Higher education

No Small Matter: Leadership for Institutional Culture in Vincentian Higher Education

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The consideration of “Vincentian leadership” exists within the larger context of the loss of religious personnel from Catholic universities across the United States. For the religious mission and identity to remain strong at these institutions, Vincentian leaders must leverage a primarily lay-led, self-sustaining culture.

“No Small Matter: Leadership for Institutional Culture in Vincentian Higher Education” is an article in the Vincentian Heritage Journal, Volume 26, Issue 1, Article 8 (2005) and is available at: https://via.library.depaul.edu/vhj/vol26/iss1/8

 

About Saint Vincent de Paul and DePaul University’s Vincentian, Catholic, and Urban Identity

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In this original unpublished essay by Fr. Edward R. Udovic, C.M., we hear a bit of history of the Vincentian Community’s involvement in higher education in the United States.  There is also a reflection on Vincent de Paul and his character as values-based, honoring diversity, willing to take risks, innovative, pragmatic, and intimately involved with the people in his urban community of Paris, especially the poor.  Vincent and his followers were committed to serving the needs of their poor.  They were interested in making a difference in people’s lives.

In the context of today’s world, the efforts of DePaul University’s faculty and staff are aimed at providing an education to its traditional students from marginalized communities to help in supporting a change in the well-being of those generations to come.  Serving the multi-cultural, religiously diverse student, staff, faculty, and alumni community the University continues to foster social engagement within the urban community of Chicago and, through its alumni, the communities of the world.  From “Little college under the ‘L'” to the largest Catholic University in the country, DePaul University continues its history of values-driven service, innovative programming, pragmatic activity deeply connected to the world.

Dignity and the Death Penalty

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by Fadya Salem

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The Journal for Social Justice, University Ministry, and the Center for Public Interest Law had the honor and privilege of hosting Sister Helen Prejean for a roundtable discussion with students, faculty, and alumni in April.

Sister Helen, Nobel Peace Prize Finalist and New York Times bestselling author of the academy award winning movie, Dead Man Walking, is an anti-death penalty advocate who has served as a spiritual advisor to death row inmates.

As a law student, I was eager to join the discussion with Sister Helen. After having studied wrongful convictions in an undergraduate course, I came to law school with the desire to advocate for those who have wrongfully fallen victim to the criminal justice system. I learned from Sister Helen the importance of not only fighting for the people we believe are innocent, but to advocate for the rights of those who have done something wrong, because they too should still be treated with dignity.

My religion, like some others, teaches that there are certain acts that are punishable by death. I sought to participate in this discussion in hopes to reconcile my religion’s views with my moral belief that the death penalty is wrong. I was moved by Sister Helen’s discussion on Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, whom she spoke on behalf of during his trial, and her insistence that, although his actions caused three people’s death, he still has human dignity.

Sister Helen began her anti-death penalty advocacy while living in the St. Thomas housing project in inner-city New Orleans.  It was there that she became aware of the harrowing connection between poverty and oppression and prison.  While in St. Thomas, she became pen pals with a Louisiana death row inmate.

The roundtable conversation began with Sister Helen describing her first experience as a spiritual advisor for a death-row inmate.  She described it as a “secret ritual” that much of the rest of the world renounces.  This experience became the subject of her first book, Dead Man Walking.  The book was published in 1993, a time when 80% of Americans supported the death penalty.

Despite the large number of death penalty supporters, Sister Helen knew the story needed to be told.  She finds that many people who support the death penalty do not know much about the process and what it entails.  She works tirelessly to resist the death penalty and educate the public as a lecturer and writer.

When asked how she chooses inmates to work with, Sister Helen said it is a decision that she can’t explain. She has been a spiritual advisor to five death-row inmates, visiting with them from throughout their time in prison and to their execution.  She also counsels the families of murder victims as the founder of “Survive,” a victim’s advocacy group in New Orleans.

A powerful point in the conversation came when Sister Helen pushed the group to think about how we treat a human with dignity.  With the firm belief that “everyone is better than the worst thing they’ve ever done,” she reminded attendees that, despite their actions, people in jail are still human, which is the same value that St. Vincent advocated in his work.

I recall a discussion in my criminal law course about different methods of executions, when a fellow student asked, “If they killed someone, why do we care how we treat them?” For many people, the death penalty is such an abstract phenomenon that may be difficult to conceptualize. Sister Helen adamantly believes that if people knew what happens at executions, there would not be as many supporters.

