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Pall on the Hill

But Jews, Protestants Join Protest to Restore USF Institute

By Stephen Schwartz

The fight to defend the Saint Ignatius Institute at the University of San Francisco has gone national, spreading across the U.S. and Canada, then jumping to Rome, where institute defenders have appealed to Holy Father, Pope Paul II to reinstate the fired institute staff.

While the university's board of trustees gave Father Stephen Privett support for the firings of the institute faculty members in a 30-2 vote on March 23rd, a steady Bay Area response in support of the staff have given hope to the institute's partisans. While being honored at a pro-life event in Concord in March, Charles Rice commented, "The St. Ignatius Institute rendered immeasurable service to the Church. It would be tragic to see the institute abolished or gutted of its character while retaining its name. I hope the decision of Father Privett will be reversed and that the institute will be allowed to continue to make its unique contribution to the Church."

Meanwhile, in the lay campaign to defend the institute, alumni from all points of the compass are speaking up. John Taylor, class of 99, and now a software executive based in Eastern Washington, commented, "It's pretty appalling. [The institute] was one of the last authentically Catholic activities going at the university. It's disappointing to see a Catholic institution in San Francisco going in the same direction as the rest of the city, toward political ultra-liberalism."

Alumnus Cathy Severance emailed, "I am the fourth of six people in my immediate family to attend the [the institute] at USF. We traveled (usually by car) all the way from Chicago." "It was the SII program, but especially the professors and the directors, that taught me a love for learning and to embrace truth." I learned that truth is beautiful and exciting. One cannot be truly thrilled over half-truths or lies. I think that is why many (not all) of the professors I had outside of the [the institute] seemed passive about what they taught. It seems insensitive to say such things about other professors but unfortunately it is true and that is why we traveled across the country to be part of such a great program." She closed by saying, "If they want an exceptional university, they should know where its strength lies. They should not only return the [the institute] to what it was, but spend every spare dime promoting it."

Vince Ryan, class of 2000, is now studying history at St. Louis University, said, "I was in the program for four years," he said. "This is a slap in the face to Catholic social thinking. The reasons they give for it keep shifting, first it's economic, then administrative, and now it seems to involve nothing more than theological name-calling. If I was going to college now I would not apply to USF, without the professors and the outlook of those who shaped the program."

Such a decision had already been made by Nick Campbell of El Segundo, who told the Washington Post he dropped his plans to attend USF this fall. "The only reason I really wanted to go there was the St. Ignatius Institute. They changed all the fundamental things, so I decided I just couldn't go there."

The conflict over the institute picked up more steam last month in Washington, D.C. A secular Jew from the conservative Hudson Institute, Stanley Kurtz, decided to help organize a national protest in support of the program. "I'm not Catholic," said Kurtz. "But I got involved in this because I care deeply about liberal education in the classic definition, and I think that the point of it is to put before the student the fundamental alternatives in life, which must include great religious thinkers. It is very disturbing to me, although I am secular, to see religious authors increasingly excluded from our colleges and universities. When a nominally Jesuit university engages in this it's an alarming symptom."

Kurtz took the scandal onto the popular conservative website, National Review Online, where he wrote, "These leftist theologians reserve the right to disregard the ordinary teachings of the Catholic Church." Kurtz noted that the institute had already added the Koran, the Analects of Confucius, and the Hindu Ramayana to its great-books curriculum. "But that is simply not good enough for Father Privett and the liberal Jesuits at the university. Kurtz asked, "Why, then, did [the institute] have to go?" Kurtz signed up a star-studded roster in favor of the institute, whose names appeared in a paid ad in the San Francisco Chronicle -- which had previously ignored the story -- and the official weekly Catholic San Francisco -- over the weekend of March 18. After the ad appeared, former secretary of education William Bennett joined the effort.

"Mr. Bennett has been a leading voice in the nation on the many problems that have befallen our universities in the era of political correctness," said Kurtz. "It was of tremendous importance that he would speak publicly on this matter."

Jody Bothum, a Catholic and literary editor of the conservative Weekly Standard signed on and said that because of widespread political correctness at Catholic campuses, the need to support places like the institute is greater than ever.

Other Catholic personalities supporting the institute's effort included Michael Novak, George Weigel -- the biographer of Holy Father, Father Richard John Neuhaus, and Robert Royal, director of the Washington-based Faith and Reason Institute. Non-Catholics in the ranks ranged further, to Jean Bethke Elshtain, a Lutheran and professor of social and political ethics at the University of Chicago, and other Jews besides Mr. Kurtz.

Kurtz praised the combative professors and alumni of the institute for initiating the resistance to Father Privett's abuse of power. "None of this would have happened if the professors hadn't had the courage to resign their posts," he said. "This shows the need for cooperation in the fight against political correctness."

He also pointed to the student protest and the mobilization of alumni as key factors in pressuring Privett over the scandal, in addition to the stance by the public intellectuals. It's clear, however, that a pall of repression has settled over the once lively campus on the hill in San Francisco. Sources at the university who have taken a conservative position in the past, but who have not yet spoken out in favor of the institute declined to respond to requests for comment.

It is perhaps ironic that the Jewish Mr. Kurtz has put himself in the forefront of the defense of Catholic thought, where others fear to tread. "There is certainly a chance that the clash over the fate of the Saint Ignatius Institute will become a critical flashpoint in the larger struggle for the soul of American Catholicism," he wrote recently.

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