December 9, 2012
VIA ELECTRONIC MAIL AND HAND DELIVERY
President Mary E. Lyons
University of San Diego
5998 Alcala Park
San Diego, California 92110
Dear President Lyons,
We write today to respectfully request your immediate resignation as president of the University of San Diego. Under your leadership, the pattern of missteps in matters of academic freedom and shared governance places the academic mission and reputation of the university at serious risk. The undersigned do not support your continued role as president and chief administrator of the university.
The recent rescission of Professor Tina Beattie’s agreement to be a Frances G. Harpst Center for Catholic Thought and Culture Visiting Fellow, an action that has earned USD well-deserved censure in the international academy, including the reasonable, if uncomfortable suggestion by a Cambridge historian that the action colludes in the suppression of academic exchange, is the latest of these transgressions. The fact that no serious rationale has been offered to Professor Beattie or the larger academic community is unacceptable.
In your letter of rescission to Professor Beattie, you offer no reason to think that her presentations would not be in full accord with the primary mission of the Frances G. Harpst Center for Catholic Thought and Culture. You describe this mission by first noting the intentions of those who have financially supported the center, and say that its primary mission “is to provide opportunities to engage the Catholic intellectual tradition in its diverse embodiments: doctrinal, spiritual, moral, literary, artistic and social. This would include clear and consistent presentations concerning the Church’s moral teachings….” You also claim that Professor Beattie, as a Catholic theologian, dissents publicly from the Church’s moral teachings and that there is a “contradiction between the mission of the Center and your [Dr. Beattie’s] own public stances as a Catholic theologian.”
Professor Beattie’s scholarly record of books, articles, lectures and appointments offers ample evidence that she would be fully capable of providing opportunities to engage the Catholic intellectual tradition in a manner consistent with the primary mission of the Center. The text she intended for the Prayer Breakfast and which Professor Beattie was obviously prepared to send in advance, is an exemplary weaving of the doctrinal, spiritual, moral, literary, artistic and social dimensions of the Catholic intellectual tradition. The deftness with which she integrates the poetry of Hopkins and Herbert, the philosophy of Aquinas, the social critique of Pope John II, Hebrew scriptural teachings and contemplative insights is impressive. We do not see anything that suggests an unclear or self-inconsistent presentation.
We learn from your letter of November 2, 2012 to Professor Amy Besnoy (Chair of University Senate) that the reason for the rescission of Professor Beattie’s invitation is that she became the signatory of a public letter “urging Catholics to dissent from official teaching.” While it is true that Dr. Beattie signed a letter of August 13, 2012 to The Times reiterating some principles of pastoral care put forward by the Catholic Church in England and Wales and by Cardinal Hume, the letter signed by Professor Beattie is, in our opinion, seriously mischaracterized by you when it is described as “urging Catholics to dissent from official teaching.” The letter neither endorses nor rejects proposals to extend civil marriage to same-sex couples. It merely suggests that there are reasons, reflected in certain pastoral care principles, to support such extension, and that Catholics using fully informed consciences and taking such principles into account, may reasonably back the proposed legislation.
Your letter to Professor Besnoy still does not explain why Professor Beattie’s Visiting Fellowship to the Center would in any way conflict with the mission of either the Center or the Catholic character of USD. The Center’s mission, as described on the university’s website, is intended to play a role in the academic life of the university and engage the universityin “critical dialogue” with the Catholic intellectual and cultural traditions. The website explains that
Today, no less than in the past, Catholic universities have a vital role to play in engaging and questioning this tradition in light of contemporary human concerns and with the same academic rigor and freedom that have characterized and ensured the tradition’s intellectual vigor and depth.
The Center for Catholic Thought and Culture was inaugurated in July 2008 to enable and foster this engagement. (http://www.sandiego.edu/cctc/about_cctc/)
Another of the Center’s goals is to “provide faculty with opportunities and support for development and to create quality courses that expose students to the Catholic intellectual and cultural traditions.” It is reasonable to conclude that the Center, by virtue of its published description, mission, personnel, physical, budgetary and administrative connections to USD, is a part of the University of San Diego, rather than an independent entity or instrument of the Catholic Church. The Center’s activities and personnel are in no way exempt from the university’s academic freedom and shared governance policies. Professor Beattie’s questioning of certain moral teachings of the Catholic Church, something she neither denies nor confuses with the questioning of doctrinal truths, cannot be taken as a legitimate reason for the rescission. Certainly, we cannot accept the view that Professor Beattie’s reasonable discussion of moral teachings is inconsistent with the mission of a center that forms part of an academic, degree-granting institution of higher learning for which academic freedom is a core value.
