The "Soul of a University" story in the Spring 2004
issue may be one of the most important stories we've ever done.
It originated this past fall during a lunch conversation with
the author, Anthony DePalma, a longtime New York Times correspondent
who was here as a visiting scholar at Notre Dame's Kellogg Institute.
I had planned to discuss his doing a piece for us on his areas
of expertise (Latin America, Cuba), but I also wanted to know
how his son, a Notre Dame senior, was doing. Aahren had had a
terrible time with leukemia as a student here.
We talked a long time -- mostly about Aahren and Notre Dame.
DePalma had clearly been impressed and moved by Notre Dame's compassion
and care for his son. I told him I was glad to hear such good
things about the place. This was the Notre Dame I believed in,
I said, and it was reassuring to know it still touched lives the
way it had touched mine so long ago.
I have worked here now for 26 years, long enough to see the
human and the heart. I have listened to and participated in the
debates about Notre Dame maintaining its Catholic character while
aspiring to academic greatness, about the tension between teaching
and research, about preserving a sense of family and community
in a burgeoning corporate organization. I have listened to those
so enamored of rankings and ratings, whose measures of success
come from comparing Notre Dame to other places. And I have listened
to those who look back at some favored past and think Notre Dame
has been going downhill ever since.
Some are confidently intent on building a new and improved Notre
Dame. Others wonder if their values and their way of doing things
are threatened, out of fashion. There are those who want to bring
the best of Notre Dame forward as the institution ventures ahead,
helping Notre Dame be fully itself and not aspire to sameness.
They are concerned that there is too much good here that risks
being lost if we are not mindful of all those warnings about gaining
the world and losing our soul.
There is a great deal at stake these days. There is little doubt
the place has changed in recent years. That's why this cover story
is so important.
It's important to put this stuff out on the table, to take it
to the whole family, to have these conversations about what Notre
Dame was, is and wants to become. Anthony DePalma offers a unique
and valued perspective. He has covered higher education for The
New York Times, he's been a Notre Dame parent and has children
at other schools, and he's been on campus as a visiting professor
and journalist, seeing the place for himself. His story is worth
listening to.
* * *
April 2004
