Gender and LGBTQ Equality in the University

2021 ◽  
pp. 207-248
Author(s):  
Gerald J. Beyer
Keyword(s):  
Higher Education ◽  
Sexual Violence ◽  
Colleges And Universities ◽  
Catholic Higher Education ◽  
Catholic Colleges ◽  
Participation Of Women ◽  
Full Participation ◽  
Catholic Colleges And Universities ◽  
Social Tradition ◽  
The University

This chapter advances the argument that the Catholic social tradition, which includes the work of feminist theologians and ethicists, can point toward greater equity for women in the academy. This chapter also discusses the continuing need to create more inclusive campus communities for LGBTQ persons. The author contends that the issues that women face because of their gender and the LGBTQ community's ongoing struggle for equality are not the same and warrant more extensive treatment than can be offered in this book. However, the chapter aims to offer some insights about how CST can promote the dignity, equality, and full participation of women and LGBTQ persons in Catholic higher education. Ways in which Catholic colleges and universities have promoted equity and full participation of women and LGBTQ persons on their campuses are considered. The concluding section confronts the problem of sexual violence in campus, which the author contends is a severe affront to a person’s autonomy and right to fully participate in a community.

The Church and Catholic Higher Education

Horizons ◽  
1990 ◽  
Vol 17 (1) ◽  
pp. 7-29 ◽  
Author(s):  
David J. O'Brien
Keyword(s):  
Higher Education ◽  
The United States ◽  
Colleges And Universities ◽  
Catholic Higher Education ◽  
Catholic Colleges ◽  
Catholic Colleges And Universities ◽  
The University ◽  
Public Church ◽  
The Church ◽  
Ongoing Dialogue

AbstractRecurrent debates about the church and higher education in the United States involve differing understandings of the nature and purpose of the church as well as differing understandings of the university. Catholic colleges and universities remain important but underutilized resources for the American church as it pursues its mission. Institutional, communitarian and servant models of the church must be examined more rigorously before they are used to prescribe changes in higher education. None is without problems. In a pluralistic and free society, a public church,” self-consciously mediating the tensions between Christian integrity, Catholic unity, and civic responsibility, provides an altogether appropriate stance for Catholic colleges and universities as well. It points not to a neat resolution of outstanding difficulties but to ongoing dialogue among the publics to which both church and higher education must address themselves.

The Mission of Catholic Higher Education in the Age of the Corporatized University

2021 ◽  
pp. 11-46
Author(s):  
Gerald J. Beyer
Keyword(s):  
Higher Education ◽  
The United States ◽  
Negative Consequences ◽  
Catholic Higher Education ◽  
Catholic Colleges ◽  
Business World ◽  
Catholic Colleges And Universities ◽  
Social Tradition ◽  
The University ◽  
Contemporary Context

This chapter problematizes the contemporary context in which Catholic colleges and universities operate in the United States, namely, that of corporatized higher education. It describes the corporatization of the modern University and its negative consequences, locating this phenomenon within the ascendancy of neoliberalism. The author argues that the corporatization of the university has infected higher education with hyperindividualistic practices and models imported from the business world, essentially creating a clash of values with the Catholic social tradition. This phenomenon hinders the ability of Catholic institutions to fulfil their mission, which includes creating an environment imbued with values and principles of CST such as respect for human rights, solidarity, and justice. This final section of this chapter introduces the reader to the values and principles of CST, which should inform the policies and practices of Catholic institutions and counteract the values of corporatized education.

scholarly journals Defining Catholic Higher Education in Positive Terms

2019 ◽  
pp. 1-25
Keyword(s):  
Higher Education ◽  
United States ◽  
The United States ◽  
Colleges And Universities ◽  
Catholic Identity ◽  
Catholic Higher Education ◽  
Catholic Colleges ◽  
Academic Literature ◽  
Catholic Colleges And Universities ◽  
Catholic History

Debates about Catholic higher education in the United States sometimes focus too much on what Catholic colleges and universities should not do, rather than what they should do. This article attempts to reframe those debates away from the negative expressions of Catholic identity (i.e., denying guests a right to speak on campus based on their stance on abortion) and toward more positive expressions, like promoting scholarship on Catholic history, culture, and theology. It reviews some key academic literature that approaches Catholic identity from this positive, proactive perspective, and attempts to categorize that literature into common, identifiable themes.

