“Christ is not valued at all unless he is valued above all.” –St. Augustine
As an educational institution, Notre Dame should be committed to two things: the truth and academic excellence. Diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI), at best, is irrelevant to these two pursuits; at worst, it compromises the university’s pursuit of truth and excellence.
DEI initiatives have recently gained national attention since the Trump administration’s renewed crackdown on DEI in government and federally-funded programs, but at Notre Dame, DEI initiatives take on a special significance in light of the university’s Catholic mission.
In a January email sent to all faculty, Notre Dame Provost John McGreevy laid out the university’s hiring priorities for the semesters ahead:
“One important goal is to hire Catholic faculty and other faculty deeply committed to our mission to ensure continuity with our past and our future as the world’s leading global Catholic research university. A second overlapping and equally important goal is to increase the number of women and underrepresented minorities on our faculty so that we become the diverse and inclusive intellectual community our mission urges us to be.”
In stating these two hiring objectives, McGreevy lays out the two most important goals of the university in the education of its students. In other words, Notre Dame now has no higher concern than the racial and sexual makeup of its faculty.
As a Catholic university, Notre Dame’s most important aim is to give its students an excellent education that is distinctively Catholic. It does this primarily through its faculty, who, if not Catholic themselves, understand and support the Catholic mission of the university. Any priority of the university that stands on equal footing with the faculty’s Catholic alignment is necessarily an obstacle to the Catholic mission of Notre Dame, whether that goal be football, facility improvements, research—or DEI.
But even if you ignore the ideological implications of the Provost’s statement, DEI’s growing importance in the eyes of the university follows an unmistakable decline in the Catholic makeup of Notre Dame’s faculty, making McGreevy’s statement shocking.
The Provost’s push for DEI could not have come at a more worrisome time. The percentage of Catholic faculty has decreased from 85 percent in the 1970s to barely 50 percent now. Even more worrying, the university recently hid access to the data, removing all possibility of accountability.
McGreevy is not concerned with a serious pursuit of Catholic excellence—making me wonder little that he tried in previous years to remove the theology course requirement for undergraduates.
Is the skin color of our professors equally important to their religious conviction? It is deeply worrying that McGreevy—the highest-ranking academic officer of the leading Catholic research university in the world—is willing to place an extrinsic quality on equal footing with the Catholic character of the faculty.
The university’s Mission Statement says the following about diversity: “The intellectual interchange essential to a university requires, and is enriched by, the presence and voices of diverse scholars and students. The Catholic identity of the University depends upon, and is nurtured by, the continuing presence of a predominant number of Catholic intellectuals.”
McGreevy completely misunderstands the meaning of “diversity” in Notre Dame’s mission statement. It does not mean diversity of race or gender—it means intellectual diversity, an environment in which a university flourishes. McGreevy assumes that female and minority faculty will bring an inherent contribution of academic rigor to the university. Scholars who happen to be female or racial minorities bring academic rigor not because of their race or gender, but because of their personal excellence. In an academic context, diversity is only valuable insofar as it contributes to the pursuit of truth—the highest goal.
A mission divided against itself cannot stand. McGreevy has explicitly splintered the attention and priorities of the university, betraying the Catholic mission of Notre Dame.
Lucy Spence is a sophomore majoring in the Program of Liberal Studies and piano performance. She can be reached at lspence@nd.edu.
Photo Credit: Matthew Rice
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