Theodore Hesburgh

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Theodore Martin Hesburgh, CSC, (May 25, 1917 – February 26, 2015), a native of Syracuse, New York, who became an ordained priest of the Congregation of Holy Cross, and is best known for his services as president of the University of Notre Dame for thirty-five years (1952-1977).

Hesburgh was an educator and writer who served in a variety of American civic and governmental commissions, as well as international humanitarian projects.

Hesburgh has been recognized and commended for his service, including the Presidential Medal of Freedom (1964) and the Congressional Gold Medal (2000).

He also set the world's record for the individual with the most honorary degrees with more than 150 degrees as of 2013. Hesburgh has been credited with the introduction of Notre Dame, a long-running football program, to the forefront of American Catholic universities and its transition to a nationally recognized institution of higher education.

He oversaw the university's dramatic growth, as well as the smooth transfer of its assets from Holy Cross priests to the Notre Dame Board of Trustees in 1967.

During his time as president, the university also became a coeducational institution.

Hesburgh served in leadership positions in a variety of organisations concerned with civil rights, peaceful use of atomic energy, migrant reform, and Third World development in addition to his service to Notre Dame.

Hesburgh was also on the boards of numerous companies, charities, civic groups, and Vatican missions.

Early life and education

Theodore Martin Hesburgh was born in Syracuse, New York, to Theodore Bernard Hesburgh, a Pittsburgh Plate Glass warehouse manager, and Anne Murphy Hesburgh. His father was of German descent; his mother's family was of Irish descent. Young Theodore was the second child and oldest son in a family of five children with two boys and three girls. He attended Most Holy Rosary, a parochial school in Syracuse, and was also an altar student. Hesburgh said he wanted to become a priest at the age of six. Thomas Duffy, a missionary priest from Congregation of Holy Cross, which formerly owned the University of Notre Dame, influenced Hesburgh's interest in joining the priesthood.

Hesburgh graduated from Most Holy Rosary High School in Syracuse in 1934 and enrolled in the Holy Cross Seminary at Notre Dame in the fall. His teachers encouraged the young seminarian to study in Rome, Italy, where he graduated from Pontifical Gregorian University with a bachelor of philosophy degree in 1940. Hesburgh returned to the United States to continue his studies after the American consul in Rome ordered all American citizens to leave Italy in 1940 due to the outbreak of World War II. He spent three years (1940–43) at Holy Cross College and two years (1943–45) at The Catholic University of America, where he received a doctorate in sacred theology in 1945.

Hesburgh was nominated a priest for the Congregation of Holy Cross at Notre Dame's Sacred Heart Church on June 24, 1943 (later renamed the Basilica of the Sacred Heart). Hesburgh dedicated his life to "God, Country, and Notre Dame," inspired by an inscription on the church's door. Father Ted, as he desired to be called, returned to Washington, D.C., to complete his studies and help at area parishes. Hesburgh also served as a chaplain at the National Training School for Boys (a youth detention center) and a military installation. In a Knights of Columbus hall in Washington, D.C., he also operated a large United Service Organization (USO) club. Despite Hesburgh's desire to serve as a chaplain in the United States Navy during World War II, he returned to South Bend, Indiana, in 1945, after finishing his education in Washington, D.C., to begin a teaching career at Notre Dame.

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Career

In 1945, Hesburgh joined the Notre Dame faculty as an instructor in the university's Department of Religion. Hesburgh was named head of the Department of Theology in 1948, but John J. Cavanaugh, C.C., appointed Hesburgh executive vice president John J. Cavanaugh, C.S.C., as the Hesburgh executive vice president in 1949. Hesburgh took over Cavanaugh as president three years later, at the age of thirty-five.

Hesburgh served as Notre Dame's president for thirty-five years, from 1952 to 1989. He was "the longest president in American higher education" at the time. "Into a nationally recognized institution of higher education," Hesburgh began attempts to make the school, mainly known for its football program, "into a nationally recognized institution of higher learning." In 1953, Notre Dame introduced the Distinguished Professors Program to attract top scholars. The school had more than 200 distinguished professorships by the time Hesburgh's resignation in 1987.

Hesburgh supervised significant growth at the university and the expansion of its endowment, as well as the transition to a coeducational college, which was first established in 1972. During his tenure (1952–87), the annual operating budget rose from $9.7 million to $176.6 million, and the university's endowment increased from $9 million to $350 million. From $735,000 to $15 million, research funding increased. The enrollment of students has more than doubled from 4,979 to 9,676, with the teaching staff up more than doubled from 389 to 951. The average faculty salary increased from $5,400 to $50,800. The number of degrees conferred annually has increased from 1,212 to 2,663. While Hesburgh was president, the university also initiated forty new building projects, including the $8 million library with the famous "Word of Life" mural, also known as "Touchdown Jesus" on its facade.

