{"id":66,"date":"2018-05-12T15:30:19","date_gmt":"2018-05-12T19:30:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.shu.edu\/cheb\/?p=66"},"modified":"2018-05-12T15:31:37","modified_gmt":"2018-05-12T19:31:37","slug":"negotiating-identity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.shu.edu\/cheb\/2018\/05\/12\/negotiating-identity\/","title":{"rendered":"Negotiating Identity"},"content":{"rendered":"

Gallin, A. (2000).\u00a0Negotiating identity: Catholic higher education since 1960<\/em>. Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press.<\/p>\n

\"\"This \u201chistory\u201d takes up where Gleason (1995) left off with the decline of \u201cNeo-Scholasticism\u201d and the attempts to modernize Catholic education post Vatican II.\u00a0\u00a0 The underlying question is \u201cwhat makes a university Catholic\u201d?\u00a0 Gallin includes many historical examples from Catholic universities.\u00a0 These long examples and the political details make this rather a heavy read (I confess I skipped over many of the details) but Gallin clearly shows the origin of many of our current challenges, especially the financial issues and \u2013 as indicated in the title \u2013 questions of identity.<\/p>\n

One consequence of modernization was dispute about academic freedom between clerical and lay faculty, the latter arguing that to advance intellectually (and keep pace with secular institutions) discussion had to go beyond church teachings, question dogma and consider modern philosophical trends.\u00a0 These \u201cYoung Turks \u2026 conceived their task as one of stimulating critical questions and suggesting new horizons of thought\u201d (p. 10) rather than affirming known truths.\u00a0 There was also conflict about institutional autonomy from Rome and membership in the International Federation of Catholic Universities (IFCU; formed under Pius XII in 1949) which indicated the ambiguity over what constituted a \u201cCatholic\u201d University.<\/p>\n

The 1960\u2019s saw rapid growth in university enrolment, greater openness to other faiths (Ecumenism) by Catholic universities, emphasis on individual freedom and civil rights, and the expansion of student aid begun under President Kennedy.\u00a0 It was a time of student protests, civil engagement, and the burgeoning Catholic social justice tradition.\u00a0 By 1970 the \u201cuniversity\u2019s image as an ivory tower was gone forever\u201d (p.32).\u00a0 The Land O\u2019Lakes (1967) document helped \u201cmodernize\u201d Catholic education but also moved it further from the church (or any external authority) and its traditions (see an interesting post<\/a> on this)<\/p>\n

The 1970\u2019s saw more growth in enrolment, especially among part-time students and those seeking \u201cpractical\u201d degrees; we see an early criticism of the modern problem where students see themselves as \u201cconsumers\u201d (p. 49). The larger Catholic universities competed with the secular research universities for students and funding, while smaller institutions either stuck to their liberal roots or tried to find innovative \u201calternate degree paths\u201d (and programs) for the new generation of students, including women and minorities.\u00a0 This divergence hastened the end of a single \u201cCatholic\u201d identity for higher education. \u00a0However, there was a common movement to achieve \u201cacademic excellence\u201d — and funding, much of which discouraged religious instruction and identity.\u00a0 Gallin points here to an important distinction between US universities that held \u201cmoral development\u201d as part of their role and European universities, which did not (in Newman\u2019s tradition, intellectual development was their primary role).<\/p>\n

A side effect of Catholic universities\u2019 move toward \u201cthe mainstream\u201d was pressure to pay salaries \u201con par with lay faculty\u201d (something which has not happened for most of us!) while still trying to enroll disadvantaged and lower income students in the Catholic tradition.\u00a0 Generally lacking endowments and often with limited state support, this created financial difficulties and \u201ctuition-driven\u201d economies, especially for smaller institutions.\u00a0 Public disillusionment with higher education also contributed to the financial crisis which ultimately led to the failure or merger of many smaller institutions.<\/p>\n

Gallin describes various congresses and debates (including a great deal of politics) that attempted to define \u201cCatholic higher education\u201d, culminating in Pope John Paull II\u2019s 1990 Ex Corde Ecclesiae, <\/em>which brought some unity of purpose despite difficulties in implementation (p. 180).\u00a0 One positive development was increased support for departments of Catholic studies and social justice programs to reinvigorate the Catholic intellectual tradition and encourage critical interdisciplinary dialog. However, despite establishment of \u201cCore\u201d programs and attempts to reinvigorate teaching of the classics and theology, declining student enrolment and administrative support often led to reliance on poorly-paid (and sometimes poorly trained) adjunct faculty which tended to sideline these efforts.<\/p>\n

Gallin concludes with \u201celements of the tradition\u201d of Catholic colleges and universities taken from a 1995 symposium which include:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Reason and faith are not seen as antagonistic or un-connected<\/li>\n
  2. The tradition takes philosophy and philosophical reasoning seriously<\/li>\n
  3. Challenging the belief that facts come in pristine form (the inference here seems to be \u201cindependent of meaning\u201d)<\/li>\n
  4. Resisting reductionism<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    Questions<\/h4>\n
      \n
    1. How can a Catholic university or college (especially a smaller institution) stay financially viable without large endowments OR continually raising tuition?<\/li>\n
    2. Are the \u201celements\u201d she concludes with rather vague? How might they be strengthened (bearing in mind the question above)?<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

      Gallin, A. (2000).\u00a0Negotiating identity: Catholic higher education since 1960. Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press. This \u201chistory\u201d takes up where Gleason (1995) left off with the decline of \u201cNeo-Scholasticism\u201d and the attempts to modernize Catholic education post Vatican II.\u00a0\u00a0 The underlying question is \u201cwhat makes a university Catholic\u201d?\u00a0 Gallin includes many historical examples … Continue reading “Negotiating Identity”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":116,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-66","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-catholic-higher-education"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.shu.edu\/cheb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.shu.edu\/cheb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.shu.edu\/cheb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.shu.edu\/cheb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/116"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.shu.edu\/cheb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=66"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.shu.edu\/cheb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":69,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.shu.edu\/cheb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66\/revisions\/69"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.shu.edu\/cheb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=66"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.shu.edu\/cheb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=66"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.shu.edu\/cheb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=66"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}