Theology in the Catholic University

2021 ◽  
pp. 185-200
Author(s):  
James L. Heft
Keyword(s):  
Higher Education ◽  
Moral Education ◽  
Religious Studies ◽  
Unique Contribution ◽  
Catholic Higher Education ◽  
Catholic Colleges ◽  
Catholic Theology ◽  
Ex Corde Ecclesiae ◽  
Catholic University ◽  
Catholic Colleges And Universities

Major secular universities do not teach theology; they teach religious studies, if they teach anything about religion at all. It is impossible to imagine a Catholic university without theology. Four characteristics of Catholic theology show the unique contribution the discipline makes to Catholic higher education. False dichotomies are identified: critical or catechetical and faith or reason. This chapter describes the dramatic changes over the past sixty years in who teaches theology and what is taught to lay students at Catholic universities. Theologians need to address effectively the problem of widespread religious illiteracy among most college students. The Vatican document on Catholic higher education, Ex corde ecclesiae, offers a broad and demanding vision of the type of theological and moral education necessary for Catholic colleges and universities. The expectations of Catholic theologians in the academy and beyond it are daunting.

Introduction

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-10
Author(s):  
Gerald J. Beyer
Keyword(s):  
Higher Education ◽  
Catholic Social Teaching ◽  
The United States ◽  
Social Teaching ◽  
Catholic Higher Education ◽  
Catholic Colleges ◽  
Responsible Investment ◽  
Diversity And Inclusion ◽  
Institutions Of Higher Learning ◽  
The University

The introduction describes the author’s purpose, aims, and methodology of the book and why it should matter to all who care about Catholic higher education. The author discusses his own indebtedness to Catholic higher education and acknowledges that Catholic colleges and universities in the United States serve students and society in laudable ways. However, the introduction presents the thesis of the book: many Catholic institutions of higher education have failed to embody the values of the Gospel and the principles of Catholic social teaching (CST) in some important institutional policies and practices. Just Universities argues that the corporatization of the university undermines the fidelity of Catholic higher education to its mission by hindering efforts to promote worker justice on campus, equitable admissions, financial aid, and retention policies, just diversity and inclusion policies, and socially responsible investment and stewardship of resources. The author acknowledges the argument of the book represents one perspective and is intended to generate more sustained conversation about ways that Catholic social teaching should shape the life of Catholic institutions of higher learning.

Seed That Falls on Fertile Ground (Matthew 13:1–9): Catholic Higher Education and the Renewal of Agrarianism

Horizons ◽  
2015 ◽  
Vol 42 (1) ◽  
pp. 38-69
Author(s):  
Elizabeth Groppe
Keyword(s):  
Higher Education ◽  
Biodiversity Loss ◽  
The United States ◽  
Catholic Higher Education ◽  
Water Shortages ◽  
Catholic Colleges ◽  
Agricultural Knowledge ◽  
Catholic Colleges And Universities ◽  
Catholic Culture ◽  
Whole Person

Agriculture in the United States today faces myriad challenges, including soil erosion, biodiversity loss, climate change, water shortages, dependence on harmful chemicals, and a breach in the intergenerational transmission of agricultural knowledge. The scope and scale of the agricultural problems facing our nation today are an indication that we need a new culture of theager(“field” in Latin)—a fundamentally new way of understanding and enacting our relationship to the land and the production of food. Catholic colleges and universities can make a vital contribution to this renewal through new agrarian curricular and research programs grounded in Catholicism's sacramental epistemology, analogical metaphysics, interdisciplinary search for wisdom, and respect for the spiritual significance of agricultural and manual labor. In turn, the incorporation of agrarian practice, education, and research within Catholic institutions of higher education can contribute to the education of the whole person that is fundamental to Catholic pedagogy, the cultivation of the virtue of humility, and the enrichment of Catholic liturgical practice and Catholic culture.

World War II and Institutional Shifts

1996 ◽  
Author(s):  
Philip Gleason
Keyword(s):  
Higher Education ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
Korean War ◽  
Colleges And Universities ◽  
World War ◽  
Catholic Colleges ◽  
American Higher Education ◽  
Steady Growth ◽  
Catholic Colleges And Universities ◽  
The Korean War

World War II set the stage for an era of tremendous growth in American higher education, growth in which the Catholic sector shared fully. Between 1940 and 1960 the number of Catholic colleges and universities increased by one-fifth (from 193 to 231), faculties grew by about 85 percent (from 13,142 to 24,255), and enrollments almost doubled that percentage, zooming from just under 162,000 to just over 426,000, an increase of 164 percent. Sheer growth was thus the most basic of the institutional developments that took place in this era, but it presented itself more as a series of crises than as a process of continuous accretion. The first crisis, brought on by the wartime draft and the attraction of highpaying jobs in defense industries, imperiled the very existence of the colleges by depleting their pool of potential students. Then came the overwhelming surge of postwar veterans that almost swamped the system. And just as educators were regaining their balance from that onslaught, the outbreak of the Korean War threatened to start the cycle all over again. Korea proved to be a mere dimple compared with World War II, but steady growth did not really begin until 1953.

