Theodore Hesburgh

Hesburgh joined the Notre Dame faculty as an instructor in the university's Department of Religion in 1945.[14] In 1948 Hesburgh was named head of the Department of Theology, and in 1949 Notre Dame's president, John J. Cavanaugh, C.S.C., appointed Hesburgh executive vice president. Three years later, at the age of thirty-five, Hesburgh succeeded Cavanaugh as president.[2][15]

Fr. Hesburgh presents the Laetare Medal to John F. Kennedy on November 22, 1961[16]

Hesburgh served as Notre Dame's president for thirty-five years, from 1952 until his retirement in 1987. At that time his was "the longest presidency in American higher education."[2] Hesburgh immediately began efforts to transform the school, primarily known for its football program, "into a nationally respected institution of higher learning."[17] In 1953 the university created the Distinguished Professors Program to attract top scholars to Notre Dame. By the time of Hesburgh's retirement in 1987, the school had established more than a hundred distinguished professorships.[18]

Hesburgh Library at the University of Notre Dame

Hesburgh supervised dramatic growth at the university and expansion of its endowment, as well as its transition to a coeducational institution which occurred in 1972. During his presidency (1952–87), the annual operating budget increased from $9.7 million to $176.6 million and the university's endowment increased from $9 million to $350 million. Research funding increased from $735,000 to $15 million. Student enrollment nearly doubled from 4,979 to 9,676, and its faculty more than doubled from 389 to 951. The average faculty salary rose from $5,400 to $50,800. The number of degrees conferred annually doubled from 1,212 to 2,663.[19][20] While Hesburgh was president, the university also initiated forty new building projects, including the $8 million library with the famous "Word of Life" mural, better known as "Touchdown Jesus," on its façade.[21][22]

Hesburgh played a key role in developing the Land O'Lakes Statement that North American representatives of the International Federation of Catholic Universities issued in 1967. The document outlined a commitment to academic freedom with independent governance and insisted that "a Catholic university properly developed can even more fully achieve the ideal of a true university."[2][23] The statement created some controversy because it declared that Catholic universities should be autonomous, free from all authority, including the Catholic Church. Despite the conflicts that the statement initiated, Hesburg's commitment to excellence "transformed Notre Dame into one of the most recognizable and prestigious Catholic universities in the United States".[2] In 1967, Hesburgh ended the university's exclusive, century-long leadership by the Congregation of Holy Cross clergy. Hesburgh and Father Howard Kenna worked together to establish a plan for transferring ownership of the university from the Congregation of Holy Cross priests to the University of Notre Dame Board of Trustees. The new governing board included laypersons and Holy Cross priests as trustees and fellows.[21][24][25]

During the 1960s, when student demonstrations were held at colleges and universities across the United States, Hesburgh and many other collegiate presidents came under attack. For Notre Dame the climax of student unrest occurred in 1968–69.[26] On February 17, 1969, Hesburgh took a controversial position in dealing with anti-Vietnam War student activism on campus when he issued an eight-page letter to the student body outlining the university's stance on protests. Hesburgh's letter stated that student protesters who violated the rights of others or disrupted the school's operations would be given fifteen minutes to cease and desist before facing suspension, or expulsion if they refused to disperse.[27] Hesburgh's action provoked controversy and made national headlines.[28] The letter was reprinted in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, and the Washington Post.[29][30] Although Hesburgh received harsh criticism from Notre Dame's students, including requests for his resignation, responses to editorials in 250 newspapers about his "fifteen-minute rule" were nearly all favorable.[21][27] In addition, President Richard Nixon sent Hesburgh a telegram praising his "tough stance" on the campus's student protests.[31]

At President Nixon's request, Hesburgh offered advice to Vice President Spiro Agnew in a letter written on February 27, 1969, that included suggestions for potential actions that could be taken to control the violence on college campuses. Hesburgh, who generally disagreed with the Nixon administration's policy in Vietnam and favored an accelerated withdrawal of the troops,[32] advised against repressive legislation to control campus protests. Hesburgh argued that university and college administrations should be allowed to continue to decide the appropriate action to take on their respective campuses. The National Governors Conference agreed with his view; the majority of state governors opposed the proposed legislation. In October 1969, Hesburgh publicly expressed his opposition to the war by signing a letter with other college presidents calling for withdrawal of U.S. forces from Vietnam and was present at an on-campus peace Mass with 2,500 Notre Dame students the following day.[33]

