President's Convocation 2006

The Idea of a University in the Ignatian Tradition
12:15 p.m. October 5, 2006

Good Afternoon, I’m Ernie Rose, senior vice president for Academic Affairs and it is my pleasure to welcome all of you to the 2006 President’s Convocation. Some quick announcements: first, if you have a cell phone please either turn it off or turn it on the vibrating mode. Secondly, like last year’s President’s Convocation, this year’s address will be also turned into a podcast that will be available on ManeGate or on the LMU website starting next week. And third, Fr. Lawton’s address today, The Idea of a University in the Ignatian Tradition, is meant to be a dialogue that we start on campus. And so as a follow up to his convocation address, there will be a town hall-style meeting on October 10th at 4 p.m. in Ahmanson 1000 in University Hall.  I’ll give you a little bit more detail about that at the end of his address today.

At this time I am pleased to acknowledge the presence of members of our board of trustees, our board of regents, some members of our other important boards and councils, along with alumni, donors and friends, our faculty, staff and student leaders.  Thank you for being here today.

The year 2006 is a jubilee year for the Jesuits. This year marks the 450th anniversary of the death of St Ignatius Loyola and the 500th anniversary of the birth of St. Francis Savior and blessed Peter Fabrum. In June of this year a commemorative conference was held in Paris for the members of the association of Jesuit colleges and universities. The theme of that conference was the vocation of the teacher in the Ignatian tradition. There were many excellent presentations and a visit to Mt. Martra where the first Jesuits took their initial vows. At the conclusion of this conference those of us from LMU met together under the guidance of Fr. Bob Caro, and in our discussions, Fr. Lawton felt it would be appropriate to declare this academic year the year of the teacher in the Ignatian tradition at LMU.

A few weeks ago at one of the inaugural events in the newly remodeled Collins Center, the faculty members who were present at that conference: Sherril Grills, Wilke Au and Paul Harris, gave a presentation on their impressions of the conference and their thoughts on teaching in the Ignatian tradition. Now, as you know, the Jesuits are famous for organizing things in threes. This is not surprising considering the founder of the Society of Jesus, St. Ignatius, had two very close companions who complemented his vision for a new company, a new order dedicated to actively following Christ’s teaching by being in the streets rather than being sequestered in a monastery. Thus, this jubilee year honors St. Ignatius, St. Xavier and blessed Ft. Faber, the power of three.

Here at Loyola Marymount University we are blessed in that we have three compelling traditions that influence the mission of our campus: the Society of Jesus, the Religious of the Sacred Heart of Mary and the Sisters of St. Joseph of Orange. The combination of these three traditions makes Loyola Marymount University unique among all catholic universities—the power of three.

The vocation of the faculty in virtually every college and university in America is expressed in three core elements: teaching, research or artistry, and service. And our LMU faculty are exceptional in this vocational tradition. At this time I would ask that all of the LMU faculty to please stand. Join me in acknowledging the professoriate of Loyola Marymount University. Thank you. Teaching, research and artistry, and service—the power of three.

This afternoon marks the occasion of Fr. Lawton’s 8th Presidential Convocation. Try as I might, I could not establish a good relationship between the number 8 and the number 3, I should have consulted with our mathematics faculty but I was floundering on my own. However I do know that Fr. Lawton is well-known for having three points of emphasis in his addresses and homilies. And Father, I want to thank you for that because at my age, trying to remember anything more than three points at a time is taxing. Those of us who have had the pleasure of hearing Fr. Lawton’s speeches throughout his Presidency know we can be guaranteed three things: it will be informational, it will be inspirational and it will be eloquent—the power of three. Ladies and gentlemen, please join me in welcoming our president of Loyola Marymount University: the one and only Rev. Robert B. Lawton, Society of Jesus.

FR. LAWTON

Thanks Ernie, and I want to thank all of you for coming today. It’s a beautiful, beautiful early October afternoon and it’s great that you’re here and it’s great for me to be with you.

