I share Callard’s enthusiasm for the liberal arts (though not her underqualified endorsement of the university). However, her desire to define the university as the unique space within which to achieve the highest intellectual aims dis-incentivizes students to engage with these goods in the first place. Why would my students want to spend a lot of time and effort cultivating intellectual habits that will have no place in their lives after college? If we limit our account of what the university’s purpose is too much, if we tell our students, as Callard does that, “[t]his is what universities are for: reading Aristotle together”—even to make a point—we abbreviate far too much. We introduce them to a depth of consideration and intellectual life with the dangling assumption that these are university-specific practices. We are opening a rarified door only to promise it will be shut in their faces soon afterward. This does not strike me as a very appealing enterprise to most undergraduates. Furthermore, narrowing the purpose of college in this way will disproportionately impact students facing existing barriers to the kinds of humanistic education Callard seems to be defending. As Roosevelt Montás points out in his recent book, Rescuing Socrates: How the Great Books Changed My Life and Why They Matter for a New Generation, families who have historically had access to liberal education, wealthy and white families, will continue to see its value and to pay for it, even if they are not all transformed by it. While those who have no experience with “doing the liberal arts” or with its relevance for their future lives will have no reason to seek such a purpose out.² What is this purpose? Montás argues that a meaningful core curriculum ought to offer guidance in fundamental questions about truth, justice, and beauty—questions that aid students in defining not only “how to make a living, but what living is for.”³ This will allow the liberal arts to remain a luxury “reinforcing social privilege.”⁴ As Montás argues, the liberal arts have a dual capacity: to subvert hierarchies, but also to reinforce them if access is limited.

These questions about liberal education make me wonder whether some of the same dynamics apply to a distinctly Jesuit education. The value of the liberal tradition, Montás argues, is that it presents thinkers who engage in a sustained consideration of life’s enduring questions. Presented in a vigorous way, in a community of teachers and learners, students ought to gain tools for this lifelong pursuit. However, he worries whether liberal arts universities are often failing to present a liberal tradition in a coherent way. For instance, are these texts part of a core—a contested and contestable core but a core nonetheless—which offer students a distinct pathway to discerning meaning in their own lives? Or are they more likely to emerge as a chance encounter in a “pick your own adventure” core? I wonder if the same question should also be asked about the way in which a Jesuit mission is presented? Could our students present a coherent account of what their Jesuit education is for (even if they disagree with parts of this mission)? Do they read any common Ignatian texts? How is this mission specifically elaborated in their core in a way that they can explain? Indeed, one of the most striking moments for me during our seminar was that—though I attended a Jesuit university as an undergraduate and have worked at Santa Clara for seven years—I don’t believe I have read a text about the history of the Jesuits. This experience—this realization—was quite shocking. It was like finally seeing a band live that you had only ever heard recordings of. It was a realization that my access to the Jesuit mission has often been an oral tradition passed on via university speeches. This is not to diminish the value of those speeches. Nor is it to argue that Jesuit universities are failing to convey their mission. It is to wonder whether there are more ways we could ensure that Santa Clara students— regardless of their major—partake in a core curriculum in which they could expect to actually read Ignatian texts (as one among the humanistic traditions to which they deserve an invitation)?

Expanding access to a robustly defined “Ignatian core” in a truly inclusive way, though, seems to present substantial challenges. For instance, in the analogy to liberal arts, we might resist such a core because it implies a fixed list of books dominated by white land-owning men. Conceived as a constant over time, such a tradition will be characterized by hegemonic perspectives and impenetrable. Yet, the presence of such a rigid notion of tradition should not be grounds for rejecting the idea of a tradition altogether. Doing so reinforces the assumption that these texts do not belong to students, especially students from marginalized groups. It also further obscures the ways in which these traditions were themselves contested. It fails to acknowledge that, in the midst of their often very flawed arguments, these texts also make vital headway. Montás points toward the absurdity of such assumptions through his own example; “[my] being a brown immigrant from the Dominican Republic does not make the Constitution less relevant to me than it is to my wife, a white woman born in rural Michigan. She is no closer to and no further from Homer and Socrates than I am or than our two-year-old son will grow up to be.”⁵ This makes me wonder how a Jesuit mission can also be better presented as plural, contested, and as deeply relevant to students from diverse starting points.

