ARTICLES

Creative Fidelity

USF Welcomes a New President

By Mark Kreidler

The University of San Francisco inaugurated its 27th president on November 18 in St. Ignatius Church adjacent to the campus of the Jesuit university. The event also commemorated the martyrdom of six Jesuits. Incoming president, Father Stephen Privett, former provost of Santa Clara University, chose as his motto "Educating for a Just Society." This motto set the scene for a morning of ceremony, celebration, and messages about 'our common home' that were repeated throughout the day. Attending were Archbishop William Levada, Mayor Willie Brown, Representative Nancy Pelosi, and a who's who of California Jesuits. Four Italian Jesuits whose mission was to spread the Jesuit traditions to the West Coast founded the school in 1855. It is the oldest university in San Francisco and one of the oldest in the Western United States.

Father Privett provided a printed message that reflected the vagueness of the event in regard to specific policy for the university. He wrote, "Now is the time for the Jesuit University in San Francisco to achieve the recognition it merits and the support it needs to reach the next plateau of excellence. This is a critical moment for USF, fraught with opportunity and challenge. We are poised to capitalize on those opportunities and meet the formidable challenges posed by our urban setting, our Jesuit tradition and our rich diversity."

When Mayor Brown took the stage, welcoming Father Privett on behalf of the city of San Francisco he remarked that the school "is one of the most important institutions to serve the city" and was impressed by the "incredible diversity" of the school, whose students are more than 40% non-Caucasian.

Archbishop Levada welcomed Father Privett on behalf of the Church, taking the opportunity to speak on the importance of reviewing at this time the mandatum for Catholic universities, Ex Corde Ecclasiæ. USF has demonstrated disagreements with the 1990 apostolic constitution on Catholic universities in the past under the direction of former President Father John Schlegel, who now serves as president of Creighton University in Omaha. During his tenure, Father Schlegel said of the mandatum, "We agree on the goal, namely to preserve and foster out Catholic identity; we disagree on the means to achieve this goal." Whether Father Privett will adopt the mandates of the encyclical as other colleges and universities have elected to do, was not touched on during the inaugural occasion.

When Archbishop Levada rose to speak, he remarked, "The choice of this occasion to commemorate those martyrs is an expression of the Church in America seeking to educate for a just society." He also delivered a clear admonition that USF needs to "stand for the dignity of every person from the beginning of life to its natural end" and called on Rather Privett to defend that dignity. Comments on the mission of a Jesuit university by the Jesuit West Coast provincial, Father Thomas Smolich, called for 'creative fidelity' and 'diversity' and the necessity for that university 'to bring all to the table where they have a voice at the table'. On behalf of the university spoke sociology professor Esther Madriz. Madriz took the microphone and railed against the prosperity created by Silicon Valley and the disproportionate wealth it has created, making housing unaffordable for many inhabitants of the city. She then asked Willie Brown to fix the problem. Following this, Madriz called for benefits for domestic partners who are faculty members at the school, citing the need for USF to embrace everyone. She noted that there are too few minorities filling high positions at the university. She went on to expound on the meaning of the university and the importance of 'hanging together' and how the university "is an instrument and a means to implement justice on behalf of the Gospel."

Finally Father Privett took the podium to address the congregation. He greeted the many people who came to be there, including a special mention of Nancy Pelosi, the pro-abortion representative from San Francisco who claims to be Catholic. In a speech that took the listener from Chesterton to El Salvador, he commented, "If it is true that reason without compassion is ruthlessly narrow, it is certainly true that compassion uninformed by reason degenerates into mere sentimentality."

Vague mentions of 'mission', 'tradition', 'the role of a Catholic university' were sprinkled in without specificity or context. Even Heaven was a word left unspoken, as Father Privett chose instead to make allusions to 'home' ("no one of us will ultimately find our way home unless all of us do").

Added to this were the calls for an emphasis on the social justice programs. Father Privett spent four months in El Salvador in 1988, befriending some of the Jesuits who would lose their lives that next year.

In the summer 1990 issue of Santa Clara Magazine, Father Privett wrote a story titled "The Salvadorian Martyrs." "What I tell myself is that I will no longer be defensive or apologetic about Jesuit education, and I will never accept from anyone the theses that concern for the poor and the defenseless, or the promotion of social justice, is a distraction from Santa Clara's educational mission. In fact, it is the very soul of that mission."

TOP