Hesburgh, a member and later chair of the U.S. Civil Rights Commission, was publicly vocal in his support for equal rights, but he did not immediately recognize or take significant action to eliminate institutional racism at Notre Dame, where the number of black students and employees "remained at token levels until the late 1960s."[34] In 1969, after some of Notre Dame's African American student activists criticized the low level of blacks enrolled at the university, Hesburgh appointed a student-faculty committee to assess the issue. The committee's findings caused him to take immediate measures to increase minority employment and aggressively recruit minority students. Hesburgh also persuaded the university's trustees to lift their forty-year ban on participation in postseason football games and used revenue generated from Notre Dame's bowl game appearances to fund minority scholarships. The Notre Dame Fighting Irish's win over the University of Texas Longhorns in the Cotton Bowl Classic in 1970 raised $300,000 for Notre Dame's scholarship fund.[35]

Notre Dame, as with other colleges and universities around the country, continued to experience antiwar protests as the Vietnam War proceeded to escalate. In early May 1970, after learning of rumors that a group of students and antiwar activists planned to firebomb the Notre Dame campus's Reserve Officers' Training Corps (ROTC) building, Hesburgh responded with a public statement on May 4. In an address to a crowd of approximately 2,000 students, Hesburgh spoke against the war and objected to Nixon's decision to send troops into Cambodia. During his conciliatory remarks, Hesburgh also outlined steps that he thought the government could take to address student concerns. On May 18, Hesburgh sent a letter to President Nixon and a copy of his address, which became known as the Hesburgh Declaration. Although campus unrest caused classes to be canceled on May 6, Notre Dame's seven days of protest ended without damage, violence, or National Guard presence as it did on other college campuses, such as Columbia University, the University of California, Berkeley, and elsewhere.[36]

By the early 1970s, Hesburgh had become the most well-known Catholic in the United States. He continued to respond to student concerns during the 1970s and 1980s. To increase student involvement in the administration's decision-making process, Hesburgh added student representatives to university committees.[37]

Fr. Hesburgh chairs the Civil Rights Committee

Hesburgh's career included many civic activities, as well as American and international initiatives beyond his work at Notre Dame. Hesburgh estimated he spent about 40 percent of his time off-campus and believed that his civic involvement "enriched" his priesthood.[38]

Beginning in 1955, Hesburgh served in a number of posts on government commissions that included National Science Board and the U.S. Civil Rights Commission, and also served on the boards of non-profit organizations, such as the Rockefeller Foundation, and Vatican missions. His career included at least sixteen presidential appointments involving some of the major social issues of his era: civil rights, campus unrest, Third World development, peaceful uses of atomic energy, and immigration reform, "including the American policy of amnesty for immigrants in the mid-1980s."[39]

Hesburgh's first presidential appointment occurred in 1954, when President Dwight Eisenhower appointed him to the National Science Board.[40] Although Hesburgh had no previous experience as an activist supporting civil rights issues, President Eisenhower made him a member of the U.S. Civil Rights Commission in 1957, beginning fifteen years of service on the commission. Hesburgh emerged as a civil rights advocate and spokesperson for the commission.[34] In an appendix to the commission's annual report in 1959, Hesburgh outlined his position on civil rights and equality:

I believe that civil rights were not created, but only recognized and formulated, by our Federal and State constitutions and charters. Civil rights are important corollaries of the great proposition … that every human person is a res sacra, a sacred reality, and as such is entitled to the opportunity of fulfilling those great human potentials with which God has endowed every man.[41]

In 1961 Hesburgh persuaded the Indiana Conference of Higher Education to support a Notre Dame-based pilot project for President John F. Kennedy's new Peace Corps initiative that trained new volunteers for service in Chile,[2][42] but he felt that the Kennedy administration had a poor record on civil rights issues.[41] In contrast to his assessment of the Kennedy administration's civil rights efforts, Hesburgh praised Lyndon B. Johnson's work to secure passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 in the U.S. Congress and his courage for supporting the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Hesburgh also made public appearances to show his support for the civil rights movement. On July 21, 1964, Hesburgh delivered an impromptu speech during Martin Luther King Jr.'s civil rights rally in Chicago, Illinois. At the conclusion of the event, he joined hands with King and other civil rights supporters as the group sang "We Shall Overcome."[43]

