De-Emotionalizing DACA

If the last six months have indicated anything about the current state of our political discourse, it is that it’s nearly impossible to engage in bipartisan political dialogue without an overload of virtue signaling from members of the left. The left’s dogmatic standard in civic conversation is based upon the notion that feelings trump fact, instinct trumps reason, and emotional impulse trumps logic. This has left a noticeable taint on the way we carry out conversations on public policy. The consequences of such a standard are damaging and destructive. Of course, emotion plays a central role in the human experience and it’s only natural that it has some bearing on one’s political leanings and tendencies, but when it comes to public policy, one must rely on the objective and impartial rather than the infinite and indeterminate. Although emotional bias as a legitimate basis for diplomatic discussion has taken over seemingly every component of our political discourse, it is most prominent in discussions concerning DACA, or Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals. Despite the policy’s blatant executive overreach and unconstitutionality, the emotion-infused policy proposals and overly euphemistic language of the DACA debate are ultimately detrimental to the integrity of political discussion on both micro and macro levels in the United States. 

In 2011, one year prior to former president Barack Obama’s reelection, he rightfully acknowledged on his campaign trail the antidemocratic and unconstitutional ramifications that an executive order like DACA would create: “Sometimes when I talk to immigration advocates, they wish I could just bypass Congress and change the law myself. But that’s not how democracy works.” 2011 Obama was correct: surely everyone who has passed a seventh grade social studies class knows that the legislative branch makes laws while the executive branch merely enforces them—to suggest otherwise runs contrary to the sociopolitical and constitutional foundations of the United States government, and the former president was right to clarify the issue in the honest and transparent way he did. 

Come 2012 reelection season, however, in an effort to frame members of the Republican Party as cold-hearted and compassionless (a rather masterful political move), President Obama decided that the integrity of the executive branch ought to take a backseat to his own partisan needs (the Republicans had won the House majority in 2012 as well, so he had to rely upon an executive order to push his agenda through, which stands in stark contrast to the current administration’s lawmaking tactics). His unilateral political maneuvering won, and before anyone knew it, DACA was instituted as a “temporary measure,” and any attempt to question the moral and constitutional foundations of the order was met with snide and pompous remarks from political opponents. What was once “not how democracy works” suddenly became “who we are as a people,” as Obama wrote when President Trump announced plans to end the program in September 2017. What was once considered executive overreach became known as “basic decency,” what was once illegal and unconstitutional became acceptable and encouraged, one who was once called an “illegal immigrant” was suddenly referred to as a “dreamer,” and what was once a desire to uphold the Constitution is now known as “racist” and “xenophobic.” 

Of everything we have learned over the past several months of immigration policy debate, the most striking would be the power of words. Politics and persuasiveness go hand in hand, and it’s no coincidence terms like “dreamer,” “family reunification,” and “undocumented” have been brought to the forefront. The left’s approach to the immigration debate is one of overblown euphemisms and emotionally persuasive language—and to their credit—it has worked quite well. Even the rather partisan Holy Cross administration has given in to such emotionally permeated language (which in and of itself speaks volumes about the school’s political priorities given that the administration rarely, if ever, focuses its attention to critical Catholic issues like abortion and the rise of the anti-Catholic cultural influences, while it does not hesitate to comment on immigration and refugee concerns), with members of the administration saying on multiple occasions that they are “troubled” by what was initially a temporary instance of executive exploitation being repealed. 

Surely, it is difficult to blame these so-called “dreamers” (illegal immigrants who were brought to the United States as children) for the wrongdoings of their parents, and even the most far-right politicians and pundits don’t have any real desire to deport hundreds of thousands of innocent and hardworking migrants for something that was no fault of their own. Unfortunately, though, that’s not the point. No matter how much we may sympathize for these individuals, facts are facts: the executive order allowing them to remain in the United States is glaringly undemocratic. Compassion does not hold a candle to constitutionalism, regardless of any political or emotional stakes. 

In more recent weeks, President Trump has held several bipartisan meetings on the future of DACA, and he has made it clear on multiple occasions – most notably in his first State of the Union address—that he is willing to compromise with Democrats on DACA and other pressing immigration issues so that both parties are satisfied. More specifically, the President has proposed his “four pillars” plan that would provide a pathway to citizenship for approximately 1.8 million “dreamers,” $25 billion for border security measures including the construction of a wall, an end to chain migration, and an end to the Diversity Visa Lottery Program. Of course, this proposed plan is quite generous and more than reasonable despite its neglect for the Obama administration’s unconstitutionality—as President Trump himself indicated, it “covers almost three times more people than the [Obama] administration. Under our plan, those who meet education and work requirements, and show good moral character, will be able to become full citizens of the United States over a 12-year period.” To no surprise, most Democrats are not budging: House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi suggested that “the plan is a campaign to make America white again” while Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer claimed that Trump was using his plan “as a tool to tear apart our legal immigration system and adopt the wish-list by anti-immigration hardliners." This rationale, of course, is ludicrous. As political pundit Ben Shapiro said, “to suggest that allowing in millions of illegal immigrants and millions more legal immigrants is somehow a reflection of underlying racism is pure demagoguery.” The Democrats are, of course, politically posturing to their far-left base, and their inability to even consider a compromise as generous and balanced as President Trump’s sheds light on where their highest priorities truly lie. 