In the tradition of the Catholic Church, and not simply in its mystical tradition but in its larger tradition, the value of silence—both for our individual growth and our growth as a community is emphasized. So I thought I would do something different this year, and at the beginning I am going to invite you to be in silence for a while; no cell phones, no blackberries. But, in silence, to get in touch with your deepest thoughts and feelings about education and your deepest aspirations for this university. So I invite you to be in silence. I am going to sit down in about 20, 25 minutes, I’ll come back and I’ll share some… You’re right, I’m just kidding.

Actually silence is important but I wouldn’t do it to you without warning. The reason silence is important is because we live so much of our life on the surface and that’s true even in education. This very, very rich process, social responsibility, mystery, we so quickly turn it into requirements, assignments, grades, schedules, deadlines. So rather than silence I would like to try to use words this afternoon to invite you to a deeper place as we think about education.

There are lots of ways in which I could talk about this. Today I am going to talk about it in terms of the Ignatian tradition. As Dr. Rose says (or indicated probably) the talk will have three points, but most of my talks are pretty linear. This talk is sort of an homage to modern novels and films, it is going to be fragmented. There are going to be flashbacks and flash forwards. I’m going to begin with a little bit of history about Ignatius and the early Jesuits and then I want to work up to the question, “How did Jesuits get into running schools?” because we didn’t do that at the very beginning. But I don’t want to spend too much time on that question because for me the more interesting question is, “Why did we stay running schools?” Because, as I hope I can communicate to you, those schools turned out to be an enormous headache. I’m going to try to answer that question, so that ‘s the first part.

In order to answer it, I’m going to do the flashback. I’m going to go back to Ignatius and the early Jesuits try to get a sense what were their fundamental values, what made them tick? And, going to take a little bit of a look at a manual called, The Spiritual Exercises, in doing that. So, what were their values—that will be the second part. And then in the third part, come back again to education in light of those values and talk about education and about LMU. So those are the three major parts to this talk. And then, as a special bonus, I’m going to conclude with three reflections.

Ever since I came here, in fact when I first began interviewing for this job, a question that was posed to me by most groups that I met with was, “LMU is ready to go to the next level; how would you understand and define that?” Obviously my answers over the years have not been very good because I keep getting asked that question. So today, and that first reflection, I am going to definitively and clearly answer that question: where is the next level? The second thing I’d like to do in my final reflections is, most of my talk is are gong to be addressed to all of us, but I want to say a particular word or two to the younger faculty, those of you who are not yet tenured and promoted. And then in my third, final reflection I’m going to tell a story.

So that’s sort of an outline to the talk, as Ernie said, next Tuesday I’d love to hear your own feedback. One of the difficulties in giving a talk is you’re out there, and I have no idea do they agree, do they disagree? Would they like to make a qualification? Would they look at things vastly differently? So this is your opportunity to let me know what you’re thinking and we can talk back and forth a little bit more than we can in a setting like this.

And finally, by way of pre-note, occasionally I’m going to be looking at my watch. One of the difficulties when you don’t write out a speech is you have no idea how long it is. So occasionally I’ll look at my watch and try to adjust the tempo, and so on, depending on where we are because I do want you to have lunch and what I don’t want is a revolution.

First of all, a little bit of history. St. Ignatius was born in 1491 that’s one year before Columbus sailed the ocean blue in 1492. And mentioning Columbus, I think very quickly gives a sense of the world into which Ignatius was born. It was a world when whole new lands and cultures were being discovered and explored. And as a result of that, a whole new set of trading partnerships were developing; it was a world of globalization.

Cultures and religions were coming into contact. The early missionaries were discovering very, very different religious from Christianity. And, also at the same time, Islam was already a very powerful force. So, it was a word of globalization and religious diversity. The printing press was still recent, so it was a world of new advances and information technology. And it was a world where more and more people were moving to the cities; a world of urbanization and an increasing spread between rich and poor. In short, a world in many ways, like our own. I suppose like many of you, I’ve over the years live imaginatively as I’ve read novels and histories, I’ve lived imaginatively in other periods of time. That period of time, is probably the only other one besides my own that I would have liked to live in. It must have been an extraordinary era.

So, Ignatius is born, and Ignatius wants to become a knight and a soldier. And not just a knight and a soldier, he wants to be a very distinguished knight and soldier. In 1521 he was wounded in battle and spent a fair amount of time recuperating from that wound. As he was recuperating there were only two books, at the place that he was, A Life of Christ and Some Lives of the Saints. Ignatius was a dreamer and so, as he would read The Lives of the Saints and The Life of Christ, he got increasingly drawn to being a distinguished follower of Christ to become a saint.

