Kid reading The Communist Manifesto in the Notre Dame Commercial last night.

[zelezo vlk]

The only reading that should be required of all students

 

[SouthSideChiDomer]

It almost certainly was intentional that they showed CM as the narrator says "...and those whose opinion we reject." Interpreting it charitably, it's great that they open the ad with a quote from Aquinas. If the goal is to tell people, "You'll read a broad range of things at ND, but analyzed through a Catholic lens and only after receiving a solid foundation in Catholic thought," then I'm all for it.

The problem isn't that message, but that we don't actually do that anymore. In 7 straight years at ND, I was never assigned Aristotle, Augustine or Aquinas; Dante, Chesterton, Waugh, O'Connor, or Tolkein; never asked to read an encyclical or the decrees of an ecumenical council. The Church's perspective on various issues was rarely brought up, and if it was, it was simply presented as one opinion among many. The hiring of faculty is handled almost entirely at the department level, and whether or not a professor is a practicing Catholic means very little compared to things like academic prestige, # of citations in peer reviewed publications, etc. The First Year of Studies program, the "core" curriculum that every ND student ought to receive before graduation, is a pale shadow of what it once was, and is still under constant attack.

There are more Catholics in America than any other single religious denomination, and ND is unarguably the flagship Catholic university in this country. But once you take away that religious character, we're just another small liberal arts school in a cold demographically-declining part of the US scampering for scraps from the Ivy League table. Yet our leadership has been actively undermining that most important part of our identity for decades.

I'd happily cheer for an ad as described in my first paragraph above. Unfortunately, I think the intent was more along the lines of: "Notre Dame, where you'll read the same shit everyone else does."

I think there is a fundamental question of what you want out of the university that I think we differ on. Do you want the university to be a school for catholics, where everyone is catholic, and nothing but catholics? Or do you want it to get the best minds it possibly can from whatever background and educate them with a basis in catholic ideology? Because I feel like the school has moved from the first one to the second one and I think its for the better. While the first option might give you a cleaner look to the school from the outside, I feel like it makes less of an impact on the world because it will be fundamentally more difficult to get the same caliber of student.

 

[ickythump1225]

Check it out at the 11 second mark.

<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/Z8ZW6Gyaehw" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen></iframe>


I mean what the fuck.

I appreciate the honesty in advertising

 

[Whiskeyjack]

I think there is a fundamental question of what you want out of the university that I think we differ on. Do you want the university to be a school for catholics, where everyone is catholic, and nothing but catholics? Or do you want it to get the best minds it possibly can from whatever background and educate them with a basis in catholic ideology? Because I feel like the school has moved from the first one to the second one and I think its for the better. While the first option might give you a cleaner look to the school from the outside, I feel like it makes less of an impact on the world because it will be fundamentally more difficult to get the same caliber of student.

This debate always ultimately ends up here, but I think it's a false dichotomy. No one with any pull at ND wants to see it become a Catholic madrassa like Thomas Aquinas College, where there's no majors and everyone graduates with the same degree (though their curriculum is a work of art). ND was never like that even in its earliest days.

But it's not obvious we're even doing the bolded part of what you wrote above. The truth is that there's no such thing as a View from Nowhere. No university is offering an unbiased objective curriculum, because one can't educate without assuming certain things like, "What is a human being" and "What does a life well-lived look like?" Even the Ivies that we're constantly comparing ourselves to have a very Progressive post-Mainline Protestant (though I repeat myself) perspective on these questions.

So to the extent we're trying to copy the Ivies, we're not offering a Catholic education anymore. I just want to see us be openly and unapologetically Catholic, first and foremost because it's true, but also because it's just who we are, and we're never going to become "better" by dropping it. No Catholic school should have a "Gender Studies" department, because it's antithetical to the Church's answers to those questions I mentioned above. Nor should we be allowing pro-abortion speakers to proselytize on campus, or granting honors to politicians who persecute the Church. This stuff isn't hard, but ND's leadership can't even manage this much.

ND can and should continue to admit non-Catholic students and to employ non-Catholic professors. We can be magnanimous and eager to dialogue with the best of other cultures and faiths when we're coming from a position of confidence and faith. But if we want to LARP as post-Protestants because that's what the Ivies do, we're going to be selling everyone short, Catholics and non-Catholics alike.

 

[Classic Irish]

What did you study? Because I read most, if not all, of those people at Notre Dame. If not in Theology or Philosophy classes that everyone takes, then in upper-level English or Political Science classes as part of my major (which was Arts & Letters but not especially church-focused, nor PLS). Maybe they don’t make sure every engineering student reads GK Chesterton, but it’s certainly there if you want it.