As unavoidable as emotional influence often is when it comes to major public policy issues and as challenging as it can be to resist such influence, if we truly want a shot at preserving the moral and constitutional integrity of our country, it is time to set emotion aside. Likewise, and more importantly, real debate cannot exist in an environment in which those with opposing viewpoints are shut down as “racist” and “bigoted.” When emotion takes the forefront in our public policy debates, it is easy to resort to name-calling, moral patronization, and virtue signaling, but what good do such antics do for the country? Passion and emotion are important, but they have their time and place, and politics is not one of them. The future of the country depends upon our willingness to sacrifice feelings for fact and sentiment for common sense and the rule of law. That journey starts here and now. 

Treason and the Culture of Deceit

We live in a culture of deceit. Two events this winter have proved that point abundantly. On January 5th, Michael Wolff published Fire and Fury, a gossipy account of the Trump White House. Taken to task for the fact that many of his sources (from a former British Prime Minister, to major Trump allies, to a slew of journalists at the New York Times) explicitly denied quotes attributed to them, Wolff found himself on the back foot. He wouldn’t produce the recordings of their conversations which he (allegedly) possessed. No, the public doesn’t need hard evidence to support contested claims. Instead, Wolff proposed a novel method to prove what was true and what wasn’t: “If it rings true, it is true.” What does that mean, in essence, except for “It’s true if you want it to be true?” Different things will sound true or false to different people. In that case, my biases distinguish what’s true from what isn’t. On a closer investigation, they do more than that; my biases come to constitute the truth. 

On February 5th, President Trump spoke at a manufacturing plant in Ohio. Apparently prickled by insufficient applause at his State of the Union address, he said of the Democrats, “They were like death and un-American. Un-American. Somebody said, ‘Treasonous.’ I mean, yeah, I guess, why not. Can we call that treason? Why not?” Cue media firestorm number three hundred and seventy-nine, even though the President was probably joking. As with a lot of media meltdowns over things Trump says, there’s something here worth being upset about. Nationally elected figures shouldn’t call their political opponents traitors, even in jest. But, as a Holy Cross alumnus over at National Review has pointed out, the left lost the ability to complain about that a long time ago. 

When? Oh, seven years ago, that time Joe Biden said Republicans in Congress and the House “have acted like terrorists” by playing debt-ceiling politics. Or six years ago, when Senate majority leader Harry Reid started speculating that Republicans were deliberately tanking the U.S. economy in order to score political points against Barack Obama. Or three years ago, when Hillary Clinton compared pro-life Republican politicians to “terrorist groups.” Or even three months ago, when Andrew Cuomo accused Republicans who voted for tax reform of violating their oath. “It’s treasonous,” he said. “It’s modern-day Benedict Arnold.” 

All of this puts Trump in his context. For nearly a decade in mainstream politics, and substantially longer in media circles, we’ve been transforming our political opponents into terrorists, traitors, and totalitarian sympathizers. But does that have anything to do with Michael Wolff? Of course it does. Trump and Clinton, Joe Biden and Harry Reid are all enthralled to the Wolff standard for truth. It has nothing to do with whether the accusation can be proven, whether the facts can support it, or indeed whether a conversation actually happened. No, none of those things make a quotation or a story true or false. But they ring true, so Democrats are traitors and pro-lifers are terrorists and the Republicans want to destroy the United States of America. 

But why does it matter? This isn’t a new phenomenon. We can find this sort of casual relativism at the headwaters of Western culture, critiqued in the plays of Sophocles and the dialogues of Plato. While that’s true, there’s an important difference now. We can see it in the standard that Michael Wolff proposed. He didn’t say “It’s true because I said it’s true,” or “It’s true because I can persuade you that it is.” He said, “It’s true because it rings true,” which is to say, “It’s true because you want to believe it.” 