Hesburgh was instrumental in the creation of the Land O'Lakes Statement, which was issued in 1967 by North American representatives of the International Federation of Catholic Universities. The paper introduced a pledge to academic autonomy with free government and said that "a Catholic university that has properly developed will even more fully fulfill the ideal of a true university." The statement sparked controversy because it said that Catholic universities should be autonomous, free from all authority, including the Catholic Church. Despite the controversies surrounding the statement, Hesburg's contribution to excellence "transformed Notre Dame" into one of the country's most recognizable and prestigious Catholic universities. The Congregation of Holy Cross clergy, Hesburgh, ended the university's exclusive, century-long leadership in 1967. Hesburgh and Howard Kenna worked together to devise a strategy for transferring the university's assets from the Congregation of Holy Cross priests to the University of Notre Dame Board of Trustees. As trustees and colleagues, the new governing board welcomed laypeople and Holy Cross priests as trustees and fellows.

Hesburgh and several other collegiate presidents were among the victims of student protests at colleges and universities around the country in the 1960s. The climax of student demonstrations in Notre Dame occurred in 1968-1969. Hesburgh took a controversial stand on campus in defending anti-Vietnam War student activism when he delivered an eight-page letter outlining the university's stance on protests on February 17, 1969. According to Hesburgh's letter, student protesters who breached the rights of others or disrupted the school's operations would be banned from attending or expulsion if they refuse to disperse. Hesburgh's move sparked controversy and made national news. The letter was reprinted in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, and the Washington Post. Despite Hesburgh's students' scathing criticism, as well as calls for his dismissal, his reactions to editorials in 250 newspapers about his "fifteen-minute reign" were mostly favorable. In addition,, President Richard Nixon sent Hesburgh a letter praising his "tough stance" on campus's student demonstrations.

Hesburgh gave Vice President Spiro Agnew an essay published on February 27, 1969, which included plans for future steps to reduce the violence on college campuses at President Nixon's request. Hesburgh, who generally disagreed with the Nixon administration's Vietnam policy and endorsed an expedited withdrawal of troops, has advised against enforcing new rules to regulate campus demonstrations. Hesburgh argued that university and college administrations should continue to determine the right option to take on their respective campuses. The National Governors Conference accepted his views; the majority of state governors opposed the proposed legislation. Hesburgh protested the war publicly in October 1969 by signing a letter from other college presidents calling for the removal of US forces from Vietnam and the following day, the following day attended an on-campus peace Mass with 2,500 Notre Dame students.

Hesburgh, a member and later chair of the United States Civil Rights Commission, was vocal in his support for equal rights, but at Notre Dame, where the number of black students and employees "remained at token levels until the late 1960s," but not immediately recognize or take immediate action to eliminate institutional racism. Hesburgh appointed a student-faculty commission to investigate the issue in 1969 after some of Notre Dame's African American student students slammed the poor black students enrolled at the university. The committee's recommendations prompted him to take immediate action to increase minority employment and actively recruit minority students. Hesburgh also advised the university's trustees to lift their forty-year ban on participation in postseason football games, and that the university's trustees could use funds earned from Notre Dame's bowl game appearances to fund minority scholarships. In the 1970 Cotton Bowl Classic, the Notre Dame Fighting Irish's victory over the University of Texas Longhorns raised $300,000 for Notre Dame's scholarship fund.

The Vietnam War, as well as other colleges and universities around the country, were still suffering from antiwar demonstrations as the Vietnam War continued to escalate. Hesburgh responded with a public statement on May 4 after learning of rumors that a group of undergraduate and antiwar protesters planned to firebomb the Notre Dame campus's Reserve Officers' Training Corps (ROTC) building in early May 1970. Hesburgh protested the war and protested Nixon's decision to deploy troops into Cambodia in an address to a crowd of about 2,000 students. Hesburgh also listed steps that he felt the government could take to address student concerns during his conciliatory remarks. On May 18, Hesburgh sent President Nixon a letter and a copy of his address, which became known as the Hesburgh Declaration. Despite campus unrest on May 6, Notre Dame's seven days of demonstrations ended without injury, violence, or National Guard presence on campus, such as Columbia University, Berkeley, Berkeley, and others.

Hesburgh had become the country's most popular American Catholic by the 1970s. During the 1970s and 1980s, he continued to respond to student neptitudes. Hesburgh also appointed student representatives to university committees in order to improve student involvement in the administration's decision-making process.

Hesburgh's career included many charitable causes as well as American and international causes beyond his work at Notre Dame. Hesburgh estimated that he spent 40 percent of his time off-campus and that his civic involvement "enriched" his priesthood.