Your experience was similar to mine: read Aristotle, Augustine, Aquinas, Dante, and O’ Connor while at ND.

 

[Whiskeyjack]

What did you study? Because I read most, if not all, of those people at Notre Dame. If not in Theology or Philosophy classes that everyone takes, then in upper-level English or Political Science classes as part of my major (which was Arts & Letters but not especially church-focused, nor PLS). Maybe they don’t make sure every engineering student reads GK Chesterton, but it’s certainly there if you want it.

Your experience was similar to mine: read Aristotle, Augustine, Aquinas, Dante, and O’ Connor while at ND.

When did you guys graduate?

 

[Classic Irish]

When did you guys graduate?

1992

 

[Whiskeyjack]

1992

I left ND in 2009.

 

[ND88]

This debate always ultimately ends up here, but I think it's a false dichotomy. No one with any pull at ND wants to see it become a Catholic madrassa like Thomas Aquinas College, where there's no majors and everyone graduates with the same degree (though their curriculum is a work of art). ND was never like that even in its earliest days.

But it's not obvious we're even doing the bolded part of what you wrote above. The truth is that there's no such thing as a View from Nowhere. No university is offering an unbiased objective curriculum, because one can't educate without assuming certain things like, "What is a human being" and "What does a life well-lived look like?" Even the Ivies that we're constantly comparing ourselves to have a very Progressive post-Mainline Protestant (though I repeat myself) perspective on these questions.

So to the extent we're trying to copy the Ivies, we're not offering a Catholic education anymore. I just want to see us be openly and unapologetically Catholic, first and foremost because it's true, but also because it's just who we are, and we're never going to become "better" by dropping it. No Catholic school should have a "Gender Studies" department, because it's antithetical to the Church's answers to those questions I mentioned above. Nor should we be allowing pro-abortion speakers to proselytize on campus, or granting honors to politicians who persecute the Church. This stuff isn't hard, but ND's leadership can't even manage this much.

ND can and should continue to admit non-Catholic students and to employ non-Catholic professors. We can be magnanimous and eager to dialogue with the best of other cultures and faiths when we're coming from a position of confidence and faith. But if we want to LARP as post-Protestants because that's what the Ivies do, we're going to be selling everyone short, Catholics and non-Catholics alike.

Notre Dame should welcome all opportunities to lead open discussions and forums in and outside of the classroom regarding every important issue, especially those that openly contradict its core values as they relate to Catholicism and the Gospels. In fact, it would benefit everyone for ND to be strong leaders in this way, starting first with its religious principles. It’s not anti-progressive for organizations to remain steadfast in their core tenants. One problem with contemporary “progressive” thinking is complete “rejectionism” of anything in direct disagreement. This lessens genuine honest dialogue and understanding in favor of tribalistic leanings that isolate and exclude. ND doesn’t want to seem exlusionary, because they want to be respected by the so-called intellectual elites. However, what would make that relationship more fruitful is for ND to stand up and embrace why Catholicism is an important strand of thinking / living especially in times when many have serious questions about the validity of such a religion that has exacted horrible and public abuses. Instead, it tends to be like “yeah, but that’s not us.” (Just an imperfect opinion.)

 

[Legacy]

ND Undergrad Core Curriculum Starting 2018

 

[NDMontana]

It almost certainly was intentional that they showed CM as the narrator says "...and those whose opinion we reject." Interpreting it charitably, it's great that they open the ad with a quote from Aquinas. If the goal is to tell people, "You'll read a broad range of things at ND, but analyzed through a Catholic lens and only after receiving a solid foundation in Catholic thought," then I'm all for it.

The problem isn't that message, but that we don't actually do that anymore. In 7 straight years at ND, I was never assigned Aristotle, Augustine or Aquinas; Dante, Chesterton, Waugh, O'Connor, or Tolkein; never asked to read an encyclical or the decrees of an ecumenical council. The Church's perspective on various issues was rarely brought up, and if it was, it was simply presented as one opinion among many. The hiring of faculty is handled almost entirely at the department level, and whether or not a professor is a practicing Catholic means very little compared to things like academic prestige, # of citations in peer reviewed publications, etc. The First Year of Studies program, the "core" curriculum that every ND student ought to receive before graduation, is a pale shadow of what it once was, and is still under constant attack.