And sadly, whether it’s a treason accusation or an invented quote by Tony Blair, we all too often do believe it. The great and good turned out in hordes to cheer for Fire and Fury back in January. Hillary Clinton even stood on stage at the Golden Globes to read selections from it. Trump’s crowd cheered on those treason accusations with gusto, and we know the far-right wing agreed. A heap of students at this college would gladly lend their voices to the Clinton-Biden siren song of Republican traitors and pro-life terrorists. Our society makes biases primary, and tries to conform reality to it. Truth? What is Truth? 

This rot runs from the roots of the tree to its crown: on campuses, in the news media, in Washington. It has real consequences. For obvious reasons, when truth doesn’t exist, nobody believes anything the other side says, so we make things up and decide they’re true instead. Conservatives will be content to believe that the Democrats want to recreate the Soviet Union, and liberals will think that Republicans have a hankering for Germany circa 1936. There results an alchemy of outrage which transposes minor policy disputes into raging culture wars. And, because we don’t believe the other side will tell the truth, compromise becomes impossible. 

The issue of “fake news” reveals another facet of the problem. The term should diagnose a real problem—the kind of “journalism” produced by Infowars that intentionally misleads people to manipulate their voting preferences. But instead, it has become a synonym for “bad press,” or even just “honest reporting.” CNN, the New York Times, and the Washington Post are “fake news” in a lot of conservative circles. National Review and the Wall Street Journal earn the same title among my liberal friends. The assertion isn’t merely that they’re biased; it’s that any of those five news outlets will make up facts whole cloth in order to score political points. Of course, every media outlet has a slant. But if the NYT and WSJ are “fake news,” what are Breitbart and Buzzfeed? 

Pontificating about how the West is facing a cultural crisis has become a cottage industry of considerable scale. I’m not going to toss my hat in that particular ring. You need perspective to do that, and the perpetual screaming match of a New England campus doesn’t offer it. This hill isn’t high enough to see that far. But the limited view from here shows us a particularly vicious kind of tribalism—fractious groups of like-minded people glommed together against their political opponents. Factions in the Church. Identity groups on the progressive left. The seven kinds of conservative. The unmoving progressive/traditionalist battle line. These reveal a bloodless form of blood feud, in which common good and common decency are trampled to win the ideological campaign. A truthless society makes for a culture at war, and culture wars are tribal wars. 

A lecturer I heard back in September put it best. He argued that our public life has lost the images of the covenant. Although drawing on religious imagery, he was talking about the signal forms of social solidarity, like stable marriages, civil friendships, and personal loyalty. Is that our fundamental problem? I don’t know. But the religious imagery can tell us some -thing. “Covenant” is a biblical word, evoking God’s fidelity to his covenant with Israel. In Exodus, the Hebrew for covenant fidelity is emet. When ancient Jewish scholars translated the Bible into Greek, they rendered emet with a word that also stands for “truth.” Fabricated “truths” betray our social covenant. That’s the treason of the culture of deceit. 

Burial

April 6, 2016. During the monumental construction of Holy Cross’ new Luth Athletic Complex, much-extolled for its heft and grandeur, a time capsule is exhumed. As the Luth absorbs the Hart Center, a steel box is lifted from the latter’s dusty brick rubble. The ideals, memories, and relics of the College’s 1975-1976 students and faculty lie in a worker’s hands. The capsule is opened. Nestled inside is an assortment of memorabilia: copies of the Catholic Free Press, the Worcester Telegram, the Evening Gazette, the Crusader, and Crossroads. An American Revolution bicentennial medal and flag. Mementos from Rev. Francis J. Hart, S.J., and a newspaper article about his dear friend Will Jenks ’54. A letter regarding scheduling intramural basketball. A St. Ignatius Loyola Fundator Society of Jesus token. 

And lastly, a “beaded necklace” with images of Christ and the Virgin Mary. Catholics call it a Rosary. 

We do not know whose words those were. We do not know on whose account the misprint stole onto the pages of the Holy Cross Alumni magazine. What we do know is a much more sobering fact: that here at the College of the Holy Cross, there are individuals so estranged from the College’s Catholic identity and Jesuit charism that they do not know what a rosary is. The College, of course, doesn’t force prayer on its students; not one person must slide beads across his fingers out of some enforced necessity. But the problem is not that we have non-Catholic students. Rather, the real question is one of presence; one would expect that, in a Catholic institution, one of the most powerful prayers in existence would be visibly displayed on campus. If not that, we should at least recognize that the beads are used in prayer—not in fashion. There is no reason our faith needs to lie hidden. 

The misidentification tells us something, like the rest of the objects in the box. Consider the values of faith, history, and patriotism that so many at the College seem to be willing to abandon in the rubble. 

