Reflections on a shared mission

Last week St. Thomas Law School's Murphy Institute co-hosted a conference with the Von Hugel Institute at St. Edmund's College of Cambridge University.  At the conference dinner, I offered brief remarks on why such partnerships are so important:

My colleagues and I are grateful for the hospitality you’ve shown us, and for the time and effort you’ve invested in helping us organize this conference on the religious and moral dimensions of questions regarding the patentability of life products and processes. It is not often I feel almost apologetic explaining that we represent a 130-year old university, but by Cambridge standards, I feel obliged to reassure you that we are really here for the long haul and are not just a flash in the pan. This collaboration between our institutions is well-suited to the test of time for reasons that warrant at least a few moments of reflection.

 

The University of St. Thomas School of Law has a mission statement that dedicates us to “the integration of faith and reason in the search for truth through a focus on morality and social justice.”  One of the many ways we try to live out that mission is through the work of the Terrence J. Murphy Institute for Catholic Thought, Law, and Public Policy.  The Murphy Institute’s work, in turn, is greatly enhanced through institutional partnerships, such as the one we are building with the Von Hugel Institute here at St. Edmund’s College at Cambridge University.  As a preface for my toast, I’d like to articulate three reasons why this partnership is so crucial to our work.

 

First, this partnership will produce a broader and richer conversation. As a gathered assembly of law professors, theologians, philosophers, practicing attorneys, and policy advocates, I hope we can agree that conversations matter; the conversation has intrinsic value that is not contingent on any particular outcome or lack thereof.  Both the Murphy and Von Hugel Institutes are committed to bringing insights from the Catholic intellectual tradition into some of our most pressing legal and policy conversations – conversations where, too often, such insights are raised only on the margins, if acknowledged at all.  By partnering, we can widen the circle of participation, expand our platform, and reach new venues.

 

Second, this partnership will produce insights of greater scholarly depth and real-world impact.  The concepts we explore – human dignity, the preferential option for the poor, the universal destination of goods, solidarity, and subsidiarity, among many others – can fruitfully be engaged by individual scholars on their own initiative.  But these concepts are sufficiently important to warrant sustained and serious engagement over generations of scholars – a quality of engagement that can best be facilitated by institutions.  By partnering, we can leverage our distinctive strengths, pool resources, and tap into new circles of expertise and influence.

 

Third, this partnership can be a source of mutual encouragement, support and even accountability as we work to stay faithful to our missions.  Higher education is not immune from the general pressure in our society to produce measurable outcomes in the most efficient way possible.  There’s nothing inherently wrong with assessment or efficiency, but we need to be careful that this narrowing focus does not allow technical questions of “how” to obscure deeper questions of “why.”  As we’ve already seen at this conference, our mission is the impetus for big questions.  What does it mean for law if all creation is a gift?  What is the nature of the human person, and why should the political community care?  Is human dignity an infinitely malleable concept, or does it have an unshakeable core that can shed light on our most intractable conflicts and confusions?  These are just a few of the questions that may fall out of favor within the surrounding academic and policy-making circles, but that we must continue to revisit if we are faithful to our founding visions.

 

Human beings have an infinite capacity to empower our insecurities to distract ourselves from the pursuit of truth.  For academics, the recurring temptation is to chase prestige.  We pursue cleverness for the sake of appearing clever. We strive to be the first to proclaim an idea, not because the idea is worth proclaiming, but because novelty can too often be invoked as a proxy for insight.  Our mission is too important to let this happen.  And so, if you raise your glasses with me, I’d like to toast the new partnership between the Murphy and Von Hugel Institutes; my hope is that the partnership will extend over many years and be marked by a collaborative, thoughtful, and bold stewardship of questions that may otherwise recede from view.