The Intellectual Context

1996 ◽  
Author(s):  
Philip Gleason
Keyword(s):  
Higher Education ◽  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
World War I ◽  
Thomas Aquinas ◽  
Catholic Higher Education ◽  
Catholic Colleges ◽  
Precise Relationship ◽  
American Catholic ◽  
Medieval Universities ◽  
The University

Central to the intellectual revival that dominated Catholic higher education between World War I and the Second Vatican Council was the recovery of Scholastic philosophy and theology, particularly that of St. Thomas Aquinas. The “Scholastic Revival,” as it was called, began in the middle decades of the nineteenth century and was officially endorsed by Pope Leo XIII in 1879. Although its influence was felt earlier, especially in seminaries, it did not affect American Catholic higher education in a really pervasive way until the 1920s. By the end of that decade, however, Neoscholasticism had become a “school philosophy” that served for Catholic colleges very much the same functions that Scottish common sense philosophy and Baconianism served for Protestant colleges in the first half of the nineteenth century. To understand how this came about, we must review the earlier phases of the revival and highlight the main features of Neoscholasticism as a system of thought, before attempting to link its popularization with other events and movements of the 1920s. The term Scholasticism refers broadly to the teaching and method of the “schoolmen,” that is, the philosophers and theologians who propounded their views at the medieval universities, especially at the University of Paris. St. Thomas Aquinas (1225-74) is generally regarded as the outstanding figure among the Scholastics, and the revival of the nineteenth century aimed primarily at recovering his ideas and drawing upon them to establish Catholic teaching on a solid intellectual foundation. This effort involved a process of gradual clarification because the full richness of Thomas’s thought emerged only in the course of the historical investigations set off by the revival. The same is true of its relation to the thinking of other schoolmen and of later commentators, especially post-Reformation Scholastics like the Spanish Jesuit Francisco Suarez, who died in 1617. The virtually interchangeable use of the terms “Neothomism” and “Neoscholasticism” reflected the ambiguity that persisted well into the twentieth century as to the precise relationship between the thought of St. Thomas himself and that of the larger school of which he was the acknowledged master.

Catholic Universities, the Right to Education, and the Option for the Poor

2021 ◽  
pp. 90-134
Author(s):  
Gerald J. Beyer
Keyword(s):  
Higher Education ◽  
Colleges And Universities ◽  
Access To Higher Education ◽  
Catholic Social Thought ◽  
Right To Education ◽  
Catholic Colleges ◽  
Knowledge Based ◽  
The Poor ◽  
Catholic Colleges And Universities ◽  
The Right

This chapter argues that many Catholic colleges and universities failed to sufficiently embody Catholic social teaching’s option for the poor in recruiting, admissions, and retention policies. It begins with a brief overview of empirical trends concerning the access of students from economically disadvantaged backgrounds to higher education in the United States. Next, it discusses the right to education in Catholic social thought. This section of the chapter highlights Catholic social teaching’s emphasis on the importance of education in overcoming poverty and fostering the right to participation in the life of society. It also argues that in a knowledge-based society the right to education must include access to higher education, particularly for the economically marginalized (a subsequent chapter examines the distinct, but related disadvantages in access faced by racially minoritized students) The second part of the chapter presents empirical data concerning the socioeconomic background of students from selected Catholic colleges and universities. The chapter concludes with some normative conclusions about the degree to which Catholic colleges and universities promote access for low socioeconomic status students and suggests how they might be able to realize this goal to an ever-greater degree.

Terca, pero no pendeja: Terquedad as Theory and Praxis of Transformative Gestures in Higher Education

2020 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
pp. 23-43
Author(s):  
Omi S. Salas-SantaCruz
Keyword(s):  
Higher Education ◽  
Sexual Violence ◽  
Doctoral Student ◽  
Power Structures ◽  
The University

In this article, the author explores the concept of terquedad or waywardness as a blueprint towards gender/queer justice in education. Using María Lugones’s (2003) theorizing resistance against multiple oppressions, the author presents Gloria Anzaldúa’s' writings in Borderlands/La Frontera (1987) and This Bridge Called My Back (1981/2015) as a project of storying the plurality of terquedad. In doing so, the author calls for a theory and praxis of terquedad as a framework to understand the embodied resistances queer and trans-Latinx/e students deploy as textual inconveniences to push back and resist the “institutional grammars” of U.S. universities (Crawford & Ostrom, 1995; Bonilla-Silva, 2012). Through a plática methodology (Fierros & Delgado Bernal, 2016), the author introduces Quiahuitl, a doctoral student engaging with a praxis of terquedad when confronted with institutional and sexual violence as she moves within and against the geographies and power structures of the university.

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