The time capsule also contained a copy of the Catholic Free Press, which, in 1975, must have merited value as an emblem of our faith. It was, after all, buried with the cornerstone of the Hart Center. Yet now, over forty years later, it would be bewildering to see a student know what the Catholic Free Press is, much less actually read it. The newspapers usually stand nearly untouched on the newspaper rack in Smith Hall, every-so-often picked at by students who, like winter fowl searching for nourishment, peck and decide that their worth is barren. The St. Ignatius token would have represented the spiritual legacy of St. Ignatius within the Catholic Church; the two were then inseparable. Now? It stands for a nebulous “Jesuit mission.” 

The copy of Crossroads accompanying its peers represents the gradual decay of our history. Among the undergraduate body, it has obtained no legacy here; perhaps graduates know it became the current Holy Cross Alumni magazine. And, over the impending years, the same may be said for the Crusader. Its name has been abandoned, buried by the Spire. One must wonder whether this noteworthy change will leave its predecessor swallowed up by the irrepressible gullet of time. 

The commemorative bicentennial flag and medal of the American Revolution represent another withering ideal: patriotism. In a college so vehemently concerned with social justice, which often takes the form of a double-edged sword - lacerating the faults of some to bolster the worth of others - patriotism shrivels like a dying vine. “He isn’t my President.” “Crooked Hillary.” The claim “I appreciate the United States for the opportunities it has offered me” is rarely made here. Perhaps that respect had roots here forty years ago, but there is little reason to expect a 250-year-anniversary commemoration of the Revolution in 2026. 

That time capsule represented the loyalties of an earlier Holy Cross: an inheritance of Catholicism within a Jesuit charism, history, patriotism. Thus passes the glory of the world. But, within a small scheduling letter, we find something the College has managed to retain: its concern for greater athletic community. We have, at least, accomplished that much. The Luth Athletic Complex will serve over a quarter of the student body with unwavering commitment and presents itself as a source of community pride. We shall, at least, excel in athletics. 

But since the Hart Center was built, how far have we come—or how far have we fallen? Does Catholicism still provide a thorough basis for the College’s decisions on the executive level? How much do our current undergraduates actually know about the history of the College? Is there still an underlying love for our country beneath our breath? Unfortunately, these questions cannot be easily answered with statistics and surveys. They embody a greater crisis in our very nature as an institution. And they must not, like our faith and devotion, lie buried. 

Emblazoned on the side of the Luth Athletic Complex is a massive cross, shamelessly on high for all to see. At night, it glows a radiant purple, shedding light over the campus and letting its presence be known in the city of Worcester. We aren’t afraid to show the religious tradition of Holy Cross; we need to find the courage to live it. 

The Abolition of Manhood

Immediately following the news that the Hawaii missile attack warning was just a false alarm, PornHub traffic from the Aloha State jumped 48% higher than normal levels. Men of older generations might have taken a sigh of relief, hugged family members, and thanked God after such a scare. Our generation, on the other hand? Not so much. 

If this shows anything, it is that men have much different priorities now than in previous generations. Rather than prioritizing family, country, and God, we prioritize ourselves. We put our desires above all else and seek pleasure at all costs. We are hedonistic narcissists. 

This mindset is not new. Self-worship drove King Herod, Hitler, and Stalin. When God is removed from the hierarchy of beings, man rises to the top; man is “the measure of all things;” man is god. And if man is god, he is the arbiter of truth; he is in full control of what is deemed “right” and what is deemed “wrong.” Moral truth becomes subjective, and genocide becomes no more inherently evil than helping Granny cross the street. 

It’s why an increasing amount of people believe that right and wrong are just matters of personal opinion. It’s why we hear so-called “Catholic” politicians say they are “personally opposed” to abortion yet applaud a woman's “right” to kill her unborn child. We hear people sanctimoniously call anyone who doesn’t condone this intolerant bigots. We’re told to be tolerant of everything except those who are intolerant. We live in a world that loves the sin and hates the sinner. 

As Venerable Fulton J. Sheen said, “tolerance applies only to persons, but never to truth.” There is nothing more precious than the truth, and there is nothing more evil than its denial. The toleration of immorality is not a virtue, but a vice. G.K. Chesterton said that “tolerance is the virtue of a man without convictions”. A man without convictions seeks to do anything that he so pleases; and if everyone else tolerates it, he is allowed to do so. As Matt Walsh writes in The Unholy Trinity, “it takes nothing to tolerate and accept,” while it “takes effort and work to not tolerate something.” Tolerance is an easy principle for lazy men. The four cardinal virtues (prudence, fortitude, temperance, justice) and the three theological virtues (faith, hope, charity), however, are not so easy. It is difficult to be courageous or faithful or prudent or charitable, and when you preach to others that they ought to practice these virtues, you are expected to live by those standards as well, or you will be ridiculed as a hypocrite. If you preach tolerance, however, you can live in any way you desire as long as you are tolerant of the sins of others. 