There are more Catholics in America than any other single religious denomination, and ND is unarguably the flagship Catholic university in this country. But once you take away that religious character, we're just another small liberal arts school in a cold demographically-declining part of the US scampering for scraps from the Ivy League table. Yet our leadership has been actively undermining that most important part of our identity for decades.

I'd happily cheer for an ad as described in my first paragraph above. Unfortunately, I think the intent was more along the lines of: "Notre Dame, where you'll read the same shit everyone else does."

Excellent post.

 

[Circa]

Check it out at the 11 second mark.

<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/Z8ZW6Gyaehw" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen></iframe>


I mean what the fuck.

I've read through the comments and to be polite. You guys don't see what's happening in some??.... of our universities these days.
I believe the commercial was a dig at other Universities policies of post-modernism bullshit that Is being tied to a Marxist state of political affairs.
I have a Jordan Peterson thread up that can help understand the state of affairs of more North American Universities than we want to accept.

 

[Domina Nostra]

1992

I left ND in 2009.

There has been a MASSIVE culture shift in those 17 years, and it’s accelerating.

I've read through the comments and to be polite. You guys don't see what's happening in some??.... of our universities these days.
I believe the commercial was a dig at other Universities policies of post-modernism bullshit that Is being tied to a Marxist state of political affairs.
I have a Jordan Peterson thread up that can help understand the state of affairs of more North American Universities than we want to accept.

No you don’t get it. I would have loved that commercial in the 1940s when ND was actually true to its mission. But now it’s just silly and self-congratulatory.

It’s a smart commercial because everyone gets to see what they want. But the problem as Whiskey points out is not what image the school is trying to project. The problem is that the school is, in fact, neck deep in all the post-modern bullshit as you said. If there is any difference, it’s the difference between someone driving off a cliff at 60 mph, vs someone driving off it at 120 mph.

We all talk about diversity, but how can you have diversity if everyone is striving to be the exact same thing. A Muslim adds nothing special to a discussion of religion if he goes to Georgetown, drifts from his faith, and ends up spouting the same post modern platitudes of all his classmates. If Catholics aren’t educated as Catholics, the fact that they came from Ireland and got confirmed at 14 doesn’t contribute anything either.

 

[IrishLax]

It almost certainly was intentional that they showed CM as the narrator says "...and those whose opinion we reject." Interpreting it charitably, it's great that they open the ad with a quote from Aquinas. If the goal is to tell people, "You'll read a broad range of things at ND, but analyzed through a Catholic lens and only after receiving a solid foundation in Catholic thought," then I'm all for it.

The problem isn't that message, but that we don't actually do that anymore. In 7 straight years at ND, I was never assigned Aristotle, Augustine or Aquinas; Dante, Chesterton, Waugh, O'Connor, or Tolkein; never asked to read an encyclical or the decrees of an ecumenical council. The Church's perspective on various issues was rarely brought up, and if it was, it was simply presented as one opinion among many. The hiring of faculty is handled almost entirely at the department level, and whether or not a professor is a practicing Catholic means very little compared to things like academic prestige, # of citations in peer reviewed publications, etc. The First Year of Studies program, the "core" curriculum that every ND student ought to receive before graduation, is a pale shadow of what it once was, and is still under constant attack.

There are more Catholics in America than any other single religious denomination, and ND is unarguably the flagship Catholic university in this country. But once you take away that religious character, we're just another small liberal arts school in a cold demographically-declining part of the US scampering for scraps from the Ivy League table. Yet our leadership has been actively undermining that most important part of our identity for decades.

I'd happily cheer for an ad as described in my first paragraph above. Unfortunately, I think the intent was more along the lines of: "Notre Dame, where you'll read the same shit everyone else does."

Really? I took a whole 3-credit class on the Divine Comedy taught by a visiting professor from Rome. One of things I was very thankful about at ND was my exposure to theology/philosophy despite being in a technical major.

 

[Rack Em]

I took "Catholicism" with Fr. Dick O'Brien. It was my first semester at ND as a transfer. I didn't know any better.

I've been atoning for that sin for years. Whiskey definitely thinks less of me now...

 

[gkIrish]

When did you guys graduate?

I graduated in 2010 and I was an accounting and classics major. We had to take 2 philosophy and two theology classes if I'm not mistaken and I read Augustine, Aquinas, and Dante. In my classics courses I read pretty much everything Greek or Roman.

 

[Legacy]

There has been a MASSIVE culture shift in those 17 years, and it’s accelerating.



No you don’t get it. I would have loved that commercial in the 1940s when ND was actually true to its mission. But now it’s just silly and self-congratulatory.