But actually there was some back and forth in his feelings. Some of the time he still wanted to be a great knight and warrior, sometimes he wanted to be a great saint and follower of Christ. And this was the beginning of a process that carried on throughout Ignatius’ life; he looked very closely and deeply at his own experience and asked which of those images, which of those dreams, which of those draws, made him feel, in the end, most fulfilled, most energized, most satisfied. And at the end of that discerning process he decided that he was going to become a distinguished follower of Christ. That journey took him to various places over a number of years.

There was particular a time in a place, town called Manrica, where he spent a fair amount of time. He spent that time ministering to the needy, counseling people, watching very closely the movements again within his own spiritual experience and beginning to put together what eventually becomes known as The Spiritual Exercises. One thing leads to another; he realizes that if he’s going to be this really distinguished follower of his Lord that it would require some further education. He goes to a number of universities and ends up at the greatest university of his day: the University of Paris. And he gets there in 1528.

He quickly becomes the center of a group of friends; there were six of them in addition to Ignatius. They became very close; they were all students and the University of Paris. They began to talk to one another about their spiritual experiences. And Ignatius, in light of his own experience, began to, in one form or another, give them The Spiritual Exercises. So they would pray and reflect and come and talk with Ignatius about their prayer and reflection; the movements in their own experience as they prayed, contemplated and reflected, and they would talk with each other.

Eventually this group of 7 decides to band together and they go around and they serve the needy, they preach, they hear confessions, they become ordained; they do all kinds of various, what we call “community service.” And then, in 1540, the Pope approves them as a religious order. Very quickly it becomes a popular religious order. So hundreds and eventually thousands of young men are joining this order. And Ignatius then has a challenge: how do you educate these young people that are joining the order, because Ignatius and the early Jesuits believed very much in university education. So this is what they did, they found colleges, and by that they meant residence halls. Colleges associated with the great universities of Europe. And that’s where these young Jesuits would live and they would go to the universities and take classes.

There was a big problem with this however, for Ignatius, and that was how to pay for all of this. Because it was a new order— not well established, by no means well endowed—how do you pay for the living expenses of these young Jesuits during their time of study? In 1547-48 the citizens of the town in Sicily, Mecina, said to Ignatius this, “If you send some Jesuits here—some to teach, some to study—we will provide, we’ll pay for the college, we’ll pay for the residence hall. So that if some of the Jesuits are teaching our sons, then that’s fine and it will be a school and we’ll pay for it and we understand that some of these Jesuits are going to be studying at the university.” This was terrific. And this is actually how we got into running schools. It’s not that we sat back and thought education is really important, it was a fundraising opportunity. And those opportunities quickly spread.

Other towns . . . sometimes it was the business leaders in the towns, sometimes it was the local prince, sometimes it was the king of the region . . . would invite the Jesuits to come in and open schools like they had done in Mecina. Not only did Ignatius get into fundraising, he got into federal relations, state relations, he really got into trying to promote the good name of these schools, he got into public relations. There’s a British historian who actually says that St. Ignatius was the first professional fundraiser. So we got into running these schools, but they quickly became an enormous headache. So how we got into these schools, I can tell you that, a little by accident. But I find the far more interesting question: why did we stay in them?

And I just want to read you some of the problems of those early schools and I’m reading from what’s become a classic book, The Fist Jesuits, by John O’Malley.

The society is being ruined by taking on so many schools. That’s what the head of one of the schools said. His remedy was to drastically reduce the number of schools, of course saving his own.

And then O’Malley goes on to talk in his own voice,

In almost every conceivable way, the society was unprepared to open in rapid-fire fashion as many schools as it had in the first years after Mecina which, by 1553, had led to a crisis in personnel that became almost endemic. There were too few Jesuits for the number of schools as for other commitments. Many among those few performed badly in the classroom, either because they did not know the subject or because they were incompetent pedagogs.