Hollywood loves to lecture Americans about how “intolerant” we are, as if the segment of our population with a near 100% divorce rate should act as our moral authority. And yet, despite the moral charge we’ve laid upon them, the past six months reveal just how badly they’ve failed in that role. Can we really expect anything else? We tell men there is no right and wrong, and then condemn them for acting wrongly. We tell men they don’t need to respect women, and then condemn them for harming women. We tell men to tolerate the actions of others, and then condemn them for their own actions. C.S. Lewis writes in The Abolition of Man, “[w]e make men without chests and expect of them virtue and enterprise. We laugh at honor and are shocked to find traitors in our midst.” 

But Hollywood’s moral authority makes another point: the people we view as role models are often the very worst of all. But where else are we to look? While there are plenty of great mothers out there who embody what it means to be a good woman, more and more fathers are absent at home, and boys are left learning how to be a “man” from singers and rappers who promote drugs and degrade women. Young men grow up not with the desire to be courageous and honorable, but with the desire to get laid whenever possible. 

Masculinity isn’t sex appeal; smoking a cigar, sipping on whiskey and hunting a bear don’t make a man a man. The crux of manliness lies in integrity and virtue—in the ability to maintain a belief despite opposition, and to live according to it. The ideal of masculinity is none other than Jesus Christ. Jesus is not the free-loving hippie that many churches portray Him to be. He was not “tolerant” of the merchants in the temple when He overturned their tables and drove them out. Neither was He “tolerant” when He said “if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away.” Rather, Jesus possessed real virtue. He stood firm in truth and love in the face of lies and hatred, and He held his ground all the way to the cross. He gave his life so that we may live, and that is the manliest thing one can ever do. 

Letter from the Editors: February 2018

Dear Reader, 

Thank you for picking up a copy of The Fenwick Review. 

The Board of Trustees has decided that we will continue to call ourselves Crusaders. The discussion took a year, and elicited an unprecedented number of responses. There was no lack of student input —fishbowl discussion, campus events, articles in this publication and others, listening sessions and the online comment forms saw to that. Indeed, at the beginning it seemed to be a lot easier for people who objected to the nickname to make their voice heard than it ever was for those of us who opposed the change. 

We don’t imagine it will be an entirely painless decision for the Board; portions of the faculty will be enraged, and a small minority of students will be upset. Listening to their complaints, and suffering the bad press, cannot be altogether pleasant. In spite of that, they reached a decision in accord with the traditions of Holy Cross, the College’s identity, and the desire of most alumni and a significant portion of the student body. We are grateful for their common sense. 

Whereas our issues last semester generally focused on issues closer to home, this fourth issue focuses heavily on political and cultural affairs. Mr. Brennan and Mr. Christ both offer their comments on the political affairs of the moment: DACA and Donald Trump’s first 13 months in office, respectively. In his first article for the Fenwick Review, Mr. Foley considers the concept of masculinity in contemporary culture. Mr. Rosenwinkel turns his attention to the cultural touchstone of “tolerance,” and dissects its relationship to love. Mr. Hanley discusses the latest manifestations of the “culture of deceit,” in Donald Trump and Michael Wolff. Mr. Giangiordano offers a spiritual reflection on the importance of the four last things. Mr. Raheb picks up on the theme of Holy Cross’s traditions with an article about the time capsule recently unearthed in the Hart Center. 

Finally, we offer our thanks as usual to Professor David Schaefer, our faculty moderator; to Ms. Raymond, whose artwork adorns our cover for the tenth consecutive issue; and to Mr. Giangiordano, our uncredited copy editor. 

Pontifications complete and genuflections made, we’re delighted to present this issue to you. We hope you enjoy it as much as we did. 

Bill Christ, ‘18 
Claude Hanley, ‘18 

Editors in Chief 

Letter from the Editors: December 2017

Dear Reader,

Thank you for picking up a copy of The Fenwick Review.

Back in late September, The Fenwick Review co-sponsored a lecture by R.R. Reno, the editor of First Things, entitled “A Christian Interpretation of the Age of Trump.”  Dr. Reno observed that the election of President Trump attests to the breakdown of the liberal postwar consensus.  He noted the once-prevailing tendency for  Conservatives and Liberals to agree that deconsolidation and greater fluidity were positive good; their disagreements arose merely over what spheres that deconsolidation ought to affect.  Today, the talk of walls, border, and “America First” on the Right makes the same point as the left’s fascination with cultural appropriation and the popularity of Bernie Sanders on the Left: Enough of deconsolidation; Americans want something stable to hold on to.  Dr. Reno has argued that liberalism is dying.  His lecture aimed to provide a Christian version of what should come next.  

