At the core of my vision for Boston College (BC) are three words: university, Catholic, and Jesuit.
UNIVERSITY
We are a university, a community of scholars and learners, not a parish, not a seminary, not a social service agency. We are an academic institution where teaching, research, community service, debate, inquiry, and learning occur. As John Henry Cardinal Newman, the great nineteenth-century English educator wrote, “Great minds need elbow room.... And so indeed do lesser minds and all minds.” Our students come here expecting to learn and grow intellectually, spiritually, and socially, to be stretched by new experiences, ideas, and people, and to be valued and treated with respect.
To achieve these goals, we have to be committed to being an institution that seeks to inform and form so as to transform. We cannot merely transmit the past; we must foster a spirit of intellectual inquiry. BC is committed to research and selected graduate and professional programs. We know that we cannot do everything. But we are committed to the transmission and discovery of knowledge in ways and programs appropriate to our mission and resources.
I often think about the words of Fr. Theodore Hesburgh, C.S.C., that a university should be a beacon, a bridge, and a crossroads.
CATHOLIC
Undergraduate education focusing on the liberal arts is at the heart of Boston College and that has long been true for Catholic colleges and universities. The liberal arts by definition help people become more liberal, more human, more free. And thus be more able to recognize their gifts and use them for the good of others. As a Catholic university, we are called in a particular way to be a meeting place between faith and culture, especially between the Catholic Church and society. As a Catholic institution, we strive to integrate religious commitment and intellectual excellence, and our institutional priorities reflect Catholic values and perspectives, where the liberal arts are emphasized as a way of helping free minds and where students especially are asked to consider questions about self, God, and neighbor.
I remember a Jesuit at Marquette University saying once that being in a Catholic university was like being in a mist; stay in it long enough and you get soaked. For these goals to be achieved, we have to be a place where people of all faiths can study, teach, research, work, and where faculty, students, and staff have the opportunity to engage in religious inquiry through worship, retreats, and intellectual and personal exploration.
...we have to be committed to being an institution that seeks to inform and form so as to transform.
JESUIT
To be a Jesuit university is to be part of a longstanding educational tradition stressing a rigorous, methodical approach to education, one based on the liberal arts and a core curriculum, reflecting the experience of St. Ignatius of Loyola and his companions at the University of Paris. Ignatius praised the approach at Paris and soon sketched out a prescriptive curriculum, a core. He wanted graduates of Jesuit schools to be a leaven for good, and he committed the Society of Jesus to education by the early 1550s because he concluded that schools were apostolic endeavors and means of promoting the greater good. His genius was to combine the best of humanistic education of his day with character formation.
Jesuit schools should strive to combine intellectual excellence and character formation. Jesuit education also means caring for the individual and urging students to develop competence in a particular discipline, to consider God’s call to them, and to share their gifts with others. It is about student formation, not just student development. It is intentional, but not coercive or indoctrinating. I think being a Jesuit and Catholic university requires that we always be involved in the life of the community, nation, and world around us. St. Ignatius once told one of his subordinates that, when establishing a new school, he should be sure that the site be “not far removed from the conversation of the city.” We continue the work begun decades ago by our founders, promoting these conversations. I hope that Boston College will continue to be a meeting place grounded in our Jesuit, Catholic tradition.
William P. Leahy, S.J., a member of the U.S. East Province of the Society of Jesus, is the 25th and longest serving president of Boston College.
Learn more about University President Fr. William P. Leahy, S.J.