Practically none were ready by training and temperament to assume the administrative duties that these institutions required. The provincial Evando Lucia felt that, in his own area, there were no more than two people who had the talent to administer these institutions.

A common complaint from students and their parents was that the Jesuits changed teachers too often and almost as often replaced them with less competent ones. Foreigners sometimes had only a rudimentary grasp of the local language and spoke Latin with accents, to which the natives were unaccustomed, a sensitive issue in Italy. The manpower situation was exacerbated by the necessity of supplying teachers for distant places. In 1561, for instance, Nadal searched the Iberian peninsula for six qualified Jesuits to be sent to India.

Older Jesuits began to complain that the younger Jesuits sent to the colleges, especially from the highly-touted Collegio Romano, knew their Terrance better than their Aquinas. These young Jesuits, they felt, had become accustomed to niceties and food and clothing, showing favoritism in dealing with students, had little interest in teaching, were arid in the things of the Spirit and dreamed of the honor of an endowed chair. In a word, the colleges were being ruined by the disorder they caused and every year one must begin again to repair the damage done by the end of the previous one.

So if you imagine yourself back into that time, there were enormous headaches for the Jesuits in running these schools. Many of the schools succeeded, quite a few of them failed and were not as good, for example, as their competitor schools in the city. But by the time of Ignatius’ death in 1556, the Jesuits had 35 colleges in Europe, and a couple of hundred years later, we had 800 hundred colleges in Europe, Latin America and Asia. So there was something about these schools and colleges and running them that appealed to the Jesuits so much so that they wanted to stay with it. So that’s the question I’m going to try to answer. And to do it we’re moving into the second part of the talk, which is a flashback.

I’d like to go back a bit, to those early Jesuits, to Ignatius and his first followers, and get a sense what were their values, what made them tick, what was foundational for them. The most important thing for those early Jesuits was their own experience. And Ignatius had an extraordinary reverence for people’s experience. And, what would happen in the retreat is, the person making a retreat would talk about his or her experience in light of prayer, contemplation, and Ignatius would try to help that person see how God might be saying something through that person’s experience, that experience is the language God uses to speak to us. So, experience was foundational. And as a result of his own experience in guiding others, Ignatius put together, over time, a manual called, The Spiritual Exercises. And you can find it in bookstores; we don’t have them for sale outside.

This is not a book you pick up and read; it’s an exercise book. And you know you wouldn’t pick up normally any kind of physical exercise book and read it, this is a book of spiritual exercises and it’s mainly a book intended for the person giving the retreat; so the one who’s guiding the other person through this set of experiences and listening to one’s own experience. But if you probe through this manual, you get an enormous sense of Ignatius’ respect for individual experience. This is what the person making the retreat has to do,

It will be very useful for the retreat director to be kept faithfully informed of the various disturbances and thoughts and movements that are awakened by the different spirits within the person.

And listen to this, this was actually contemplation, but it gives you a sense of just how deep Ignatius was in this sensitivity to experience. This is one of the meditations, and the person is supposed to pray like this,

First I will see all the different people on the face of the earth; so varied in dress and behavior. Some are white, others black, some at peace, and others at war, some weeping, and others laughing, some well, others sick, some being born and others dying.

Ignatius is very sensitive to those large issues that help to define our own particularity: race, ethnicity, culture, health, wealth—those things that effect who we are. But he was also very sensitive to even other kinds of things that are part of the makeup of our own experience,

The spiritual exercises should be adapted to the requirements of the person who wishes to make them. That is to say according to their age, their education, their aptitudes.

So again what I get a sense is this extraordinary respect for the other person’s experience. So much so that the retreat director is warned about something:

The one who gives the exercises should not encourage the one making them to embrace poverty or to make any other promise rather than its contrary; neither should he encourage him to embrace one state of life rather than the other.  Thus the one who gives the exercises should not lean either to one side or to the other, but standing in the middle like the balance of a scale, he should allow the Creator to work directly with the creature, and the creature with its Savior and Lord.

And then elsewhere:

He should limit his discourse to a brief summary statement of principal points, for then the one who’s making the contemplation by the true essentials and by personal reflection and reasoning may find something that will make it a little more meaningful for him and touch him more deeply.  For it is not an abundance of knowledge that fills and satisfies the soul, but rather an interior understanding and savoring of things.

