The Chronicle of Higher Education yesterday published an interview with Professor O'Brien that provides some details regarding her understanding of how her work fit within Marquette's stated mission. The attempt to rescind her contract in any event represents gross negligence in the University review process and/or after-the-fact external interference, which should give us pause as scholars at Catholic universities regardless of how we might disagree regarding the substantive question of mission fit.
Wednesday, May 12, 2010
More on Marquette Process Failure
Tuesday, May 11, 2010
Serious Failure of Process at Marquette
My colleague Jodi O'Brien, a prominent sociologist, was recently offered the Deanship of Arts and Sciences at Marquette, only to have the University attempt to rescind the contract. As all of our institutions do, Marquette went through an extensive search and review process before making Professor O'Brien an offer. The only justification so far for the University's change of position is that her work in gender and sexuality is inconsistent with the mission of the institution. This came as a shock to many of my colleagues here, who have considered her an important contributor to University mission, although her positions challenge some current Catholic teaching. Marquette's administration presumably reviewed her scholarship, so this should have been no surprise. Clearly, something happened after the selection process had been completed, most likely originating outside the University's administration. It has raised serious concerns about process and academic freedom at Marquette and has implications for Catholic universities in general.
Marquette Rescinds Offer to Sociologist
Marquette Rescinds Offer to Sociologist
By SAM DILLON Published: May 7, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/07/education/07marquette.html
Monday, February 1, 2010
Allen's "Future Church" -- Trend Three: Islam
Two weeks ago Amy kicked off our discussion of John Allen's important new book, The Future Church, with Allen's first trend ("A World Church"), and last week Rob continued the conversation by focusing on his second trend: "Evangelical Catholicism." This week I’ll lay out some of the most important insights from Allen’s reflections on Islam (or more appropriately perhaps, Catholic engagement with Islam). I will focus on his strongest contentions, identify the more problematic points, and then comment on the implications for Catholic legal education.
Allen provides a fair bit of background on important demographic trends in the growth of Islam. Although the community is growing, the statistics cited tend to debunk alarmist fears that Islam will somehow displace Christianity anytime soon. That said, Catholics can no longer afford to ignore or marginalize Islam as a world faith, with its nearly two billion adherents.
The next section provides theological background and context for the great diversity within Islam, appropriately rejecting a monolithic or essentialized view of the various communities. This then leads to an important discussion of the sometimes problematic relationship the institutional Catholic Church has had with Muslims, particularly in the last 30 years. After this generally helpful introduction, Allen goes on to list a number of possible consequences for Catholicism.
The most important (and in my opinion likely) consequences he identifies are the expansion of Islamic studies, the role of “Great Commission” Catholics, the increasing importance of religious freedom, and the possibility of greater cooperation between Muslims and Catholics on issues of agreement. Islamic studies has clearly become a high priority for the Vatican as well as Catholic universities, and this is only likely to grow. The impulse of Catholics to convert (which I would argue is a different goal than evangelization) Muslims will likely rise with the influence of Evangelicalism and is likely to increase interreligious tension in predominantly Muslim countries. The Catholic Church is likely to maintain its advocacy for religious freedom in countries like Saudi Arabia and constraints on religious expression in places like France and Turkey. To be fair, only recently has the Catholic Church supported religious freedom, whereas institutional tolerance of Christianity was an ideal embedded in early Islamic texts and practice. The most hopeful insight in the chapter is that Christians and Muslims have similar visions of justice and agree on a number of important policy issues, providing ample opportunities for us to cooperate.
The main challenge I have with the chapter is its depiction of radicalism and the threat of terrorism. With regard to the first, the main movements typically associated with violence (e.g., The Muslim Brotherhood, Wahhabism, the Taliban, and Hizbullah) are briefly described, but there is inadequate analysis of any real connection between theology and violence. Lumping the Iranian Revolution with 9/11 makes little sense, and attributing violence in both cases to Islam ignores social, political, and economic context. With regard to terrorism, I was deeply troubled by the subject lines “A Wild Card: Blowing Up St. Peter’s” and “A North-South Clash of Civilizations.” While these are both in his least likely to occur category, including them in some ways make them foreseeable events—new reasons for us to live in fear.
Perhaps the main implication of this chapter for legal education is the increasing importance of teaching Islamic and Middle Eastern law in American (especially Catholic) law schools. John Makdisi at St. Thomas has done important research on the proliferation of Islamic law courses in American law schools, and Catholic schools have played an important role in this development. Two other implications might be that Catholic law schools, in particular, ought to offer strong international and dispute resolution programs to prepare lawyers who can constructively engage in the work of dialogue and reconciliation.