In connection with his lecture, Dr. Reno agreed to an interview with The Fenwick Review about the state of higher education in the United States.  It is our privilege to publish the full text of that interview in this issue. The interview, conducted for The Fenwick Review by Mr. Hanley, ranges from general questions about the purpose of universities in America, to the particular challenges of free speech and intellectual diversity, to questions about the unique mission of Catholic higher education.  We are grateful to Dr. Reno for offering his insights, which we hope will prompt deep reflection on the nature and purpose of our four years on Mount Saint James.

This issue also features a balanced set of essays on both Catholicism and American politics.  Most prominently, Mr. Christ and Mr. Ciolek offer two different perspectives on the issue of gun control legislation in the United States.  In the wake of shootings in Sutherland Springs and Las Vegas, their comments on the morality and constitutionality of gun legislation are particularly important.  Mr. Dooley critiques the viewpoint behind a number of recent College-wide lectures, that Catholics ought to simply compromise with the Democratic party on the issue of abortion.  Elsewhere, Mr. Garry offers a scathing take on the notion of a “right” to healthcare, and the poverty of moral discourse which such a notion reflects.  Mr. Rosenwinkel makes a few remarks on evangelization and sanctity.  Finally, the editors note with happiness that Mr. Connolly’s poetry has finally returned to our pages.

We hope you find the reading insightful and engaging.  We certainly did.

Petite Pulchritudinem.

Claude Hanley and Bill Christ

"To Take the Risks of Love": an Interview with R. R. Reno

Dr. Reno is the editor of First Things, America’s largest journal of Religion and public life. He holds a Doctorate in Religious Ethics from Yale University, and was for 20 years a professor of Theology and Ethics at Creighton University.  This interview was conducted on September 21st, in connection with Dr. Reno’s lecture, “A Christian Interpretation of the Age of Trump.”  It has been edited for length.

Claude Hanley: What would be, in your estimation, the place of the university in American life now, and what should its task be?

R.R. Reno: Well, the purpose of the university is to provide a community of learning, it’s a place for the formation of a secular society that is committed to the life of the mind, and then obviously most students go on to professional work.  Most don’t become professors, but the educational experience serves as a leaven in society at large. I think especially on Josef Pieper’s wonderful short book Leisure, The Basis of Culture.  The American idea of the four-year liberal arts degree is of a time in your life when you’re not actually pursuing professional activities, but leaves you with something that’s closer to contemplative. Pieper argued that is actually necessary to have culture.

Now our view about the role of the university in the public square is shaped by the fact that after World War II, with the GI Bill, there was a big upsurge in college enrollments. And for the men that were coming back from World War II, the university became a kind of place where they looked at questions about what kind of society they were going to have. Consequently, we have this false view that the university is this kind of crucial place where the future of our society is debated and formed and shaped. I think that that’s distorted. It’s obviously true for some of our universities, but we overemphasize that because of the 50’s and 60’s, when we saw this sort of new, emerging middle class, different people from ethnic backgrounds being integrated into America’s leadership. Universities were the focal point for that process.  So universities would ideally be more nourishing, and less political than they are today.

CH: How do the humanities disciplines contribute to that mission?

RRR: Well, I’d put it more broadly, as the liberal arts. I mean, studying astrophysics doesn’t serve any practical purpose. It’s not clear studying evolutionary biology serves a practical purpose either.  Fossil records, all these sorts of things, contribute to our knowledge of the natural world, which we can perhaps use technically at some point.  Mathematicians also, they’re famous for coming up with things that have no relevance whatsoever, and then a hundred years later, people discover practical uses for their mathematical models. But it’s the wonder and joy of knowing that precedes their practical usefulness. And that’s a liberal education; it’s for its own sake, and not for some other end. That strikes me as what is so important about a liberal arts education.  We are made to know, and it is an intrinsic good to know truth.  Not every project can offer that; the liberal arts humanize us, and they make use more fully human.

CH: How does that humanization translate to society and to politics?

RRR: Whether it’s Shakespeare or astrophysics, you go out into the public square, if you’re liberally educated, and you’re less likely to be swept up in a thousand ideologies of the time. It gives you a kind of independence of mind.  I think it’s important, in any society, that you have people who have this independence of mind. John Henry Newman referred to education leads to an enlargement of mind.  You become more capacious…capable of grappling with a full range of experience. I don’t want to privilege the humanities in this regard.  I started out in physics as an undergraduate. My sister’s a physics professor at the University of Iowa. You have to specialize, you can’t know everything. It’s not like you’re swallowing all this food until your gut gets full and distended. It’s not just the amount of facts.  Instead, it’s developing a kind of mental plasticity, and flexibility, and a capacity that prompts you to think about things in such ways.