So, this is the fundamental: your experience.  And in that retreat, Ignatius would listen to the experience and then try to help a person listen to God through that experience.  This conditioned how Ignatius viewed the words of other people, what they said.  In the presupposition to the exercises, he said,

In order that the one who gives these exercises, and he who makes them may be of more assistance and profit to each other, they should begin with the presupposition that every Christian ought to be more willing to give a good interpretation to the statement of another than to condemn it as false.  If he cannot give a good interpretation, he should ask the other how he understands it and if he is in error, he should correct him with charity. 

So Ignatius begins with as you talk to me, I’m trying to listen very carefully to you, with great reverence and respect for your experience.  So it’s not the immediate criticism, the immediate challenge, it’s first of all, trying to get a sense of what are you saying out of your own experience. Now it may be that I want to raise questions—that I’ll raise some issues and raise some challenges—but the whole attitude is very different from that of a kind of instant criticism and challenge.

Well, okay Ignatius, why is all of this going on?  The reason is not for people to simply stay in their experience.  The reason is for people, out of their own particularity, to grow.  And so a lot of the mediations in these spiritual exercises end up with phrases like, “What should I do to be a distinguished follower of the Lord?”  If  I’m looking at the Lord, I might think, “What have I done for Christ?  What am I doing for Christ?  What ought I do for Christ?  What more can I do?” 

So it’s a striving, increasingly, for excellence.  Remember, he’s somebody who wanted to be a distinguished soldier.  He wanted to be a saint.  He wanted to be a distinguished follower of his Lord.  And so, through all of it, it’s out of my skills, my particularity, my experience, how can I stretch, not to become somebody else, but to become more myself, so that I can be even more distinguished in serving God and His people.  And so a lot of the meditations are aimed at that in these spiritual exercises.

There’s one concluding meditation.  And this is probably going to be the longest thing I’ll read to you this afternoon.  But it’s critical in so many ways: both for an understanding of these exercises, the experience of Ignatius and the early Jesuits, and ultimately as well get to thinking about education in light of all this.  It’s called A Contemplation to Attain Love. 

Two points are to be noted: the first is that love out to be manifested in deeds rather than words, the second is that love consists in a mutual interchange by the two parties.  That is to say that the lover give to and share with the beloved all that he has or can attain and that the beloved act toward the lover in like manner.  Thus, if he has knowledge, he shares it with the one who does not have it.  In like manner, they share honors, riches, all things. 

The first point is to call to mind the benefits that I have received from creation, redemption, and the particular gifts I have received.  I will ponder with great affection how God our Lord has done for me and how many of His graces He has given me.  I will likewise consider how much the same Lord wishes to give Himself to me in so far as He can, according to His divine decrees.  I will then reflect within myself and consider that I, for my part, with great reason and justice, should offer and give to His divine majesty all that I possess and myself with it, and make an offering.

The second point is to consider how God dwells in His creatures: in the elements, giving them being,  in the plants, giving them live and the animals, giving them sensation, in us giving us understanding.  And so God dwells in me, giving me life, sensation, intelligence, and making a temple of me since He created me to the likeness and image of the diving majesty.  Then I will reflect upon myself in the same way.

The third point is to consider how God works and labors for me in all the created things on the face of the earth.  That is, He conducts himself as one who labors: in the heavens, elements, plants, fruits, flocks.  He gives them being, preserves them, grants them growth, sensation.  Then I will reflect on myself.

And the final point is to consider how all blessings and gifts descend from above.  My limited power, for example, comes from the Supreme and infinite power from above.  In like manner, goodness, justice, pity, mercy descend from above just as rays from the sun, the waters from the spring.

If you kind of get a sense of what’s going on there . . . it’s really fundamental for Ignatius.  All of human experience becomes ways in which God can speak to me.  So I want to be sensitive to God’s laboring and activity and presence in all the elements of this world and my experience.  And then, as I let that in, I think about myself—my own particular talents, my own particular skills, my own particular gifts—and they become my guides to how I can serve God better.  This is very fundamental because sometimes we think of our spiritual life and our service of God as our extracurricular activity.  We’ve got our jobs, and that’s one element of our life.  And then, if we have time, we can engage in community service, we can be kind to one another, we can pray, we can do all of those things.  And they are part of our life with God. 

