Newman’s Idea of a University in Dialogue with the Land O’Lakes Statement of 1967

Abstract

Newman’s Idea of a University in Dialogue with the Land O’Lakes Statement of 1967 Michael T. Rizzi (bio) In 1961 theodore hesburgh, c.s.c., the then-forty-four-year-old president of the University of Notre Dame, made a provocative public statement about John Henry Newman. Speaking at the National Catholic Education Association’s annual convention in Atlantic City, Hesburgh opened his address by saying: I submit to you that (Newman’s Idea of a University) is a beautiful theory that neither Newman nor anyone else has ever realized in practice in any institution of Catholic higher learning since he wrote. Newman may well have given us the Irish Mountain top of vision. Our efforts, however, must be measured against the reality of life on the great American plain . . . The theory may well thrill us. The practice is that with which we must live and earn our daily bread. Let the objectives by all means be high. But remember that to be useful, they must be attainable. I submit again that Newman’s never were such, and indeed never have been attained in any full measure either here or abroad. May I be even more foolhardy by saying that Newman’s dream does not even fit the frame within which we must place the present-day objectives of Catholic higher education.1 Hesburgh knew that his argument would ruffle feathers in an audience of Catholic educators who, then as now, held Newman’s theories in high esteem. But if he encountered any pushback from the conference attendees, it did not sway his thinking. A year later he repeated the argument in a 1962 issue of the Jesuit magazine, America: I cannot recall how many times I have read and admired (Newman’s) great essays on the idea of a university. Yet it did occur to me recently, while harried by the many developmental and administrative problems [End Page 34] that face a university president today, that Newman, in fact, never did create the university he wrote about, nor did he have to administer it. There are many historical reasons to explain this, but it remains a fact that it is easier to write about what a Catholic university should be than to create and administer one in reality—to bring the total idea into being.2 Hesburgh’s critiques are arguably more relevant today than when they were first written. In his generation, American Catholic universities were rapidly becoming larger, more complex, and more diverse than ever before. For over a century, Catholic higher education in the United States had been mostly limited to small, classically-oriented undergraduate colleges supported by the free labor of religious orders. However, by the 1960s national enrollment at Catholic colleges and universities had surged to 410,000—a more than 2,400% increase in just fifty years. Today that number has ballooned even further to 760,000, which raises important questions about how to live out Newman’s ideals in large, multifaceted institutions.3 Sensing a need for some kind of theory to guide this transition, Hesburgh and his contemporaries in 1967 drafted what would become one of the most famous and controversial documents in American Catholic higher education: the Land O’Lakes Statement.4 The purpose of the statement was to help Catholic colleges maintain their religious identities even as they transformed into modern American research universities. To that end, it outlined ten principles designed to help the universities hold on to their distinctive character while still attracting enough students and outside research investment to remain financially solvent in the competitive American market. Some of the harshest critics of the Land O’Lakes Statement have described it, in language originally used by Philip Gleason, as a “declaration of independence” from the church.5 This article takes the opposite view. It argues that the Land O’Lakes Statement was, and still is, a pragmatic attempt to adapt Newman’s esoteric [End Page 35] ideals to the practical realities of a quirky American education system. Its authors, including Hesburgh, were believers in Catholic education who understood that ground-level implementation of Newman’s ideas required more than just lip service to...