CH: It’s said that there is a lack of intellectual diversity, of that independence of thought in universities today. The same people are promoting the same kinds of ideas that are getting preeminence. Do you think that’s a valid criticism of the American university?

RRR: I don’t like to use this new term diversity here. We should have diversity of some things and we should have unity of other things. So, I think it’s not a cure-all. But there is a problem, it seems, where there isn’t independence of thought, there’s too much group think. And I don’t think it’s a matter of, as people often say, “Well, it’s because all the professors are liberals.” Now, I went to a small liberal arts college, not unlike Holy Cross.  The professors were ninety percent registered Democrats, they were certainly liberals.  But it didn’t feel like an environment that was closed or limited. To be capacious, to encourage adventure, to have the security as a faculty member to accept the fact that sometimes your students will go in a different direction -- These are qualities that I think that one hopes for in a faculty, but I see less of them today. It could be that the problem is not lack of diversity, but a kind of careerism on the part of faculty.  Or perhaps people want a cheap emotional payoff of feeling that their work has a great moral and political significance.  As a result, there’s a kind of works-righteousness around our salvation, at least our secular salvation by making sure that our  classes teach the right political lessons. I think we need to dig more deeply.  It’s not just a lack of diversity. That’s a symptom, not a cause.

CH: So, to continue this theme, one of the main challenges now is academic freedom and freedom of speech. I think of the events at Middlebury last year, and similar controversies.  What do you think at least some of the underlying issues are that cause this sort of tension?

RRR: Our society is very divided. Grownups don’t tell young people what life is for, and they’ve rebelled.   Everything is open, you choose your own values, et cetera et cetera.  I think it’s quite natural that students want to find some consensus and stability. The radical schools that want to shut down who they perceive to be bad people, I think are misguided.  But that may not be an altogether unhealthy desire, that they need right and wrong. So, I think we’re seeing these perverse dysfunctions in education because we the grownups have created that need.  It’s being filled by some sort of ideological, imposed consensus, rather than a real, genuine consensus.

CH: And this critique reaches back to the same idea, that we’ve lost the ability to pursue the human good?

RRR: Right. If we’re concerned about academic freedom and free speech (and we should be concerned about these things), we need to be clear about what the education at the institution is for, and why shouting people down harms the proper end of education. We’re a community of inquiry.  In a community of inquiry, if people can’t speak, in that sense there’s an imposed consensus, and there’s not a lot of inquiry any more. I’ve talked with young people, and they’ve told me that they find more and more, that it’s just wise not to say what’s on their minds. It’s too dangerous. Well, how can you make progress in the pursuit of truth if you can’t articulate what you think the truth is, and hear what others have to say in response? The problem with shutting down speakers is that it impedes us in achieving the end of education, which is to refine our ideas and make them more in accord with the truth. So I don’t think that academic freedom is an end in itself, it needs to be the means to the end -- having a healthy medium of inquiry. I don’t think that Holy Cross should invite a creationist to give lectures. It just doesn’t help advance the pursuit of truth.  You and I can come up with examples where “no, that’s not going to help.” The problem again is that then the sort of ideological frame of mind comes into play.  It’s a crazy view that the political opinions of half the country are taboo. How could any reasonable person think that? It’s irrational.

CH:  So we have to balance academic freedom with a duty to truth.  What duty to truth does a Catholic university in particular have, and how should it be balanced against academic freedom?

RRR: I think that a Catholic university has an absolute duty to teach what the Catholic Church teaches. A Catholic university that does not teach that which the Church teaches is not betraying its Catholic identity; it’s betraying its identity as a University. The purpose of a university is to encourage people to pursue the truth, and also to transmit the truth. And we believe, as Catholics, that what the Church teaches truths that are indispensable, not just for our salvation but also for our fuller understanding of the human condition. There’s a question of priorities. It’s not the job of the Catholic university to represent all possible views of what it means to be human; It is absolutely the responsibility to propose to students, and to the world, that the Church teaches what it means to be human. That entails defining priorities: hiring priorities, what kind of courses to acquire, etc. It’s not a violation of academic freedom to say that Catholic theology is required, but a Jewish Studies professor’s course is not required. It’s not a violation of academic freedom; that’s the institution establishing its priorities.   Nor is it a violation of academic freedom for the university not to invite speakers who hold positions contrary to what the Church teaches. Now there could be student groups or others who want to invite those people.  Then the university has to make a judgement about whether it harms the mission of the university, which is to transmit and encourage students to pursue the truth. In many cases, Catholic universities have confidence in their own students. If it is doing what it should be, which is to ensure Catholic teaching is clearly taught, it can tolerate dissent quite easily.