But Ignatius is grounding our life with God in something far more central.  He’s grounding it in our own life, so that with my own particular gifts, talents, skills, jobs, occupations, particularities, these are the ways I serve God.  As a professor, by being a great professor; as a financial person by being a good financial person; as someone who takes care of facilities, by doing that in an extraordinarily good way; as a student, by taking advantage of all the academic and other opportunities offered me.  In all these ways, central to who we are, we serve God.  So it comes out of our experience, but we’ve got to be stretched.  It’s not about wallowing; it’s not about just being content with who I am.  It’s out of who I am, stretching to be more.

So, that’s what was fundamental to those early Jesuits and to Ignatius.  And I think that’s why, when they got into schools, the schools became so important to them.  Because if you think about education, this is exactly what we do in education.  At the foundation of our education is great respect for human experience; that’s the basis of it all.  It’s because I have my experience, I want to understand it, to share it, want to figure out this world, want to figure out this life of mine.  It’s because of all that that we get involved in this whole process of education—to hear other viewpoints, to explore whole other areas of this world and human culture and experience, and all of it all the time trying to make sense of my experience.  So this is critical, certainly to education in the Ignatian tradition.

I think sometimes that’s not the way education is thought of, in terms of the value of one’s own experience.  Certainly for many of my first years in education I didn’t look at it that way.  I looked of it basically as education was this objective set of data out there.  And I had to get it from the teacher, take it in, and give it back.  And my experience didn’t have anything to do with that.  And, even when the teacher said, “Well, I want you to put this in your own words,” I was always trying to figure out, what words does he think he wants to hear from me? 

Some things happened that I radically changed my view.  And, like a convert, I’m really big on this.  That this is critical.  I was a Dean of Arts and Sciences for a while and got very interested of the education in Physics.  And I went to some conferences on some very well-known physicists on educating people in Physics.  And they pointed out that it was possible to be an advanced graduate student in Physics and have some of the basics of Physics all mixed up, and not to understand it.  And the reason for that is: people didn’t trust one of the most basic human experiences: do I really understand this?  Because sometimes we can spit it back and not really understand it.

In an education in the Ignatian tradition, experience is absolutely fundamental.  My experience and then how I can grow from that.  And I value other people’s experience too because that’s what challenges me and helps me to grow.  In light of that, we have a particular way, I think, in an Ignatian university, of listening to each other.  And that should always be with the greatest of respect.

Alan Bennett, in the preface to The History Boys, writes this.  He’s talking about a historian who reviewed another historian, Neil Ferguson. 

Both the pity of war and the reception it has enjoyed illustrate aspects of British culture about which one can only feel ambivalent.  Anyone who’s been a victim, let alone a perpetrator, of the Oxbridge system will recognize Nile Ferguson’s book for what it is: an extended and argumentative tutorial from a self-consciously clever, confrontational young don determined to stand everything on its head and argue with vehemence against what he sees as the conventional wisdom or, worse still, the fashion of the time. 

The idea is to teach the young to think and to argue, and the real masters of it were first argued undergraduates out of their received opinions, then turned around after a time and argued them out of their new-found radicalism, leaving them mystified as to what they believed and suspended in a free-floating state of cleverness.

That’s one way we can listen and dialogue with each other, but at an Ignatian university there may be challenge, confrontation, help-me-understand-that.  But it always proceeds by taking this whole project very seriously; it’s not a game.  Our experience of the world, our trying to understand that, our sharing that with others—this is really serious.  And so I listen with seriousness and I expect to be listened to with seriousness. 

You can just see universities would be perfect for these early Jesuits.  And, one final point, they’re great places of course where we simply don’t have our experience, but we’re stretched.  We’re stretched to dig deeper into our experience.  We’re stretched to refine our skills, to stretch our imagination, to sharpen our intellect, to find our own particular passions and perfections and develop those, to do it in the classroom and in extracurriculars.  All of this happens in education, so it was perfect for those early Jesuits.