Thursday, January 21, 2010
Unconditional Forgiveness -- for Christians and perhaps others
Patrick,
I agree with your claim that unconditional forgiveness is a Christian norm deeply rooted in our texts and tradition. My recent essay on forgiveness in Islam concludes that there is a similar moral basis for unconditional forgiveness in Islam (though perhaps not as clear in the Quran as in the Sunnah and later jurisprudence). I did note in my research that there are Rabbinic traditions that require affirmative steps on the part of the offender in order for forgiveness to be appropriate. It is not clear to me that this position is universally accepted within Judaism, however.
Russ Powell
Thursday, December 17, 2009
Forgiveness in Islamic Jurisprudence and Its Role in Intercommunal Relations
I have just posted a new paper with the above title on SSRN. It was presented at a conference at USC a few weeks ago. http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1524436
Monday, September 28, 2009
Interesting New Work on Christian-Muslim Relations
The most recent issue of Commonweal has a fascinating article on the interaction between St. Francis of Assisi and Sultan Malik al-Kamil during the Fifth Crusade. The piece is an adaptation of Paul Moses' The Saint and the Sultan: The Crusades, Islam, and Francis of Assisi’s Mission of Peace, to be published September 29 by Doubleday Religion. For more information, go to www.saintandthesultan.com.
Monday, June 15, 2009
Catholicity of Sotomayor Comment
So far, the most controversial revelation regarding the nomination of Judge Sonia Sotomayor is her comment in a 2001 speech at Berkeley which included the following statement:
"I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn’t lived that life."
Although the statement may raise legitimate political and jurisprudential questions related to her confirmation, it could be construed as consistent with the Catholic principle of the preferential option for the poor. Both Sotomayor's statement and the preferential option imply that privilege can result in lacunae requiring a "view from below" in order to identify injustice. The preferential option as a principle of Catholic social thought has its origin in the work of liberation theologians such as Gustavo Gutierrez. In a 1980 sermon, Pope John Paul II articulated it as...
"a call to a special solidarity with the humble and the weak, those who are suffering and weeping, who are humiliated and left on the fringes of life and society, in order to help them to realize ever more fully their own dignity as human persons and children of God."
Saturday, April 18, 2009
Opening of the Fred T. Korematsu Center for Law and Equality
Today is the kick-off event for the Fred T. Korematsu Center for Law and Equality at Seattle University School of Law. The presentations this morning focused on the Japanese internment, the initial Supreme Court decisions, and the later coram nobis decisions (nearly the entire legal team was present). Speakers this afternoon will focus on the role of academics in advocacy for justice more generally. The entire event was framed by Seattle University School of Law Dean Kellye Testy in the context of the obligations to love and do justice in Catholic tradition. Please follow the link below for more information.
Thursday, October 2, 2008
Credit Default Swaps and Speculation
Thanks to those who have have responded to my original inquiry regarding the financial crisis. Fractional reserve banking, questionable mortgage lending practices, stewardship, and the role of regulation were some of the topics I was hoping we would address. One issue that has not been mentioned but is perhaps the elephant in the room is the role of derivatives, and credit default swaps in particular. Mortgage defaults and bank failures are terrible problems, but I don't believe that these alone motivated President Bush to responded with such urgency. Credit default swaps and similar instruments have allowed corporate debt to be leveraged (perhaps ten fold), so that as corporations are unable to make payments on debt, the impact is amplified throughout the ecomony.
A credit default swap is an agreement to exchange periodic payments for a promise to make a payout upon a specified default of payment on corporate debt. It functions as a form of insurance except that the party promising payout is not regulated as an insurer and the purchasing party does not necessarily have an interest in the underlying debt instrument. The result is an unregulated tradable contract that is structured like insurance but is often entered into for purely speculative purposes. Some current estimates place the notional value of these contracts at between 50 and 60 trillion dollars (perhaps ten times the value of the corporate debt market and four times the US GDP). While such contracts serve a valuable hedging purpose for holders of debt, they have also magnified the potential severity of the housing bubble and its effects. A number of analysts have likened credit default swaps to gambling, something which Catholic teaching certainly speaks to. At the very least, this problem invites discussion regarding appropriate regulation of these types of financial instruments.
Monday, September 29, 2008
A Catholic Approach to the Financial Crisis?
Today the Dow dropped the most it ever has in a single day. The administration argues that our financial system is on the verge of collapse. Despite lobbying by the President and senior cabinet members, the House did not approve the bailout plan today. I am curious what members of our blog community believe is an authentically Catholic approach to these critical issues, particularly in formulating legal solutions. Recent events have prompted me to reflect on my own assumptions about our economic system, and I am deeply concerned that the most vulnerable members of our community are likely to suffer the most significant harms in the short term. In the long term, I have deep misgivings regarding the debilitating debt we are leaving for future generations. Although I am not certain what our response should be, failure to act is an option that carries great potential costs if Secretary Paulson is to be believed. How can we best serve the common good here? What is an appropriate level of government intervention? How will our policy choices impact the poor?
Recent Posts
Categories
Monthly Archive
StatCounter
PageViews
Since February 19, 2008