It’s a smart commercial because everyone gets to see what they want. But the problem as Whiskey points out is not what image the school is trying to project. The problem is that the school is, in fact, neck deep in all the post-modern bullshit as you said. If there is any difference, it’s the difference between someone driving off a cliff at 60 mph, vs someone driving off it at 120 mph.

We all talk about diversity, but how can you have diversity if everyone is striving to be the exact same thing. A Muslim adds nothing special to a discussion of religion if he goes to Georgetown, drifts from his faith, and ends up spouting the same post modern platitudes of all his classmates. If Catholics aren’t educated as Catholics, the fact that they came from Ireland and got confirmed at 14 doesn’t contribute anything either.

Whether they are representative, which they should be, or not of a Notre Dame education just as the implication that everyone reads them, other books shown in the video include:

Plato's The Republic
Immigration Wars (Jeb Bush)
Notes from a Native Son (James Baldwin)
The Founders View of the Second Amendment
The Feminine Mystique (Betty Friedan)
Essays on Woman (Collected works of Edith Stein)
In the Blink of an Eye (on film editing)
Hot, Flat and Crowded (Thomas Friedman)

Not exactly Core Curriculum. I trust.

I disagree that you cannot discuss economic and political philosophy without an understanding of the C.M. that and Capital. Neither brings anything essential to either discipline, and neither is foundation for the actual economic or political systems in the Western world.

I am not trying to be cute and I do agree that those texts are very important in the history of thought and that you will not be able to participate in a lot of particular economic and political discussions without understanding those texts.

I also disagree that you cannot understand Solzhenitsyn without having read those texts. You can understand the horrors of the holocaust, without reading MK. You can understand The Jungle or uncle Tom's Cabin without reading Adam Smith. Solzhenitsyn's criticisms, in particular, are ultimately moral and spiritual. They don't require reading that stuff, though it would certainly illuminate in places.

BUT the bigger point is that you are stating the perfectly valid, but IMO totally pretextual, argument that Notre Dame relies upon to justify doing whatever it needs to do to be embraced by elite academia. It has other, similar arguments for why it needs to put on the V---- Monologues, kick certain types of student groups off campus, allow certain types of protests but not others, give awards to politicians who are hostile to fundamental aspects of the common good, etc.

IMO, ND does what it has to do for prestige, insofar as it can without open revolt of alumni and donors. And most alumni and donors are willing to tolerate a whole lot that has nothing to do with the mission of a Catholic University, as Fr. Sorin, JPII, Bl. John Henry Newman, and other luminaries understood it.

I understand your points. Some implications of mine were that:
- personality development and culture (in this case Russian) can be mostly independent of a totalitarian regime that attempts to impose their philosophy on a population as governance
- individuals (or authors) may emerge that speak to their understanding of truth despite - and people will change not necessarily due to environment, e.g. Thomas Merton's conversation and his Catholicism
- aspects of behaviorism are valid within a context, but to assume that individuals' values will change more from a particular environment (in education, for instance) when certain factors/ideas are introduced is a leap, e.g. Texas textbooks requiring creationism.

I was thinking of Deneen's book, too, which started with the failure of communism and fascism as political philosophies leaving only liberalism.

 

[Domina Nostra]

Whether they are representative, which they should be, or not of a Notre Dame education just as the implication that everyone reads them, other books shown in the video include:

Plato's The Republic
Immigration Wars (Jeb Bush)
Notes from a Native Son (James Baldwin)
The Founders View of the Second Amendment
The Feminine Mystique (Betty Friedan)
Essays on Woman (Collected works of Edith Stein)
In the Blink of an Eye (on film editing)
Hot, Flat and Crowded (Thomas Friedman)

Not exactly Core Curriculum. I trust.



I understand your points. Some implications of mine were that:
- personality development and culture (in this case Russian) can be mostly independent of a totalitarian regime that attempts to impose their philosophy on a population as governance
- individuals (or authors) may emerge that speak to their understanding of truth despite - and people will change not necessarily due to environment, e.g. Thomas Merton's conversation and his Catholicism
- aspects of behaviorism are valid within a context, but to assume that individuals' values will change more from a particular environment (in education, for instance) when certain factors/ideas are introduced is a leap, e.g. Texas textbooks requiring creationism.

I was thinking of Deneen's book, too, which started with the failure of communism and fascism as political philosophies leaving only liberalism.

All very good points.

I am kind of a windbag, as you can see. But my thinking just basically comes down to this (paraphrasing Mr. Teresa): "“God has not called me to be successful; He has called me to be faithful.” Same goes for ND, in its realm.