Sister Helen described the important role lawyers play in anti-death penalty work: Lawyers are critical in framing the story told about inmates and furthering the idea that they are better than their crimes. For death-row inmates, lawyers and advocates are often times the only human dignity they have left. It is the passion for human dignity that keeps Sister Helen moving forward in her fight against the death penalty.

Fadya Salem just completed her first year of law school at DePaul.  A Chicago native, she is an alum of the University of Illinois and hopes someday to practice law within the public interest arena.   

An earlier version of this piece was published online by the Center for Public Interest Law at DePaul University in May.

What George Clooney Taught Me About the Importance of Education

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What does a mediocre rental movie have to do with existential questions of humanity and the value of higher education?  Probably very little, but I will let you peek into the firing of my synapses which found a connection.

It was a free night with no plans so my wife and I rented a movie from the box in the drug store.   After some discussion we choose The Monuments Men. The movie follows the ‘based on a true story’ tale of a group of art scholars tasked with preserving masterpieces during the throes of World War II. The mission is carried out while the Nazis are seeking to seize masterpieces from the countries being militarily conquered. Worse still, because of the war paintings, sculpture, and architecturally important buildings could be destroyed either due to the fighting and bombing or intentionally due to the Nazis’ desire to eradicate a people’s culture from the earth.

The movie focused on some key questions for us as people. How can we reconcile the spending of resources on preserving works of art (no matter how beautiful) with the fact that resources are in short supply and in high demand for other needs? How can we spend lives saving art rather than defeating the enemy? More importantly, what is it we are actually fighting for? What do we truly value?

These questions make me think of current debates regarding the value of higher education.   What is higher education’s purpose or need when, in a changing job market, a college education is not necessarily required and is certainly not a guarantee of employment?

If higher education is reduced to being a hoop one needs to jump through to get a lucrative job, I will concede pursuing it may not make sense. It is however more than that. Though it may help one get a job (and well it should), higher education is about education — learning, imparting wisdom, and helping one discern vocation. Perhaps most importantly, higher education is about discovering the contributions a person will make with their one precious life.

The process of education is about making sense of life and our world; it is not so our job market can ask us what sense higher education makes.   If education was all about how to get high-paying jobs (which are not bad and can be quite good) and that is all we focused on, our societal response to positions of care and compassion for our sick, elderly, and vulnerable would be very small. Human services would not be a field, nor would most liberal arts studies. History would be lost to time, and we would gain nothing from the accomplishments of those who have gone before us. The greatest accomplishments in thought and philosophy would go unlearned and unexamined. If it is all about high paying jobs, we may well be excellent producers of products, but we may never have learned how to think.

I recently watched the eyes of a large Mexican family – all of them, from oldest to youngest, men and women – fill with tears as they looked on with pride as their loved one (daughter, granddaughter, sister, niece, great niece, cousin) donned a DePaul cap and gown, becoming the first in their family to graduate from college. She will be going into a helping profession.

If higher ed is primarily about money this scene does not make sense, but if education is about more than that – striving to achieve, learning, living dreams, discovering passions, extending one’s understanding of community – the very things that make us human, then I think we have answered what the value of higher education is.

The movie The Monuments Men makes a compelling argument that we were not simply fighting to save people nor only to stop an imperialist power. We were fighting to preserve cultures, people’s histories, and greatest accomplishments. It makes the point that we value difference, beauty, and expression as humans. It also makes the point that we are willing to do what is necessary to preserve these elements for future generations. We do this so that those who come after us will be inspired to learn about their culture, learn about where they come from, and learn about the very essence of what makes them who they are.

Presumably this is also why we continue to offer and place value upon higher education. Without education present in our society we risk becoming a culture of task completers, valued chiefly by our capacity to produce. With learning present in our society, we are humanized and we are a culture of beings valued for who we are as a people.

In the movie one of the characters asks, “Who would make sure that the statue of David is still standing or the Mona Lisa is still smiling? Who will protect her?” If the focus had only been on defeating the Germans, the “monuments men” would not have made sense and neither would the art they were trying to save. If our focus is on our humanity and our greatest expression of such, these are the values we hold dear, these are the values we fight for, and these are the reasons we endeavor to learn.

 

Robert J. Gilmore is the Coordinator of Faith Formation for DePaul’s Catholic Campus Ministry

 Monuments Men image from from wikipedia.org; Egan Statue from http://abt.cm/1nTAZDq