This just in, over the e-mail transom. I completely concur: Tom Hibbs' withdrawal is bad news. But given the turmoil at UD, and the board of directors' apparent wishes to cast aside what makes UD special, it's hard to see why someone of Hibbs's caliber, as well as spiritual and academic orientation, would have walked into that lion's den:
Baylor honors college dean Thomas Hibbs, the favored candidate by orthodox Catholics to take over the University of Dallas provost job, has removed himself from the competition -- which had come down to him and one other fellow. This is most distressing. The following e-mail was sent to me this afternoon. I take out names and e-mail addresses:
This e-mail is circulating among UD alumni. HIbbs would have been not only a huge coup but also a sign that the admistration wants to preserve that which makes UD a great institution. (For the record I don't entirely agree with the reasoning below. The problem is not a lack of administrators who are officially Catholic. The problem is administrators who don't understands the ethos of a Catholic liberal arts education. Find me a Baptist, Orthodox or agnostic who appreciates that I would welcome them aboard.)-- [Name redacted]
UD '00---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: [REDACTED]
Date: Nov 9, 2007 2:04 PM
Subject: University of Dallas Provost News - Action Required
To: [REDACTED]Devastating news from the University of Dallas. Tom Hibbs pulled his name from consideration for UD Provost. As demoralizing as that is, we cannot give Dr. Lazarus the out to hire the non-Catholic, unqualified Bill Berry from Butler.
PLEASE send messages to Dr. Lazarus ([REDACTED]) making it clear that Berry is unacceptable. We need to get them to start the search over...with a new search firm...or the bad press and enrollment drop, not to mention the direction of the school, will be horrendous. It will be a repeat of the pain we went through with Milam Joseph.
This is serious, folks. Lazarus is expected to make an announcement any day. He was down to 2 finalists and the good one (Hibbs) just pulled his name out. We need to put some pressure on Dr. Lazarus, otherwise the Catholic identity of UD is in real jeopardy. At this point, only 4 of the top 10 administrators at Dallas are Catholic.
This Provost choice will just add the non-Catholic voice there, and he will be the senior academic officer (in Berry's case, he has made it clear he wants to make the faculty "more diverse" and to add female authors to the core curriculum...apparently it is the gender of the author and not the content which determines a book's greatness). We can't have that.
[FINAL SENTENCE AND NAME REDACTED]
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Irritated:
I plan on writing a substantially longer post later today, but in the meantime, I'd like to respond to some misunderstandings about alumni giving. Like you, I was under the impression that alumni giving for years has been awful. After participating in the phoneathon for several years and getting frustrated about the lack of good data on alumni, I started to look into the practices of University Advancement, particularly the alumni data they were working with. What I found was extremly surprising. UD alumni actually give at a fairly high rate---when they are contacted. Up until very very recently when some improvements were made, there was correct contact information on less than half of the UD alumni.
Now better contact data should yield much better results, but only when married with good messaging and the ubnderstanding among alumni that what they say about UD is the same thing the admnistration is saying. BTW, this misunderstanding about alumni giving has for a very long time been used as reason to ignore the very reasonable concerns of alumni who truly care for the place.
Irritated:
Grahmann is not really gone, because he had his favourite installed as the new board of trustees chairman just before the Pope replaced him. (Installed in contravention of the board's term limits, but what's a think like rules among cronies?) The board of trustees is overwhelmingly Grahmannoid.
The provost selection matters tremendously. Trustees told alumni leaders when they began the process to hire a new provost that they were expecting to hire Dr. Lazarus's heir apparent. Dr. Lazarus is near retirement age and the strains of office, many the result of his own blunders, may accelerate his retirement. The trustees' inclination is to promote the new provost to the presidency. So what if he is not a Catholic nor one who even understands Catholic education? Why should they care?
That said, I agree with you on the point that this is no time for alumni to cut off giving to the school or to threaten to do so. Threats to cut off small giving are pathetic, and whatever else one may say about the chairman of the trustees, he is at least shrewd enough to pounce on the little mouse whenever an unhappy but impecunious alumnus threatens to stop his small contributions.
Alumni should increase giving as much as possible. But even if alumni giving doubled or tripled -- which may not be realistically in our capacity -- that would not provide UD with the huge capital gifts it needs. Successful and admirable universities always depend on huge gifts from non-alumni -- think of Joan Kroc and Notre Dame and San Diego. Braniff, Blakley, Carpenter and Constantin were not UD alumni. There is no way around it: Beating up the alumni to give more will only get us so far. We need to find new Constantins and Carpenters, very wealthy, very generous, very visionary, non-alumni.
Many alumni and others interested in the University of Dallas are very concerned about the question of whether the future provost will be Catholic or not. That is an important issue, no doubt, as a Catholic university needs an administration that has a thorough understanding of the Catholic tradition. It is equally important, however, that the new provost will have an outstanding academic record. A provost is something like a "first faculty member," a role model who sets standards and implements policies concerning the academic rigor of an institution of higher learning. This is why Tom Hibbs was such an exciting candidate: he is a Catholic intellectual of significant repute--and promise.
By the way, the University of Dallas is not in crisis. There are some tensions and debates over the future vision for the university--but such discussions are normal at any institution or even business. There are also some financial challenges, concerning salary levels and the state of the library, for example. But these are not problems of apocalyptic dimensions. I am confident that they can be addressed and resolved.
Philipp:
I agree with your comments; I doubt, however, that any alumnus would argue that a provost need only be Catholic and that a strong academic record is only a "nice to have."
With so many strong Catholic intellectuals in American higher education, though, I would think that an institution as well regarded at UD could recruit one to fill the provost position. So why would UD not first set sights on a strong academic who is Catholic? Prudence would seem to dictate that it do so.
And UD did have an outstanding candidate in Thomas Hibbs...the school now needs to go out an find more such candidates.
With regard to UD not being a school in crisis, that may be the case now. Through the fine work of the admissions staff, and because UD continues to offer one of the finest educations in the country, it is experiencing some of the largest and most academically qualified classes in its history. But UD's reputation was damaged greatly in the late 90's and early 00's and enrollment and retention numbers dropped dramatically as a result. I suspect that UD might not be able to easily weather another storm that would be created if there were any whiff that UD may be putting less enphasis on the Catholic tradition, or that it is putting more focus on professional study rather than honoring and promoting its liberal arts heritage.
Although I am an outsider, please allow me to make a suggestion: Your first order of business with the new bishop should be to restore U.D.'s Catholic appearance in it's most conspicuous place.
It's been nearly two years since I last attended a Mass there, but I assume that the chapel still looks like the product the breakaway spirit of Vatican II American Catholic church rather than the Roman Catholic Church in America. As I mentioned to Rod in a post some months ago, U.D. appears to be ashamed of belief in the Real Presence because He is shunted off to a tiny niche by the door; not allowed inside the Unitarian Universalist-like meeting hall ("chapel") itself. But of course what is allowed in is an elevated wading pool that sounds like a toilette flushing every few minutes-- the spirit of V II types have to show that U.D. is up to date, you know. This outsider sees it as all hat and no cattle, as Texicans like to say.
It broke my heart to see reverent, clear-eyed Catholic students (our future) having to attend Mass with fold-down kneelers in a "worship space" ashamed of the Real Presence.
Want to spark contributions by Catholics? First give them something authentically Catholic to be proud of again.
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