Let me just say (I am conscious now of time) a quick word about LMU then get on to those three final reflections that I do want to be sure to touch on.  Perhaps the easiest way to do this LMU part is to share with you four stories from my past couple of weeks.

First story: I’ve been at a number of parent receptions.  This is what a number of parents have told me at different receptions, not knowing each other.  They have said, “The great thing about LMU is that my son or daughter feels respected by their professors.  And they said that’s very different than the experience they had in prep school and high school.  They feel that, whatever they say, the professor is listening and taking it seriously.”  Respect for the opinion of another.  But it’s not an easy respect that just says, “What’s your opinion?  Fine.  What’s your opinion?  Fine.  What’s your opinion?  Fine.”  It’s a real pushing, “I respect you so much I’m going to push you.” 

Another story is: a parent told me that their daughter came to LMU a very shy person.  Somewhere in her second year, she called her parents and said, “Mom and Dad, I just want you to know I’m not shy anymore.”  And this is what had happened: in one of the classes, she had said something, and the professor said, “Let me probe that a bit.”  And challenged it.  And someone else chimed in and defended her (another student).  Another student chimed in and criticized her.  And she said, “I finally decided, I’m going to defend this position.”  She stopped being shy.  So this respect that can happen in the context of this university is not an easy respect.  It’s a respect that challenges, that pushes; because I respect you, I can push you and challenge you.

Another story: last night I read a book called Atonement.  I had a book discussion with 10 students, most of whom are 1st and 2nd year students.  I had read the book when it first came out, I read it again in preparation for this discussion.  I learned something by listening to these young people—very diverse group—talking about this book out of their own experience.  I saw things in that novel I had missed.  Just as reading a novel is not simply about the novel itself, but we often think about our own experience, I thought about things in my own experience in different ways last night.  This is one of the great things about a university community: as all of us are trying, of whatever age, to understand our experiences, we’re enriched by the conversation.

Final story: I was at a luncheon for the Greek Council last week.  I was sitting next to a young woman and she said that, in her sorority, she’d become the vice president.  She said, “I have never thought of myself as a leader before and I just kind of ended up in this job.  And, you know what?  I like it.  I’m making mistakes; I find out I’m good at it.”  This is a person discovering a part of her particularity, a part of her gifts and talents—in this case, through an extracurricular activity. 

So in all this mix, a great opportunity for people to take seriously their own experience, to grow, and then ultimately to place all this in service to others.  Out of who they discover themselves to be: their talents, their skills, their particularities.  Ultimately (and this is always the case here, isn’t it) we’re always taking about the larger world, service, how can I serve?  As a teacher, doctor, politician, physician, lawyer businessperson, realtor, so many different ways.  Let me just go quickly to my three final reflections.

The first, this phrase going to the next level – As I say, I’ve been asked this over all my time here – I’ve obviously not been able to answer it adequately, because I keep getting asked it. And, it’s only recently that I’ve come to the conclusion, through some conversations with David Burcham, the Dean of our Law School that the problem is: it’s completely the wrong question.  It’s the wrong way of looking at this and let me tell you why: implied in this, is quite frankly, this model of higher education: that Harvard is the best, and basically, we all want some day to grow up and be Harvard and we are only held back by money and years. 

If you look at a lot of what goes on in higher Ed, there is basically assumed that kind of model.  And that just lies the great rich diversity of colleges and universities in this country.  Also, if you think about it going to the next level, we’ve always had problems saying what other university is at that next level – because every time someone comes up with a name, it’s always, “yes, but . . .” they are different than this and we’re different in that.  It’s always been impossible to find out who is at this kind of next level.  Finally, it gives a sense that we are going to run and pant and race and we’re going to get to that next level and we’re going to be exhausted and then stop and just enjoy it for a while. 

I’ve come to the conclusion that it’s a completely useless way of thinking about what we’re all about and our progress so, I would like to retire! And substitute this, and in light of everything I’ve just been saying which is building up to this.  If you think of each of us and how we grow up, we do it (often) by trying out some different versions of ourselves.  It’s one of the great things about cities, big cities, we can be anonymous in them and we can try this version and that version and be different people for a while.

