University administrators decide to shut down the Notre Dame Fund to Protect Human Life.

In an email sent on October 15, Vice President for University Relations Lou Nanni informed members of the Fund’s governing committee that the university would not allow the Fund to continue under its existing structure. He explained that the Fund would be permanently closed to future donations but that the spending of existing funds could continue until they were exhausted.

The Notre Dame Fund to Protect Human Life was signed into existence in September of 2008 by an agreement between Nanni and Bill Dotterweich, donor and alumnus. At the time, the university agreed that the Fund be governed by an independent, self-replacing committee composed of leading long-time pro-life faculty, as was stipulated in the document developed with the oversight of Notre Dame’s legal department and signed by Nanni.

As noted in a National Catholic Register article, Dotterweich underscored the importance of this provision, which retrospectively became more noteworthy in the wake of the university’s honoring of President Obama at 2009’s commencement ceremony, in a paper he wrote explaining the rationale of the Fund’s structure:

“The fund committee is independent and self-replacing so that the pursuit of fund goals can be assured, regardless of a particular direction the university administration might take,” Dotterweich wrote. “This assures our donors that their money will be spent on defending the sanctity of life. Many alumni and friends of Notre Dame who have become disaffected with the administration . . . have found, in the fund a vehicle whereby they can continue to financially support their beloved university.”

The Fund was administratively situated within the Center for Ethics and Culture (CEC), which itself is situated within the College of Arts & Letters. Then-director of the Center, Dr. David Solomon, was named chairman of the Fund’s governing committee.

Other faculty members comprising the committee are Father Bill Miscamble CSC, the founder and president of Notre Dame Faculty for Life; Carter Snead, law professor and current director of the CEC; and Elizabeth Kirk, former associate director of the CEC and advisor to the student Right to Life club. Dr. Daniel Philpott succeeded Dr. Daniel McInerny, former associate director of the CEC, when the latter left Notre Dame to teach at Baylor University.

Each member of the Fund board was named in the original document that Nanni signed in 2008.

Since its inception, the Fund has grown into one of the most successful pro-life entities on campus.

Project Guadalupe, an initiative that seeks “to form the next generation of pro-life leadership,” consists of the development of a pro-life curriculum and the two-week summer Vita Institute for recent college graduates and professionals.

The Fund also annually awards the Evangelium Vitae Medal to an outstanding pro-life leader. Recipients are honored at a banquet with a $10,000 dollar prize and a beautiful medal. Recent recipients include Richard Doerflinger and Helen Alvaré.

Additionally, the Fund has annually subsidized the cost of transportation for Notre Dame students travelling to the March for Life in Washington DC. Student attendance at the March this year doubled last year’s figure. The Fund also contributed $500 to any faculty member requesting financial assistance in attending the March.

The Fund also hosts biannual Bread of Life dinners, bringing together students and pro-life faculty to discuss life issues over dinner.

This fall, after four years of successful operation, the administration decided that the Fund’s governing structure violated university policies regarding the stewardship of donations. Consequently, the decision to disallow future donations was communicated in October to the Fund members. When the Fund runs out of expendable donations, it will shut down.

When the university proposed that the Fund to Protect Human Life be placed under the sole leadership of the CEC’s current director, Snead, the board (including Snead) declined to recommend this proposal to Dotterweich and he refused to accede. In place of the Fund to Protect Human Life, the university then established the Notre Dame Right to Life Fund and situated it within the College of Arts & Letters, placing it, according to university administrative policies, under Snead’s leadership.

In a January 4 letter addressed to Fund to Protect Human Life donors, Solomon explained his board’s objections to the university’s actions.

“We . . . argued that we were not convinced that the Fund did violate university policies   regarding fund accountability since all expenditures from the Fund were subject to various levels of oversight from other administrative units. Their response was that the University had simply made a mistake in approving the Fund in the first place and that they now wished to correct this mistake.”

Fr. Miscamble, who will sit on the Fund to Protect Human Life’s board until its current expendable donations run out, wrote a statement in which he addressed the issue.

“This action was justified on weak procedural grounds supposedly to correct arrangements that had operated well and in full accord with university policies for four full years.  There had not been a single problem in the operation of the ND Fund over this whole period,” Fr. Miscamble wrote.

Rover inquiries to Nanni and Dean of the College of Arts & Letters John McGreevy on the matter were forwarded to University Spokesperson Dennis Brown for response.

“The University recently established the Notre Dame Right to Life Fund in accord with our long-established policies regarding the stewardship of donations it receives for any purpose,” Brown wrote in an email. “An earlier iteration of this fund, the Notre Dame Fund to Protect Human Life, was created with a governing structure that did not conform to these policies.”

He continued, “specifically, the fund was directed by a committee that was incorrectly given autonomy to administer it free from any oversight by a University department. We do not believe it was a mistake to establish the previous fund. Instead, our position is that a mistake was made in the way it was established.”

However, when asked, Brown did not dispute Fr. Miscamble’s objection that all Fund activities and expenditures were already subject to university oversight. He simply said, “anything related to expenditures, administrative oversight or other matters is ancillary to the need to align the governance of the fund with University policies.”

Fr. Miscamble argued that “the ND Fund had been established through a formal contract between the founding donor and the university, but that contract was cast aside when it was no longer deemed appropriate or necessary by certain university administrators.”

Solomon encouraged donors in his letter to continue supporting Notre Dame’s pro-life efforts by contributing to the Right to Life Fund. He expressed his confidence that Snead and the CEC will continue the good work that the Fund to Protect Human Life began.

Regarding the newly-created Right to Life Fund, Brown said that “the new fund, like its predecessor, has the same objectives – education and programming pertaining to the dignity and worth of human life, especially in its beginning stages.” Brown added, “again, there has been absolutely no change in the purpose for which both of these funds were established, and any suggestion that Notre Dame has lessened its commitment to supporting the Church position on the sanctity of life would be false and a misrepresentation of this matter.”

Despite the university’s statement, Fr. Miscamble noted that “the administration decision struck at the very heart of what made the Notre Dame Fund to Protect Human Life so attractive to donors—namely the assurance that their generous donations would be committed to pro-life activities at Notre Dame and that they would not be subject to the interference of administrators who have proved unenthusiastic in their pro-life commitments in the past.”

“The first thing that must be said is that the Notre Dame administration’s decision to slowly choke off the ND Fund to Protect Human Life was not done with any thought for or consideration of pro-life efforts at the university,” Fr. Miscamble said. “The decision damages the entity that has done the most to promote pro-life work on campus in recent years.”

Michael Bradley is a junior living in Dillon Hall. Contact him at mbradle6@nd.edu.