IMO, ND has a duty to educate Catholics as if Catholicism is true, for the sake of saving souls. Education divorced from this goal may have good effects in some cases, but is not what ND was created to do. While ND still holds a pretense of faithfulness, it is well-along the path of other schools that have dropped the pretense and now describe themselves as "A school in the Catholic Tradition."

ND can have top notch engineering, science, language programs without compromising this vision. But the truth is that the approach to, and content of, a history, literature, and philosophy curriculum at a truly Catholic school is going to be scoffed at by elite academia. Revelation and the limitations placed on us by God put boundaries on what we are allowed to do, and even what we can embrace as legitimate modes of thinking. Studying CM because to learn why it is so harmful is obviously fine--I just seriously doubt (with some first hand knowledge) that is what is actually going on.

Long story short, ND can't serve two masters: God and U.S. News. It has to love the one and hate the other. It can be an excellent school by both Catholic and objective standards, providing an education second to none. But it can't do everything under the sun as demanded by non-Catholic faculty, students, and academic ranking services , pretending that "Academic Freedom" is an authentic Catholic value.

 

[ulukinatme]

If the purpose of the commercial was to get people talking, they succeeded. Noticed someone on the Surly/Shag Texas board also created a whole thread about the Manifesto spot.

 

[ACamp1900]

I read a lot of stuff by the Berenstain's,... Double Dare was pretty damned philosophical....

 

[ulukinatme]

Hefner publications were always my go to. I read them for the articles!

 

[ACamp1900]

Hefner publications were always my go to. I read them for the articles!

I was more into the naked hot chicks,... but that not being your thing isn’t really surprising.

 

[stlnd01]

When did you guys graduate?

2001

 

[Circa]

There has been a MASSIVE culture shift in those 17 years, and it’s accelerating.



No you don’t get it. I would have loved that commercial in the 1940s when ND was actually true to its mission. But now it’s just silly and self-congratulatory.

It’s a smart commercial because everyone gets to see what they want. But the problem as Whiskey points out is not what image the school is trying to project. The problem is that the school is, in fact, neck deep in all the post-modern bullshit as you said. If there is any difference, it’s the difference between someone driving off a cliff at 60 mph, vs someone driving off it at 120 mph.

We all talk about diversity, but how can you have diversity if everyone is striving to be the exact same thing. A Muslim adds nothing special to a discussion of religion if he goes to Georgetown, drifts from his faith, and ends up spouting the same post modern platitudes of all his classmates. If Catholics aren’t educated as Catholics, the fact that they came from Ireland and got confirmed at 14 doesn’t contribute anything either.

What exactly Don't I get? What exactly are we expecting the young generations to contribute? Other than learning from our histories past mistakes and bettering the World.
Things don't have to be as bad as they were in the past for everyone anymore... Yet we keep trying to rehash the damn past.

 

[ACamp1900]

What exactly Don't I get? What exactly are we expecting the young generations to contribute? Other than learning from our histories past mistakes and bettering the World.
Things don't have to be as bad as they were in the past for everyone anymore... Yet we keep trying to rehash the damn past.

All I freakin hear is how horrible everything is NOW,...

 

[Circa]

All I freakin hear is how horrible everything is NOW,...

I'm sure you are, as well as the rest of the population on earth Is. We live in a time when the risk of dying or being harmed by each other Is the lowest in statistical history per capita.
We also live in a time of everyone knowing something they don't understand and they all want attention by knowing something they can't possibly change.
The worst of the worst is knowing what we can't change and acting like It's a responsibility to change It.

 

[stlnd01]

All I freakin hear is how horrible everything is NOW,...

And do you believe it? Or are there maybe always going to be some people who say things suck because those things are not what those those people think they should, or used to, be?

People who love Notre Dame have been debating whether Notre Dame is truly as Catholic as Father Sorin first intended probably since 1843. The fact that this debate over what it means to be both Catholic and a University remains both eternal and sincere is, in fact, one of the most endearing things about Notre Dame and the people who love it. Carry on.

 

[IrishBoognish]

Is this conservative 'outrage culture' I'm reading itt?

hahaha

 

[ACamp1900]

And do you believe it? Or are there maybe always going to be some people who say things suck because those things are not what those those people think they should, or used to, be?

Not at all, I just love how the past is so horrible, until we start discussing the present... typically speaking of course.

 

[IrishDecendant]

Killjoy

Killjoy

Totally sucked the fun out of watching the game. I am so sick of politics ruining everything. I started rooting for Georgia after that commercial.