Hesburgh served in a variety of positions on government commissions, including National Science Board and the United States Civil Rights Commission, as well as on the boards of non-profit organizations, such as the Rockefeller Foundation and Vatican missions, beginning in 1955. At least sixteen presidential nominations related to several of the era's biggest social issues: civil rights, campus demonstrations, Third World construction, peaceful use of atomic energy, and immigration reform, "including the United States' amnesty for immigrants in the mid-1980s."

Hesburgh's first presidential appointment took place in 1954, when President Dwight Eisenhower named him to the National Science Board. Although Hesburgh had no prior participation in civil rights campaigns, President Eisenhower appointed him as a member of the United States Civil Rights Commission in 1957, following fifteen years of service on the commission. Hesburgh began as a civil rights advocate and spokesperson for the commission. Hesburgh outlined his views on civil rights and equality in an appendix to the commission's annual report in 1959:

Hesburgh declined to encourage a Notre Dame-based Peace Corps initiative that provided new volunteers for service in Chile for President John F. Kennedy's new Peace Corps initiative in 1961, but he feared that the Kennedy administration had a poor track record on civil rights issues. Hesburgh praised Lyndon B. Johnson's contribution to the introduction of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 in the United States Congress, as well as his support for the 1965 Voting Rights Act. Hesburgh also showed his support for the civil rights campaign on television. Hesburgh gave an impromptu address at Martin Luther King Jr.'s civil rights rally in Chicago, Illinois, on July 21, 1964. As the group sang "We Shall Overcome," he joined hands with King and other civil rights campaigners at the conclusion of the performance.

Hesburgh served as chairman of the United States Civil Rights Commission from 1969, when President Nixon named him to the position of chairman, until 1972, when White House staffs requested for Hesburgh's resignation. Following a series of differences between Hesburgh, the commission, and the Nixon administration regarding civil rights legislation, he was forced to resign from the commission in 1972. Hesburgh protested the president's sluggishness, condemned Nixon's anti-busing policies, and called for the revival of the Voting Rights Act, which the Nixon administration wanted to update. Hesburgh stated that he felt the primary reason for his dismissal was due to the commission's study on minority employment in government.

Hesburgh was considered a replacement for Eagleton as a George McGovern deputy presidential running mate in the 1972 presidential election by Rick Perlstein, but he turned down the bid.

President Jimmy Carter named Hesburgh to a blue-ribbon immigrant commission in 1979; the commission's decision that no national immigration reform plans will succeed unless the American national border is adequately secured before is cited by various critics of illegal immigration to the United States. The commission's efforts culminated in the introduction of the Refugee Act of 1980 and the establishment of a national Asylum Corps in the 1990s.

Hesburgh served as a permanent Holy See representative from 1956 to 1970 for the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna, Austria. Hesburgh was named head of the Vatican delegation on the twentieth anniversary of the United Nations' human rights charter in Tehran, Iran, and as a representative of the Holy See's United Nations delegation in 1974. In 1983, Pope John Paul II appointed Hesburgh to the Pontifical Council for Culture.

Hesburgh served on many advisory boards related to higher education, science, industry, and civic affairs throughout his career. He has also traveled around the world on behalf of the university and the charities where he worked.

Hesburgh was a contributor to The Pursuit of Excellence (1958), an examination of the United States' education system that was funded by the Rockefeller Brothers Fund as part of its Special Studies Program. Hesburgh served as an affiliate and eventual president of the Association of American Colleges and Universities from 1963 to 1970; a board member and eventual president of the Association of American Colleges and Universities; and a board member of the Institute of International Education; and several other education-related organizations.

Hesburgh was the first priest to be elected to the Harvard Board of Overseers (board of directors) in 1990 and served from 1994 to 1996 as the board's president. Hesburgh served as co-chairman of the Knight Commission on Intercollegiate Athletics, which made significant changes to American college athletics policy.

Hesburgh has worked on several science-related projects and organizations. He served as the permanent Vatican representative to the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna, Austria, from 1956 to 1970. Hesburgh was named United States ambassador to the 1979 United Nations Conference on Science and Technology for Development in addition to serving on the US National Science Board. He has also worked with the Midwestern Universities Research Association and the Nutrition Foundation Board. Hesburgh "assist in the planning of a meeting of scientists and representatives of six faith traditions who called for the ban of nuclear weapons" while on the board.

Hesburgh served as a board member of a number of industry and civic associations. He served on the board of the Rockefeller Foundation from 1961 to 1982, as board chairman from 1977 to 1982. Hesburgh has worked as a director for Chase Manhattan Bank and as a member of People for the American Way's advisory board, among other groups. Hesburgh's passion for international affairs culminated in his service on a number of international commissions and humanitarian programs.

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