A Non-Ideal Presentation of Jesuit Ideals

How might Montás’ argument apply to the idea of a Jesuit tradition? For instance, if we engage students in a core of Ignatian texts, how do we plan to address the history of Jesuit and Catholic contributions to colonial oppression and genocide? What about the various exclusions within this tradition, of women from the priesthood for example? Of GLBTQ+ people? Given barriers like this, how do we avoid a kind of false universalism in presenting a Jesuit mission as speaking uniformly “to everyone?” I would argue that confronting these limitations directly is ultimately a more accessible and hence inviting presentation. Better to address the places we have historically and continue to fall short, then to confuse our students by suggesting that the institution is a city on a hill. If we take the city on a hill approach, then we will automatically lose students who already know otherwise. We also risk undermining the faith that students have in the pursuit of justice altogether if it is only later that they discover the instances of hypocrisy in our own backyard. For these reasons, presenting the fullness of that tradition—including where it needed or needs revision—seems to be a more honest, and consequently a more compelling way to present it to our students.

Though this richness does not always lend itself to the succinct forms of PR campaigns, or mission statements, a core part of presenting ourselves as a university distinctly oriented toward justice must also demonstrate some of the failures and struggle involved in that pursuit. For instance, I see the efforts of Students for GU272 (recently renamed Hoyas Advocating for Slavery Accountability) as a model worth substantial attention. These students partnered with the descendants of former slaves—sold by Georgetown at a time of financial insolvency—to advocate for reparations. In fact, according to a report from the ACLU, in April 2020, two-thirds of the student body voted to increase tuition by $27.20 each semester to “honor those whose lives financed the college’s continued existence.”⁶ In response, the university has made promises and some progress, but the board rejected the student proposal to raise funds directly from tuition. Instead, they have proposed a separate fundraising effort. Furthermore, according to the Georgetown Voice, “in an interview in January of 2022, Georgetown President John DeGioia said funds had been raised and would be distributed by the end of the current semester. Descendants and activists say they have not been.”⁷ It is not an easy task delivering on the kinds of ideals Jesuit universities put forth, but these students are modeling that path. University boards and leadership would do well to promptly and substantively follow their lead.

Taking Georgetown as an example, it seems to me we have an obligation to listen carefully and follow students who are demonstrating exactly the kind of leadership we articulate as our mission. If we are too quick to report progress in these areas, but fail to transparently address our failures as well, then we substantially undermine our integrity with students. Including the formation of “citizens for others” in our mission gives us a weighty responsibility to model this in our own backyard. How can we expect students to continue to believe in these Ignatian ideals if it is only upon closer inspection that we reveal ourselves to fall short? To give just one example in our own SCU backyard, we currently await a response from the board of trustees to the “SCU Just Employment Policy” proposed by the Student Senate. This policy is modeled on a similar policy advocated for by students and adopted at Georgetown. It includes measures to ensure workers’ rights including a living wage for all employees—contractors and “auxiliary workers” included. These are areas that SCU continues to have significant work to do. For instance, the University agreed to sign a revised long- term contract with Bon Appétit restaurant company exempting workers from existing minimum wage and benefits requirements for SCU employees. This was against the advocacy of students at the time. We owe it to students to be responsive to their proposals and to report fully on both our successes and failures in these areas. It is not easy to be a university committed to justice when the predominant model of a university is the neoliberal model, but this is what we are trying to do.

Many would argue that openly tangling with a “pluralistic form” is fundamental to the undertaking of a Jesuit mission. For instance, “The Catholic University as Pluralistic Form” by Michael Buckley, S.J. reveals the historical reckoning of Jesuit universities with the demands of academic freedom and a distinctly Catholic mission. Another especially compelling example from our seminar—a reading that I believe could easily feature in a Jesuit core—was John O’Malley’s presentation of the Jesuit mission in historical context. O’Malley emphasizes the way in which the Jesuits have, from the beginning, confronted the tensions between worldly and spiritual demands. For instance, he argues that it was only by accident that the Jesuits ended up in education. In his account, education presented itself to the Jesuits as the best path to serving the common good. In seeking to serve this common good they were interested in educating future pastors, those who could not afford an education otherwise, as well as future civic officials who might “fill important posts to everybody’s profit and advantage.”⁸ In this context, O’Malley argues that the order did seek to care for the spiritual well-being of their students, but also saw themselves as attending to “the well-being of the earthly city.”⁹ These goals have not always been easy to reconcile. For instance, O’Malley admits “there is no doubt that over the course of the years and then of the centuries most of the schools tended” toward “catering to the rich.”¹⁰ Given the continued prevalence of this tendency—the extent to which Santa Clara is out of reach for so many students— it is clear that these paradoxes remain a key impediment to the satisfaction of a Jesuit mission. As O’Malley acknowledges, the history of the order is not one of linear progression toward these goals. Yet, it seems helpful to consider the way in which, at its beginnings, the order sought to take on a project that they understood as addressing sometimes opposed goods. They were invested in confronting worldly concerns directly and did not see the goal of professional advancement as unable to be married to the spiritual and intellectual goals of education.

