Meanwhile, Back in Detroit

...If only that had been the end of it...

...nor was there any question of preferentiai treatment for Jesuits in the selection process for termination...

...The curricula were undergoing revisions in the direction of urban relevance, attention to social change and humane values in the 'here and now.' The Department of Theology had been changed to Religious Studies, was selecting faculty on an academic rather than confessional basis, and was constructed as a bridge between the humanities and the social and behavioral sciences...

...twenty-four tenured faculty fired with a year's severance pay...

...The faculty was demoralized...

...In the third chapter we are given an account of a day in the life of this movie mogul, a "boy wonder" whom Fitzgerald modeled on MGM production chief Irving Thaiberg, and the main impression we get is of a life of continuous interruption and incompletion...

...When the search committee reconvened to reconsider the candidates, both of its Jesuit members insisted that Catholics should have priority...

...The University had just (1970) been rechartered as a private institution, at least legally distinct from the Order...

...The traditional constituency for 'Jesuit education' is increasingly reluctant to cross the color line in order to get it...

...It is as if the Jesuits at this University could not make up their minds which life they were fighting for: their own in relation to the Church and her foreseeable institutional destiny, or the life of a decent university in the midst of a deeply troubled city...

...The Department of Religious Studies had, at the same time, an appointment to make in New Testament...

...Ever since 1970 the University administration had alternately announced deficits and financial 'crises' and promulgated cures for these and claimed success for the cures...

...The cause for this was said to be 'financial exigency'--the third and surely the most drastic one in five years, all unanticipated according to contemporary administrative sources...

...I CommomveM: 51...

...This reporter is not an unbiased observer of these events...

...It appears that the Jesuit dean did his best to avoid that complication in what was already a grisly situation...

...the same for nine non-tenured faculty...

...We know as Americans that justice is most unlikely to be pursued abroad while it remains untended at home...

...That required a profession of "Equal Opportunity...

...It complicated matters that not all the signals were straight...

...That year the faculty rejected collective bargaining, proposed by the AAUP, by about 55 to 45...

...Even at the present, there is only a bare majority of Roman Catholic undergraduates...

...A couple of years ago, when an informal delegation of faculty went to the president of the university to discuss the search for a dean for the College of Arts and Sciences, they reported what they considered a strangely candid response from him...

...Teaching as I do at the University of Detroit, I am struck with Professor O'Brien's rather gentle 'sins of omission' reading of the Jesuit Crisis in Education...

...In the case of Detroit, there is a whole city that can either benefit or experience one more large defeat, depending on how the Jesuits come out of this...

...They did not accept...

...In the fail of 1972, it surfaced that the sociology department was, take it either way, being cleaned out or purged...

...he must get some "structure" back into the college--i.e., the end of the reform impulse in curriculum...

...Sidney Mead identified this as a dilemma which emerged in 19th century America and which none of the religious bodies has proven very adept at even facing, theologically...

...By early January 1976, some forty more positions had been eliminated from the University roster through various devices: a couple of medical retirements...

...Such a commitment, indeed, would be an act of high civic as well as ecclesiastical leadership...

...Yet for over a year that committee had been unable to secure a dean...

...Not one of the fired faculty was willing to attempt legal recourse, although aid and support were available...

...In the past two or three years, however, sectarianism has broken back into the open...

...It would be a risk, an entry into new worlds, demanding new competencies and requiring radically new sources of support for Jesuit education, not only in terms of money, but also in terms of consent and participation in the enterprise...

...a change of assignment from faculty to administrative posts in a couple of cases...

...I hope that the Jesuits will opt for an identity which is going in that direction, because I would like to see the University fulfill the humane possibilities which history has placed on her doorstep...

...Instead he called for a six-week moratorium during which the departments and colleges should select candidates to be fired...

...Cosmopolitanism had gone that far...

...Before the month was out, a faculty union had been formed, joining the local chapters of the AAUP, the Michigan Education Association, and previously independent faculty members...

...Life has not been easy for him...

...It was a move which deeply divided the University community...

...There is nothing incompatible with a high Jesuit profile committed to maintaining a decent, pluralistic and racially integrated university in Detroit...

...If it were not for the fact that I work in one of their institutions and have hopes for what it might become, I would not venture to discuss the identity problems of a group to which I do not belong...

...It would be avery concrete embodiment of religions values in a city grown weary of the constant defeat of humane values...

