‘Faculty Column’ Archives
Making Walls: An Ode to the Office Cubicle (by R. Smith with apologies to R. Frost)
Something there is about an office that loves a wall, That wants it up full to the ceiling, Not halfway or 3/4, but all the way, Over which no errant conversations can pass. The work of worthless bureaucrats is another thing: I have seen them pile up cubicles one on top of another, In every manner, form and configuration, To satisfy their obsession to have their employees [...]
Liberal Education and the Research Ideal
As an advancing research university, Notre Dame faces a unique challenge: to pursue knowledge while remaining committed to the framework offered by the Catholic and other intellectual traditions. Our success in balancing these issues in the coming years will be determined by many decisions we are making at the present. Faculty at research universities pursue highly [...]
Drawing wisdom from St. Ignatius of Loyola on the Solemnity of Christ the King
Delivered in the Basilica of the Sacred Heart on November 21, the following homily concluded the Notre Dame Center for Ethics and Culture's 11th annual fall conference, Younger than Sin: Reviving Simplicity through the Virtues of Humility, Wonder & Joy. It is a joy to be with you at the conclusion of this annual conference of the Notre Dame Center for Ethics and [...]
Taking on ‘Notre Dame, Our Mother’ in a New Way: Sociology professor becomes Catholic
What led sociology professor Christian Smith and his wife Emily to embrace the Catholic Church and convert from Protestantism this past April? The richness, tradition, and authority of the Church, and, ultimately, the rational sense-making to weather the assaults of modernity! Christian Smith is the William R. Kenan, Jr. Professor of Sociology here at Notre Dame and the Director of the [...]
Does Catholic liturgical music have a universal value?
In Mozart’s The Magic Flute, an opera we study in my music class, there is a funny and yet quite moving scene. The comic character, Papageno, uses the magic power of his bells to save the heroine, Princess Pamina, from the clutches of Monostatos and his slaves – caricatures of contemporary Turks. As they hear the music, they start dancing and singing like happy kids and all ends well. Pamina [...]
An Academic “Ruling Class”
Fr. Norman Weslin, O.S., at the complaint of Notre Dame, was arrested in May 2009 and charged as a criminal for peacefully entering the Notre Dame campus to offer his prayer of reparation for Notre Dame’s conferral of its highest honor on President Obama, the most relentlessly pro-abortion public official in the world. The university refuses to ask the St. Joseph County prosecutor to drop the [...]
Obama’s Illegal Stem-Cell Policy
A year and a half ago, when President Obama signed his executive order funding embryo-destructive stem-cell research, I argued in The Weekly Standard that he was perpetuating a needless stem-cell war, that his decision was "bad ethics, bad science, and bad politics." Add "bad law" to the list. Earlier this week, Chief Judge Royce Lamberth of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia [...]
So Long Captain Kirk: A Personal Reflection
The decision by Father Tom Doyle, Notre Dame’s new Vice-President for Student Affairs to fire Bill Kirk from his position as Associate Vice-President for Residence Life has left many of us with an empty feeling. It has also put another dent in Notre Dame’s reputation as a family-friendly and compassionate employer. The decision was both unfair and imprudent. It was unfair, because, as [...]
Sixty Years at Notre Dame: Vincent de Santis as Scholar, Teacher and Friend
Vincent De Santis took up his initial appointment as an instructor in history at Notre Dame in the Fall of 1949. He completed sixty years of teaching here last fall at the rank of Emeritus Professor when he offered his popular course on “American Presidents from FDR to Clinton.” Very few faculty have matched his remarkable record of sixty years of dedication and service to his [...]