CH: How does that concern influence the other disciplines, outside of philosophy and theology?

RRR: It applies across the board. For instance, one problem we have is that in the sciences, there’s often a materialistic metaphysics that’s operating very close to the surface: that our brains are our minds, and we’re just neurons firing. A university should guard against teaching this. It’s scientism, it’s not science. The same goes for economics.  Economics is a powerful and important discipline that teaches us to think in a critical way about markets.  It models the human behavior in terms of maximizing authority, where that’s understood as maximizing one’s material interest. That’s fine for modelling, but it easily can lead to a generalization that humans are nothing more than utility maximizing achievements. That’s not true for the human person either. So in many different disciplines, there needs to be reflection on how we as an institution can present our view of the human person. Pope Benedict’s Regensburg speech dealt with that.

CH: Are there any particular reforms you think should be made, or is it more a change in attitude toward the project of the University?

RRR: I think Catholic universities really need to get a grip on the hiring of faculty. We’ve spent too many decades now trying to imitate secular higher education. We need to return to the wisdom of our own tradition, and recognize that the metaphysical poverty of our time is quite acute, and we need to focus on hiring people, not the people who all agree, that’s absurd, you’re never going to find that [laughs], that’s the whole idea. You can’t even find Thomists who agree. It’s not a question of agreement, it’s a question of whether or not there are faculty members who believe that there’s truth, and that truth transcends a particular discipline. In Pope Benedict’s Regensburg speech, he looked back with nostalgia on his years at Regensburg, when faculty members often would gather together and try to talk about the big questions, transcending the specialized knowledge that they had in philosophy or theology or science or literature or history. One has to grope towards these larger theories together, and we have to hire professors who are committed to try to do that together. That’s what it means to be liberal, not having a collection of specialists.  And I think because the Catholic Church opposes a compromise of truth about the human person, both as to our manifold destiny in God, as well as to our natural duties and responsibilities, and because it presents a comprehensive vision of the human person, we in particular have an inheritance that allows us to recognize the poverty of our present age. We should address that poverty by building institutions that pursue a larger vision.

FR: But that would entail first recognizing our inheritance.

RRR: Right.  Catholic universities have a natural excellence of the life of the mind. Most of what goes on at Catholic universities functions in the area of the natural virtues -- intellectual integrity, intellectual honesty and intellectual zeal. This is encouraged and elevated by the supernatural virtue of faith, but these are natural virtues. It’s possible that we can draw upon educational models and experiences at secular universities. It’s not that we only have to hire people with degrees from Catholic universities, etc., etc. But it does require a kind of recognition that higher education in the United States is not in good shape. We see this from this dysfunctional campus environments. And because it’s not in good shape, consequently we should not just be imitating what other, elite, universities are doing.  We should be returning to our sources and asking ourselves, “What is it that the Catholic tradition proposes as a vision of the Truth?”

FR: In conclusion, what piece of advice would you give undergraduates about how to take their four years of undergraduate education?

RRR: Don’t worry about what comes next. Bill Deresiewicz, who wrote a book called Excellent Sheep about today’s college students, said that there are two religions that dominate higher education today. One is a religion of political correctness, and the other is a religion of success. Both of those religions actually feed on each other, because political correctness is a way of baptizing a person to success. So I would say that success is a far more powerful god than political correctness. So beware of that idol. Study the things you love.  One of the great poverties of our age is that it really is a loveless age. People don’t feel that they even have permission to take the risks of love. If you love physics, study physics. If you love theology, study theology. Don’t worry about what you’re going to do for a living right now.  In the United States, we have society set up for people to do well. We don’t have a society set up for people to cultivate the life of the mind. Cultivate it now, and it will carry you through many of life’s difficulties and setbacks, which are inevitable even if you are successful.

Astrology

I attended his lecture
    afraid of the heavens;
        suspicious that Father Sky
            cannot shield Mother Earth.

I raised my hand
    and gave some pause;
        my anxiety swelled as
            I braced for impact.

He said past me,
    “All signs point to
        us being a flash
            in the pan—

            Humanity
            is frail and the
            stars are not immortal.
            Only time waxes forever.
            Only energy is eternal.”

I took my leave
    looking up at the morning;
        asteroids shine no light,
            nature gives no warning.