...That was a criterion which had neither been advertised nor intimated to the candidates...

...It was painful, but the remaining faculty were assured that this was a reasonable traveling weight for any foreseeable future...

...The department refused to engage in that subterfuge...

...As soon as that election was over, the administration imposed a 'quota system' on the granting of tenure...

...Typical is the intrusion into Stahr's appointment schedule of a prima donna English novelist named Boxley whom the studio has hired...

...Five of the cases arose in the College of Engineering, one in the Division of Teacher Education...

...A well-qualified Jesuit was appointed, with the department's consent, from within Commonweal: 49 the University...

...The primary value of principles of justice lies in their ability to bring under judgment those who hold those principles...

...Each of these crises had been either accompanied or followed by an administrative shuffle at the vice presidential level...

...Arts and Sciences, Engineering, OEO~E lqC~O is associate pro]essor o/ social ethics at the University o/Detroit...

...With the aid of the union, several of the persons thus affected filed a class action suit which is still pending in the Wayne County Circuit Court...

...The untenured 'left wing' was not to be renewed...

...Other parts of the administration were insisting that the position be advertised...

...That process has begun...

...And justice, much more clearly than charity, begins at home...

...It is the denominational dilemma which is built into the American civil religion...

...Architecture and Law...

...Unable to work under the studio system, Boxley comes to Stahr's office to do his fretting...

...But the worst was not over...

...It would also be an expensive commitment, requiring the full resources of the Order and many, many others to succeed...

...From where I sit, it looks as if the crisis in Jesuit education arises very much from the same dilemma which a democratic society imposes on all religious denominations insofar as they are unable to settle for a merely sectarian identity: on the one hand, their confessional particularity is their only reason for existing apart lrom the rest of society while, on the other hand, their vision of and contribution to the general welfare is a necessary justification for their existing in society...

...As it stands, however, there are whole institutions which are experiencing disruption as the Jesuits undergo conflict over their identity...

...These were hardly the criteria with which the joint faculty-administration search committee had been charged...

...Even in the Religious Studies department, this was not the case...

...A deficit in 1970 led to a salary freeze in 1971 and a pruning of about forty members (20 percent) from the Arts College faculty through non-renewal of contracts and non-replacement of retirements...

...There were "reform" deans in at least four of the colleges--i.e...

...That possibility, however, cannot be actualized on a sectarian basis...

...21 January 1977- 50 The University of Detroit's main campus is located directly in the path of Detroit's advancing color line...

...The search committee was immobilized by this new demand...

...In reassessing the character and direction of their corporate existence, the Jesuits are face to face with this dilemma...

...Without any warning whatsoever, the president of the University called a meeting of the faculty on February 14, 1974 to announce that the Trustees had declared 'financial exigency' and, therefore, contracts would not be issued as expected on February 15...

...None of the reinstated faculty members was Jesuit...

...The brunt of these reductions was suffered in the College of Arts and Sciences...

...It seems that the Jesuit jury is still out deciding whether their new corporate apostolate will give priority to the sectarian basis or the cosmopolitan purposes of the Order...

...Stahr responds by improvising a little scene, in which Stahr himself stars, in order to give Boxley a better idea what kind of material plays in movies...

...Ia the fail of 1973, amid announcements of increasing financial health for the University, the AAUP lost another bid for collective bargaining...

...It would be a victory for the cosmopolitan values and purposes of the 'catholic tradition' generally and the traditional Jesuit commitment to excellence under socially exigent conditions...

...Perhaps we need some comparative data before we rush to agreement on either the reafity or the nature of any such crisis...

...In the end, the committee was abolished and the president appointed a compromise: a Jesuit cosmopolitan...

...and he must "do something about that religious studies department...

...Sociologically this is far and away the most important element in whatever future the University may have...

...Also, five of the terminated faculty have been reinstated--four tenured, one non-tenured-by an internal review process...

...From the time of its formation until the time for the NLRB representational election in May of 1976, I served as the president of the fledgling University of Detroit Professors' Union...

...From where I sit, if there is a crisis in Jesuit education, then it arises fxom Jesuit ambiguities on whether their future should be dictated by their cosmopolitan purposes, as Professor O'Brien prefers, or by the sectarian character of their order...

...At least eight of those ten would have been attractive possibilities at any liberal arts school...

