Reexamining Academic Freedom in Religiously Affiliated Universities: Transcending Orthodoxies

226 Pages·2016·1.79 MB·English

by  Kenneth Garcia (eds.)

Reexamining Academic Freedom in
Religiously Affiliated Universities
Transcending Orthodoxies
Edited by
Kenneth Garcia
Reexamining Academic Freedom in Religiously
Affiliated Universities
Kenneth Garcia
Editor
Reexamining
Academic Freedom in
Religiously Affiliated
Universities
Transcending Orthodoxies
Editor
Kenneth Garcia
University of Notre Dame
Notre Dame, Indiana, USA
ISBN 978-3-319-39786-3 ISBN 978-3-319-39787-0 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-39787-0
Library of Congress Control Number: 2016962098
© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2016
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A
cknowledgments
I am deeply grateful to many centers, departments, and institutes at the
University of Notre Dame for their generous contributions to the con-
ference from which the essays in this volume emerged: the Institute for
Scholarship in the Liberal Arts, the College of Arts & Letters, Notre Dame
Research, the Nanovic Institute for European Studies, the College of
Science, the Notre Dame Institute for Advanced Study, the Center for the
Study of Religion and Society, the Notre Dame Law School Program on
Church, State, and Society, the College of Engineering, and the depart-
ments of Theology, English, History, Philosophy, and Classics. An expert
advisory committee helped shape the conference themes and gave invalu-
able suggestions for conference speakers: Celia Deane-Drummond of the
Theology Department, Richard Garnett of the Law School, Brad Gregory
of Notre Dame’s History Department and Director of the Notre Dame
Institute for Advanced Study, Susannah Monta of the English Department,
and Phillip Sloan of the Program of Liberal Studies. Thank you. Many
thanks also to Elizabeth Kuhn for her expert conference organizing skills.
v
c
ontents
Part I Overview and Historical Background 1
1 Introduction: Transcending Academic Orthodoxies 3
Kenneth Garcia
2 The Nineteenth-Century German University and
German Idealism 25
Theodore Ziolkowski
3 The Open Circle: The Catholic University and
Academic Freedom 45
James L. Heft, S.M.
Part II Academic Freedom and the Natural Sciences 61
4 Academic Freedom, Religion and the Natural Sciences 63
Tom McLeish
vii
viii CONTENTS
Part III Religion and Literature 85
5 The Language of Spiritual Literature in a
Post-Religious Era 87
Michael N. McGregor
6 Altars to the Unknown God: Poetry’s Religious Impulse 97
Angela Alaimo O’Donnell
Part IV Academic Freedom, Social Science, and
Philosophy: What Went Wrong? 111
7 Academic Freedom, Religion and Social Science: Stories
from the Front 113
Douglas V. Porpora
8 Freedom-From or Freedom-For? Academic Freedom,
Responsibility, and the Revival of the Liberal Arts 133
Michele Averchi and Emanuele Colombo
Part V Academic Freedom, Theology, and Religious
Authority 153
9 The Transcending Orthodoxy: Revealed Truth
Authenticating Academic Freedom in the
Catholic University 155
Reinhard Hütter
10 The Freedom to “Bridge” Silos and the Role of
Theology in a Catholic University 179
Bernard Brady
Postscript: Some Non-theological Reflections on Theological
Dissent, or: Tradition as Map, Not Boundary 199
Index 207
n c
otes on ontributors
Michele Averchi is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at the Catholic
University of America
His research focuses on the concept of the pure ego in Husserl’s phenom-
enology. He also has a strong interest in the legacy of nineteenth-century
philosophical psychology and the impact of Husserlian phenomenology
in Heidegger and other German philosophers. He received his Ph.D.
from the Università degli Studi di Milano. His recent scholarly essays
include “The Disinterested Spectator: Geiger’s and Husserl’s Place in the
Debate on the Splitting of the Ego” (2015), Studia Phaenomenologica
15:227–246
Bernard Brady is Professor and Chair of the Department of Theology at
the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul, Minnesota. He received his Ph.D.
from the University of Chicago Divinity School and specializes in Catholic
moral theology with an emphasis in Catholic social thought. He is also the
former Director of the Aquinas Scholars Honors Program at St. Thomas.
His books include Be Good and Do Good: Thinking Through Moral Theology
(2014), Essential Catholic Social Thought (2008), and Christian Love: How
Christians Through the Ages Have Understood Love (2003). His articles
have appeared in The Journal of Catholic Higher Education, The Journal of
Moral Theology, the Encyclopedia of Politics and Religion, Journal for Peace
and Justice, and The Thomist
Emanuele Colombo (Ph.D., University of Milan and University of Padua,
Italy) is currently Associate Professor and Chair of the Department of
Catholic Studies at DePaul University, Chicago. He has received research
ix
x NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS
scholarships in Italy (University of Milan), France (EPHE, Paris-
Sorbonne), and the USA (University of Notre Dame and Boston College).