Another facet of Jesuit pedagogy that strikes me as especially well-suited to presenting a pluralistic tradition is the emphasis it places on context. On this model, we are obligated to meet students where they are at—in consideration of their personal and professional starting points and needs. There are of course many other pedagogical models that place a similar emphasis on student-centered learning. Yet, it seems helpful to bring together this emphasis on context with the more distinct spiritual and moral aims that a Jesuit mission emphasizes. On this basis, we are obligated to not only tell students that it is valuable to read Ignatius or study theoretical physics, instead we have at least two foregrounding tasks. First, we must consider why this education is likely to already present itself as valuable to students in their existing contexts. Second, we must take seriously the points of friction between our students and the tradition. For example, it is easy enough to promote Ignatian pedagogy by drawing on current endorsements of “soft skills” and the way in which these are professionally relevant. Empathy and depth of reflection are increasingly recognized as professionally relevant skills across many fields. However, this can also make it easy to slip into selling students on a Jesuit education as a kind of niche brand from which they will get all the prestige of a top university with the flare of a Jesuit culture. In conforming too closely to existing categories we risk watering down what is actually of distinct value in a Jesuit mission. To avoid this kind of surface engagement therefore, we should be confronting much more directly the tensions that students themselves are quite familiar with. To give just one example, we might underscore the way a Jesuit education might empower students to overcome the impediments to deep reflection posed by a highly materialistic and actively distracting society.

Life of the Mind in Context: A Realistic Ideal

In response to Callard’s characterization of the point of the university, the Ignatian tradition presents the university as about much more than a community of readers. This mission also claims to spiritually and morally form future citizens. It claims to be much more than Callard would have it. Yet, following Charles Mills’s approach to the liberal tradition, it is precisely because of these more expansive ideal aims that a Jesuit education demands a foundational engagement with the non-ideal elements of its own tradition. It ought to be framed as both less and more ideal. What does this entail? Mills envisions a notion of liberal theory that has an initial non-ideal phase, a phase that must address and ameliorate certain historical injustices before it is even possible to theorize the pursuit of future just social orders.¹¹ I wonder if we could think about an Ignatian tradition in a similar way, as having a history that contains serious injustices with institutions that continue to reflect and perpetuate many hegemonic structures and injustices. We could then operate on the assumption that addressing these injustices in our own institution and tradition is a foundation to better articulate and then live out our mission.

Presenting these non-ideal ideals addresses many of the holes created by Callard’s limitations on the purpose of a university. For instance, there is a great deal of truth in Callard’s view that intellectual treasures are not well supported by the demands of worldly affairs. We should be honest about this. Furthermore, in an oppressive society many of these burdens will be unevenly distributed. Our students will get busy with the demands of work and caregiving in uneven ways. They are likely to experience ample pulls on their attention—the shine of prestige, the distortions of racism, the co- optation of critical projects by status quo institutions, the demands of earning and spending. In these instances, Callard is right that it is easy for the joys of intellectual life to simply “fade away” as the rest of life takes over. However, it is also crucial that—at the outset—we are teaching students to practice and cultivate a rich life of the mind in a way that arms them to integrate this (however differently) into their lives after graduation. We should be forthcoming about the barriers to intellectual life, but also about facets of life most conducive to its flourishing, and about the role community can play in its preservation. It will be easier to read in reading groups; foster this among your friends, family, or in your place of work. Write things for your communal publications; make a podcast; host a poetry potluck. As bell hooks so convincingly argues in Feminist Theory from Margin to Center, your community will be stronger if it develops a robust account of theory.¹² Making time for reading, for meditation or prayer, even as the easily all-consuming jobs of parenting, working, and living take hold: These are just a few examples of ways in which we can contextualize the purpose and meaning of a Jesuit education not only for the present, but also for the future lives of our students.