...We will need to know a good deal more about that before we can gauge whether the Jesuits and their institutions are at all likely, as Professor O'Brien hopes, to be the bearers of a vision which joins the pursuit of academic excellence to the promotion of wider justice...

...At our school, it seems, many Jesuits, especially those in power--but not all of them--are either unwilling or unable to stand on their cosmopolitan purposes and are falling back on sectarian claims in the name of "identity...

...It requires the informed, enthusiastic and engaged participation of too many diverse parties for that...

...From that vantage point, it seems to him that the crisis arises from a lack of clarity in the Jesuit vision accompanied, therefore, by a lack of commitment to any clear goals...

...It is already difficult, and in the future it can only become more so, to conceive of a school at its present location as a Roman Catholic school for Roman Catholic students playing a vital role in the making or the remaking of any sort of specifically Roman Catholic culture...

...The case of the University of Detroit introduces some elements in the "crisis in Jesuit education" which are not apparently present at Holy Cross, nor at Boston College either...

...Crises and Cures Perhaps it was just as well...

...In the euphemism of our times, it is an increasingly 'inner city' school...

...Henceforth the Trustees were to set a number for the 'tenure slots' available in each college, regardless of the number of candidates or their individual merits...

...This may be partly a matter of sociology...

...0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 The organizing principle of F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Last Tycoon--or rather, its disorganizing principle--is supplied by the life of its hero, Monroe Stahr...

...Meanwhile a majority of the faculty in the College of Arts and Sciences, Engineering, Business and Administration, Architecture, and Librarians voted f o r collective bargaining...

...Their two recommendations had been cosmopolitan candidates...

...Within a month the entire institution was galvanized by an administrativelysponsored aura of crisis...

...The president, they said, had three priorities for a new dean...

...There are civic as well as ecclesiastical consequences either way...

...He must be a Jesuit, as his predecessor was not...

...The then-dean has since admitted, ruefully and privately, that the orders came from on high...

...Granted the two may be related...

...We also know that justice cannot but be distorted when it is pursued on" a sectarian basis or in a sectarian way...

...but it is one of the least discussed elements in the current search for a 'religious identity ~ for the University...

...That is not the way the pieces fit together at the University of Detroit...

...Especially in bad times, credit should be given where credit is due...

...In spite of repeated denials, on December 23, 1975 the Trustees did call a meeting of the faculty to announce the truth of the rumors...

...Acting out all parts himself, Stahr proposes a woman who enters an office and begins to burn a pair of black gloves in a stove, but stops short when the phone rings, explaining to whoever is on the line that she's never owned any black gloves . . . . When Stahr resumes his seat at this point, Boxley, engrossed, asks what happens next...

...The promotion of wider justice, after all, requires excellences of its own in the making of judgments, the undertaking of action, the understanding of others who may differ radically and the fashioning of institutions capable, not only of containing these differences, but of actually thriving on them...

...In the entire process of joining that faculty, no one ever asked what my religious afftliation was or if I even had one...

...When I started teaching at the University of Detroit, it seemed that the community here was supporting its cosmopolitan purposes and keeping its sectarian character well in the background...

...When it came to this, there was no problem with decentralizing authority...

...Inasmuch as the academic year had opened with optimistic reports from the president regarding the enrollment and the financial health of the University, the faculty was shocked to learn on December 4, 1975 that the administration was planning to terminate some 40 to 50 teachers, effective January 1, 1976...

...but it makes a world of difference which one is considered the dependent variable of the other...

...In December 1975 the worst crisis to date was just surfacing...

...That is one of the surprising and baffling aspects of the turmoil which this University has suffered in recent years: the persistent attempt to define a confessional identity for the University...

...The whole faculty was thrown into uncertainty and anxiety while something like twenty positions were to be eliminated from the College of Arts and Sciences, without regard to tenure...

...In a shrinking and financially distraught college, he has tried to maintain some momentum for educational innovation, while trying to placate the demand for a 'Jesuit identity.' When the Religious Studies department needed a new chairman, he insisted that it must be a Jesuit...

...M .ANWHILE, BACK IN DETROIT GEORGE PICKERING More on the crisis in Jesuit educcrtion Professor David O'Brien has submitted the case of Holy Cross as an illustration of the "crisis in Jesuit education" [Oct...

...It is not a situation in which ambiguous claims to want both will sufrice...

...If they work in that realm, they may have some value which recommends them to others...

...The search committee interviewed ten excellent candidates at the annual meeting of the American Academy of Religion...