His research is focused on religious history in early modern Europe: theol-
ogy and politics, Jesuit missions, and Christian–Muslim encounters in the
Mediterranean. He has authored and edited several books and has pub-
lished articles and book reviews on international journals. He is the execu-
tive editor of the Journal of Jesuit Studies (Brill) and member of the
Accademia Ambrosiana (Milan)
Kenneth Garcia is Associate Director of the Institute for Scholarship in
the Liberal Arts at the University of Notre Dame. He received his Ph.D.
in Theology from Notre Dame in 2008. His 2012 book Academic Freedom
and the Telos of the Catholic University (Palgrave Macmillan), won the
award for “Best Book Published in Theology in 2012” from the College
Theology Society. He has published academic articles pertaining to aca-
demic freedom and higher education in Marginalia (2015), The Journal
of Academic Freedom (2014), Theological Studies (2012), and Horizons:
the Journal of the College Theology Society (2011). He is currently complet-
ing a literary memoir tentatively titled Pilgrim River, excerpts of which
have been published in the Gettysburg Review, Hunger Mountain, St.
Katherine Review, and The Southwest Review. His essay “Diego and Our
Lady of the Wilderness” was selected as a “Notable Essay” in Best American
Essays 2015, and his essay “The Hollow Places of the World” was runner
up in the 2014 Hunger Mountain Creative Nonfiction Essay Contest and
was a finalist for the Waterston Desert Writing Prize
S.M. James Heft (Marianist) is a priest in the Society of Mary and leader
for over 20 years in Catholic higher education. He spent many years at the
University of Dayton, serving as chair of the Theology Department for six
years, Provost of the University for eight years, and then Chancellor for
ten years. He left the University of Dayton in the summer of 2006 to
found the Institute for Advanced Catholic Studies at the University of
Southern California in Los Angeles, where he now serves as the Alton
Brooks Professor of Religion and President of the Institute for Advanced
Catholic Studies. He has written and edited 13 books and published over
175 articles and book chapters. Most recently he edited Learned Ignorance:
Intellectual Humility Among Jews, Christians and Muslims (Oxford, 2011)
and Catholicism and Interreligious Dialogue (Oxford 2011). His book
Catholic High Schools: Facing the New Realities (Oxford, 2011) was listed
as a “best seller” in a recent Oxford catalog. In 2011, the Association of
NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS xi
Catholic Colleges and Universities awarded him the Theodore
M. Hesburgh award for his long and distinguished service to Catholic
higher education. He is currently coediting a book for Oxford, The Lógos
of Love: the Promise and Predicament of Catholic Intellectuals, to be pub-
lished in 2016
Reinhard Hütter is Professor of Christian Theology at Duke University
Divinity School where he teaches dogmatic, philosophical, and moral the-
ology ad mentem S. Thomae. He is presently the Paluch Chair in Theology
at the University of Saint Mary on the Lake/Mundelein Seminary of the
Archdiocese of Chicago (2015–2016). He has served as visiting professor
at the University of Jena, Germany, and as the Randall Chair of Christianity
and Culture at Providence College, RI. He is coeditor of the English edi-
tion of Nova et Vetera: The International Theological Journal. He is the
author and editor of numerous books, most recently Dust Bound for
Heaven: Explorations in the Theology of Thomas Aquinas (2012) and (ed.
with Matthew Levering), Ressourcement Thomism: Sacred Doctrine, the
Sacraments and the Moral Life (2010). He is an Ordinary Academician of
the Pontifical Academy of St. Thomas Aquinas
Michael McGregor is a Professor of English and Creative Writing at
Portland State University and a summer writing coach for the Collegeville
Institute at St. John’s University in Minnesota. Fordham University Press
has just published his book Pure Act: The Uncommon Life of Robert Lax,
an intimate biography of the influential experimental poet who was
Thomas Merton’s closest friend
Tom McLeish is Professor of Physics at Durham University. He did a first
degree in physics and Ph.D. (1987) in polymer physics at Cambridge
University. A lectureship at Sheffield University in complex fluid physics
was followed by a chair at Leeds University from 1993. He has since won
several awards both in Europe (Weissenberg Medal) and the USA
(Bingham Medal) for his work on molecular rheology of polymers, and
ran a large collaborative and multidisciplinary research program in this
field from 1999 to 2009 co-funded by EPSRC and industry. He has pub-
lished over 180 scientific papers and reviews, and is in addition regularly
involved in science communication with the public, including lectures and
workshops on science and faith. In 2014, OUP published his book Faith
and Wisdom in Science. He has been a Reader (lay preacher) in the Anglican
Church since 1993, in the dioceses of Ripon and York