But ultimately, if this human thing works right, over time we become, not somebody else, and not one of those versions, we become more deeply, more fully, more confidently, more comfortably our self.  That’s what should happen to each of us individually.  I think that’s also true of universities.  That, as we think about LMU and progressing, we should think about it that way.  As LMU not becoming another university but, LMU becoming more deeply, more confidently, in a more distinguished way, and a more excellent way, it’s self.  What is our mission; the encouragement of learning; education of the whole person; service of faith; promotion of justice. 

We want to do that better and better each year.  Ignatius was very realistic, so we want to make that realistic.  We want to talk about it in terms of some things that we might plan for, figure out how to pay for, asses, measure, hold people responsible for.  But it’s not about reaching some level out there, it’s about reaching another level in here.  It’s about becoming more deeply, more truly who we are at this institution.  I think that’s how we have to think about this and again we have work to do to measure this out, and to think about it and to make it realistic.  But I would prefer to think about it this way, rather than to think about in terms of some level out there.  It’s much truer to what life of an institution is all about.

Secondly, a word to those of who are young professors: it’s a challenging place to be.  Because we are asking to you to not just be a good teacher, not just be a good researcher, not just be a good citizen but to do all of that.  That is more challenging than if we were strictly a research institution or strictly a teaching institution.  It is, quite frankly, more challenging.  And we can talk about how research leads into teaching and teaching comes back and reaches research and in way it is true but in a day-to-day living of a life it can get very complicated and challenging.

I would just like to suggest though, that the reason you were drawn in to LMU is because that’s who you are. That you want to be, not simply a researcher, not simply a distinguished teacher, that you to be both and we want to try to help you to be both.  But there’s always to going to be a lag because hopefully, you are always going to be aspiring for more. We are going to be putting things into place to help you in your teaching and research and pretty soon it’s going to be inadequate because you’re going to be aspiring to be more. We really do want to help you and help us to know how to help you.  But in the end, I think you’re here because of your own drive and we want to help you fulfill that drive so you can feel that great pride from being distinguished in something that’s enormously challenging but very worthwhile.

A final story . . . as you do that, I would encourage to look to people who have done it well, certainly one, who I think has done it well is Professor Barbara Marino. Think of people like her.  Barbara very kindly has shared with us a story about Professor John Page and, with her permission, I would like to conclude with this story.  There were number of things but eventually, Barbara says:

I accepted a lower paying, one year position at LMU over a tenure track position at a research institution.  My advisor was confused, to say the least.  My friends and family understood.  I wanted to come back out here to secure an apartment before I moved to Los Angeles. The Academic Vice President did not approve the full travel budget, so John invited my sister and me to stay in his home.  I was a future colleague and a virtual stranger and yet he invited me and my sister to stay in his home for four days.  

The first day of our visit, my sister and I were trying to figure out how to decide on a neighborhood or neighborhoods of which to concentrate our efforts. We decided that the first order of business would be to buy a map.  When we left our bedroom to join John for breakfast he presented me with my first Thomas Guide—a scientific marvel.  My sister and I wondered later if he had overheard us talking about buying a map. Of course, he didn’t he had already purchased the map for me.  He has a remarkable ability to anticipate needs.

When I first arrived in Los Angeles, the only vehicle I had was a moving truck.  John let me use his car for several days while I shopped for a car of my own. I didn’t ask, I did not express concern, he simply called me to say, “It would probably be difficult to drive a moving truck around car shopping.”  He said he didn’t need his car and that I could have it until I had one of my own.

John is very thoughtful and kind. He has an uncanny ability to anticipate questions, concerns and needs. This incidentally also makes him an outstanding teacher.  What amazes me most is that he does not intend to be kind but, he simply does what needs to be done and moves on.  

I happened to learn about John’s act of kindness but there are lots, lots of acts of kindness between and among you. Sensitivity, kindness between people across generations, over decades, things I don’t know about, my predecessors didn’t know about. Things that aren’t rewarded in rank and tenure that don’t come up at merit time. But it’s these very acts that help to create the kind of community where people can value their experience, grow, become more fully alive.  So, I want to take this opportunity to thank John and to thank all of you for all you hidden acts of sensitivity and goodness.  The most recent of which is to listen to me.  I said we could have spent some time in silence.  Instead, I talked; you listened. Thank you for your kind attention.