Seven in ten Americans believe that U.S. higher education is headed in the wrong direction. When it comes to financial aid, career preparation, and the development of critical thinking skills, the plummeting approval ratings of colleges across the country show a decided decline. In every category—pragmatic and academic alike—universities are facing a crisis in public confidence.
Notre Dame is the only university positioned to lead the renewal that higher education needs. Guided by her mission statement, she can offer what secular universities cannot: an education founded on the fruitful pursuit of truth.
Our mission statement reads, “The University is dedicated to the pursuit and sharing of truth for its own sake.” Among every other institution inhabiting a comparable sphere of academic excellence, Notre Dame is unique in this claim. No other university shares this same pursuit today, nor can they even answer the question, “Why should we pursue truth?”
Why is this? The context for our mission statement gives the answer: “A Catholic university draws its basic inspiration from Jesus Christ as the source of wisdom and from the conviction that in him all things can be brought to their completion.”
Our secular peers ride a wave of relativism that informs—dangerously and self-destructively—their educational pursuits. Without Christ, the author of all, truth is nonexistent. Any claim to the truth, or attempt to pursue knowledge, is counterfeit without an understanding of the truth’s source.
Notre Dame still recognizes and adheres to this source in her mission, taking inspiration from her faith. Any renewal in higher education, then, must find its source in our mission. And no one bears a greater responsibility to this mission than our provost, the chief academic officer at this university.
The provost is responsible for establishing academic and research priorities; setting hiring priorities and approving all faculty hires; overseeing the university’s academic budget, including determining which departments and institutions receive funding; and deciding how the university defines ‘success.’
However, Provost John McGreevy seems to have a different mission in mind. The Office of the Provost’s website reformulates Notre Dame’s mission as the following: “The University of Notre Dame must be the leading global Catholic research university, on par with but distinct from the world’s best private research universities.”
As McGreevy himself has said, “The world doesn’t need another Harvard, Yale, Stanford, Northwestern, Chicago. The world needs the best, most distinctive, most authentic Notre Dame.” Notre Dame’s difference is clearly something McGreevy understands. Yet our provost repeatedly fails to offer his deans, faculty, and students a coherent account of the university’s mission, an account that identifies a tangible difference in action between a university that is guided by its Catholic faith and one that is not.
One of the clearest insights into McGreevy’s thoughts can be found in the university’s “2033: A Strategic Framework” (ND2033), for whose production he was primarily responsible. The document, published in 2023, lays out McGreevy’s priorities and goals for Notre Dame throughout the ten years following its promulgation. Its primary conclusion is the provost’s mission, already stated above: “Notre Dame must be the leading global Catholic research university, on par with but distinct from the world’s best private universities.”
Ironically, the framework is conspicuously similar to those published by the secular universities McGreevy aspires to be distinct from. Like Stanford, ND2033 emphasizes mental health and “belonging” as the goals for student life on campus. Like Northwestern, ND2033 seeks to expand the school’s reach as a “global” university through international research. Perhaps most shockingly, ND2033’s language regarding faculty hiring is indistinguishable from that of most private schools, prioritizing “diversity and inclusion” with no mention of Catholic representation in faculty hires.
Even what McGreevy offers as distinctly Catholic ideals are not unique to Notre Dame. We may choose to nominally ground our poverty initiatives, research funding, and global outreach in Catholic tradition, but what top-tier university does not claim to be global? What prestigious secular school does not fund research that aids the poor?
If these are the only ways that we are ‘distinctively Catholic,’ then we are not distinct at all. Nor are we particularly Catholic.
Moreover, rather than remaining faithful to the shepherding of the Church, McGreevy has consistently chosen to resist all ecclesial authority, adopting instead the paradigm of a secular university that bears no accountability to anyone.
Recent PR scandals at the university under McGreevy’s watch have all sent a clear message to the public: Notre Dame will not be held accountable by an institution like the Church. The Ostermann scandal, the controversy over staff values, the lack of transparency about ratios of Catholic faculty, the contentious hiring email sent last year, and the campus drag show are all examples of a continuous attitude of resistance to the Church’s guidance. This message is not “distinct,” but makes Notre Dame just one of many universities that shirk their responsibility to the truth in favor of reputational gains.
Instead, let Notre Dame’s distinctiveness come in her relentless pursuit of truth. A belief in objective Truth, grounded in the Eternal God, was once the cornerstone of the American university. Today, Notre Dame stands alone among her academic peers in including ‘pursuit of truth’ in her mission statement. At a time when trust in the great institutions is eroding, Notre Dame has the opportunity to lead the renewal of the American university.
“Such renewal requires a clear awareness that, by its Catholic character, a University is made more capable of conducting an impartial search for truth, a search that is neither subordinated to nor conditioned by particular interests of any kind” writes Saint Pope John Paul II in his encyclical on Catholic universities, Ex Corde Ecclesiae.
In Notre Dame’s case, it could not be more obvious that a ‘particular interest’ in academic rankings has imperiled and subordinated the impartial search for truth.
We sincerely hope that Provost McGreevy will rededicate himself and the university to what makes us truly unique: a relentless pursuit of truth for its own sake, rooted firmly in a belief in Christ.
In so doing, Notre Dame should not be surprised if she finds herself ascending the rankings. A rigorous pursuit of the Truth, informed by the Logos, naturally finds expression in academic excellence and plays out through top-tier research. If Provost McGreevy really wants Notre Dame to have global, lasting influence, he must be anchored in what is universal and eternal: Christ, His Church, and His Truth.
This editorial marks the end of Lucy Spence’s term as Editor-in-Chief. The Rover thanks her for her great work and we are excited to announce Caleb Vaughan as the incoming Editor-in-Chief for the 2026-27 year.