Search
Close this search box.

Men and Women for Others

In a now famous address to alumni of Jesuit schools in Europe (July 31, 1973), Pedro Arrupe* painted a profile of what a graduate should be. Admitting that Jesuit* schools have not always been on target here, Arrupe called for a re-education to justice:Today our prime educational objective must be to form men-and women-for-others… people who cannot even conceive of love of God which does not include love for the least of their neighbors; people convinced that love of God which does not issue in justice for human beings is a farce…. All of us would like to be good to others, and most of us would be relatively good in a good world. What is difficult is to be good in an evil world, where the egoism of others and the egoism built into the institutions of society attack us…. Evil is overcome only by good, egoism by generosity. It is thus that we must sow justice in our world, substituting love for self-interest as the driving force of society.Following up on what Arrupe had said, the current Jesuit head, Peter-Hans Kolvenbach,* challenged the 900 Jesuit* and lay* delegates from the 28 U.S. Jesuit colleges and universities gathered for “Assembly ’89” to teach our students to make “no significant decision without first thinking of how it would impact the least in society” (i.e., the poor, the marginal who have no voice). And eleven years, speaking on “the faith that does justice” to a similar national gathering at Santa Clara University (October 6, 2000), Kolvenbach was even more pointed and eloquent in laying out the goals for the 21st-century American Jesuit university:Here in Silicon Valley some of the world’s premier research universities flourish alongside struggling public schools where Afro-American and immigrant students drop out in droves. Nationwide, one child in every six is condemned to ignorance and poverty… Thanks to science and technology, human society is able to solve problems such as feeding the hungry, sheltering the homeless, or developing more just conditions of life, but stubbornly fails to accomplish this.==========The real measure of our Jesuit universities, [then,] lies in who our students become. Tomorrow’s “whole person” cannot be whole without a well-educated solidarity. We must therefore raise our Jesuit educational standard to `educate the whole person of solidarity for the real world! “Solidarity is learned through “contact” rather than through “concepts.”When the heart is touched by direct experience, the mind may be challenged to change. Our universities boast a splendid variety of in service programs, outreach programs, insertion programs, off-campus contacts, and hands-on courses. These should not be too optional or peripheral but at the core of every Jesuit university’s program of studies.==========Faculties are at the heart of our universities. Professors, in spite of the cliché of the ivory tower, are in contact with the world. But no point of view is ever neutral or value free. A legitimate question, even if it does not sound academic, is for each professor to ask, “When researching and teaching, where and with whom is my heart?” To make sure that the real concerns of the poor find their place, facultymembers need an organic collaboration with those in the Church and in society who work among and for the poor and actively seek justice.What is at stake is a sustained interdisciplinary dialogue of research and reflection, a continuous pooling of expertise. The purpose is to assimilate experiences and insights in “a vision of knowledge which, well aware of its limitations, is not satisfied with fragments but tries to integrate them into a true and wise synthesis” about the real world. Unfortunately, many faculties still feel academically, humanly, and, I would say, spiritually unprepared for such an exchange.If the measure of our universities is who the students become, and if the faculties are the heart of it all, then what is there left to say? It is perhaps the third topic, the character of our universities-how they proceed internally and how they impact on society-that is the most difficult.In the words of [Jesuit] General Congregation 34, a Jesuit university must be faithful to both the noun “university” and to the adjective Jesuit. “To be a university requires dedication “to research, teaching, and the various forms of service that correspond to its cultural mission.” To be Jesuit “requires that the university act in harmony with the demands of the service of faith and the promotion of justice.”[A] telling expression of the Jesuit university’s nature is found in policies concerning hiring and tenure. As a university it must respect the established academic, professional and labor norms, but as Jesuit it is essential to go beyond them and find ways of attracting, hiring, and promoting those who actively share the mission.==========Every Jesuit academy of higher learning is called to live in a social reality and to live for that social reality, to shed university intelligence upon it and to use university influence to transform it. Thus Jesuit universities have stronger and different reasons than do many other academic institutions for addressing the actual world as it unjustly exists and for helping to reshape it in the light of the Gospel