No mandatum is required of theologians to teach either as faculty or visitors at USD, and the university’s academic freedom policy states that there is no conflict between academic freedom and the Catholic identity of the university:
“The University maintains that academic freedom is compatible with the University’s Roman Catholic identity. Thus, the University imposes no religious limitation on academic freedom. Just as the University respects the religious traditions, the freedom of conscience, and the liberty of each member of its academic community, so too does it ask for respect with regard to its Catholic character. “(Policies and Procedures Manual 4.1)
Thus, it appears, even setting aside what many consider to be significant violations of the university’s shared governance policy, wherein faculty have primary responsibility and whose voice shall have the greatest weight when it comes to faculty status decisions such as this, we must raise with you, once again, the issue of academic freedom. Because Professor Beattie was not a member of the faculty, it will likely be claimed that no academic freedom rights have been violated. But such an argument would rest on a narrowly conceived notion of academic freedom, for its meaning and value go far beyond the ‘rights’ of individual faculty members or students. USD, and indeed, any institution presuming to call itself a university, should be concerned with supporting an academic environment wherein the responsible and thoughtful exchange of views can occur unimpeded and according to the standards of the academic fields in play. To thwart, by means of rescission, the exchange of views thought controversial by some university constituents, whether those persons be donors, board members, students, faculty, staff, administrators or members of the community, is to injure the academic culture of the university, to diminish the Catholic intellectual tradition, and to impoverish democratic society in general. It is to make USD “less likely to provide students with the broad liberal education they need to become informed citizens who can participate fully in our democracy.” (Larry Gerber)
As you know, the academic Mission Statement of the University of San Diego states that,
“The University of San Diego is a Roman Catholic institution committed to advancing academic excellence, expanding liberal and professional knowledge, creating a diverse and inclusive community, and preparing leaders dedicated to ethical conduct and compassionate service.” Mission Statement (Policy 1.2)
The undersigned wonder how the university can prepare leaders dedicated to ethical conduct if opportunities for discussion of ethical matters are censored or subject to an ideological litmus test. Indeed, how can any of the Mission Statement’s aspirations be realized if any of the university’s educators are chosen according to such a test or by an inappropriate community of expertise?
Your offer of November 13 to re-invite Dr. Beattie on the condition that she not be accorded any honorific title only adds, as one faculty member put it, insult to injury. Your claims to the Center’s advisory council that the Center was designed and funded in order to proclaim “approved” Church teaching without protection of academic freedom policy 4.1 and its guarantee of no religious limitations on free inquiry, are incoherent. They not only defy common sense understanding of the Center based upon its public descriptions, but also the testimony of the Center’s director and fundraising solicitations dating back to 2008. To accept your offer of reinvitation would be to endorse the reasoning behind it, and that is unacceptable. Moreover, your response to the crisis created so needlessly by the rescission does not acknowledge the injury to academic freedom and shared governance at USD, nor does it retract your statements regarding the nature of the relationship between Catholic theological inquiry and issues of public relevance. You have not apologized to Professor Beattie or to Professor Mannion, nor to our students and alumni who are suffering deeply. You have not apologized to the faculty or to the academic communities of USD and beyond. In sum, your response has been inadequate.
The undersigned are distressed and exasperated with what appears to be your repeated flouting of widely accepted guidelines for academic freedom and shared governance. Your actions in this and past rescissions of qualified and respected scholars indicate to us that your support for academic freedom and shared governance fall far outside the mainstream of the academic community in general and USD in particular. Therefore, we respectfully request your immediate resignation as the president of the University of San Diego.
Sincerely,
Christopher Adler, Professor of Music
Harriet Baber, Professor of Philosophy
Brian Clack, Associate Professor of Philosophy
Alana Cordy-Collins, Professor of Anthropology
Bahar Davary, Associate Professor of Theology and Religious Studies
Mary Doak, Associate Professor, Theology and Religious Studies
Kim Eherenman, Professor of Spanish
Orlando Espin, Professor of Theology
Carlton Floyd, Associate Professor of English
Steven Gelb, Professor of Education and Leadership Studies
Aaron S. Gross, Assistant Professor, Department of Theology and Religious Studies
Jerome Hall, Associate Professor of Anthropology
Lawrence M. Hinman, Professor of Philosophy
Patrick J. Hurley, Professor of Philosophy, Emeritus
Louis Komjathy, Assistant Professor of Theology and Religious Studies
Patricia Kowalski, Professor, Psychological Sciences
Stacy Langton, Professor, Department of Mathematics and Computer Science (I endorse the request for resignation but do not endorse every statement made in this letter)
Virginia Lewis, Professor of Political Science
Gerard Mannion, Professor of Theology and Religious Studies; Director, Center for Catholic Thought and Culture
Vidya Nadkarni, Professor of Political Science
Angelo Orona, Associate Professor of Anthropology
Jo Ellen Patterson, Ph.D., SOLES, Professor
Donald B. Peterson, Professor Emeritus in Chemistry
Linda L. Peterson, Professor of Philosophy
Dr. Marianne Pfau, Professor of Music, College of Arts and Sciences
Michael R. Pfau, Associate Professor, Department of Political Science and International Relations
Ann Pirruccello, Professor of Philosophy
Jack W. Pope, Professor, Department of Mathematics and Computer Science
Thomas Ehrlich Reifer, Associate Professor of Sociology; Affiliated Faculty, Ethnic Studies, Women & Gender Studies
Professor Fred Miller Robinson
Lonnie Rowell, Associate Professor, Dept. of School, Family, & Mental Health Professions, School of Leadership & Education Sciences
Thomas Schubert, Professor of Electrical Engineering
Daniel Sheehan, Professor of Physics
Marie Simovich, Professor, Biology
Steven W. Staninger, Professor, Copley Library
Abraham Stoll, Associate Professor, Department of English
Barton Thurber, Professor of English
Karma Lekshe Tsomo, Professor, Theology and Religious Studies
A. John Valois, Professor Emeritus of Psychology,
Jeffrey Wright, Associate Professor, Mathematics and Computer Science
*Professor, School of Business Administration (name withheld by request)
*Assistant Professor 1, College of Arts and Sciences (name withheld by request)
*Assistant Professor 2, College of Arts and Sciences (name withheld by request)
*Adjunct Faculty Member, College of Arts and Sciences (name withheld by request)
*Associate Professor, SOLES (name withheld by request)
*Associate Professor, College of Arts and Sciences (name withheld by request)
*Assistant Professor (name and academic unit withheld by request)
*These names are held in confidence by Dr. Ann Pirruccello and will not be released without express permission of the signatories.
CC: Ron L. Fowler, Chair, University of San Diego Board of Trustees
CC: B. Robert Kreiser, Associate Secretary, American Association of University Professors |