Hesburgh served as chairman of the U.S. Civil Rights Commission from 1969, when President Nixon appointed him to the leadership position, until 1972, when White House aides asked for Hesburgh's resignation. His dismissal from the commission in 1972 followed a series of disagreements between Hesburgh, the commission, and the Nixon administration about civil rights policies. Hesburgh objected to the president's slowdown policy on school desegregation, opposed Nixon's anti-busing policy, and advocated for the renewal of the Voting Rights Act, which the Nixon administration wanted to amend. Hesburgh publicly explained that he believed the primary reason for his dismissal was due to the commission's report on minority employment in government.[44][45]

According to Rick Perlstein in Nixonland (2008), when Thomas Eagleton dropped out of the race as George McGovern's vice presidential running mate in the 1972 presidential election, Hesburgh was considered as a replacement candidate for Eagleton, but he declined the offer.[46][47]

President Jimmy Carter appointed Hesburgh to a blue-ribbon immigration reform commission in 1979; the commission's finding that any national immigration reform proposals can succeed only if the American national border is properly secured beforehand[48][49] was cited by various opponents of illegal immigration to the United States. His efforts on the commission led to the passing of the Refugee Act of 1980, and the creation of a professional Asylum Corps in the 1990s.

Hesburgh served as a permanent Holy See representative from 1956 to 1970 to the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna, Austria. Pope Paul VI appointed Hesburgh as head of the Vatican representatives attending the twentieth anniversary of the United Nations' human rights declaration in Tehran, Iran, and as a member of the Holy See's U.N. delegation in 1974.[50] Pope John Paul II appointed Hesburgh to the Pontifical Council for Culture in 1983.[51]

Throughout his career, Hesburgh was active on many advisory boards related to higher education, science, business, and civic affairs. He also traveled the world on behalf of the university and the organizations he served.

In the field of higher education, Hesburgh was a contributor to The Pursuit of Excellence (1958), an analysis of the U.S. education system that the Rockefeller Brothers Fund commissioned as part of its Special Studies Project.[52] Hesburgh also served as a member of the International Federation of Catholic Universities, and as its president from 1963 to 1970; a board member and eventual president of the Association of American Colleges and Universities; a board member of the American Council on Education; and a board member of the Institute of International Education, among other education-related groups.[53][54]

In 1990, during his retirement years, Hesburgh became the first priest to be elected to the Harvard Board of Overseers (board of directors), and served from 1994 to 1996 as the board's president.[55] Hesburgh also served as co-chairman of the Knight Commission on Intercollegiate Athletics that made significant revisions to the regulation of American collegiate sports.[56]

Hesburgh was involved with several science-related projects and organizations. From 1956 until 1970, he served as the permanent Vatican representative to the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna, Austria.[57][58] In addition to serving on the U.S. National Science Board, Hesburgh was appointed U.S. ambassador to the 1979 United Nations Conference on Science and Technology for Development.[39] He also served with the Midwestern Universities Research Association and the Nutrition Foundation Board. While serving on the board of the United States Institute of Peace, Hesburgh "helped organize a meeting of scientists and representative leaders of six faith traditions who called for the elimination of nuclear weapons."[39][59]

Hesburgh was a board member of numerous business and civic organizations. From 1961 to 1982 he served on the board of the Rockefeller Foundation, and from 1977 to 1982 as board chairman.[39][60][61] Hesburgh also served as a director for the Chase Manhattan Bank[39] and a member of the advisory board of People for the American Way, among many other organizations.[62] Hesburgh's interest in international affairs also led to his service on numerous international commissions and humanitarian projects.

• The Relation of the Sacramental Characters of Baptism and Confirmation to the Lay Apostle. 1946.
• The Theology of Catholic Action. 1946.
• God and the World of Man. 1950.
• Pattern for Educational Growth: Six Discourses at the University of Notre Dame. 1958.
• Thoughts for Our Times. 1961.
• More Thoughts for Our Times. 1964.
• Still More Thoughts for Our Times. 1966.
• Thought IV: Five Addresses. 1967.
• Thoughts for Our Times V. 1969.
• With Paul A. Miller and Clifton R. Wharton Jr., Pattern for Lifelong Learning. 1973.
• The Human Imperative: A Challenge for the Year. 1974.
• The Hesburgh Papers: High Values in Higher Education. 1979.
• With Jerry Reedy, God, Country, Notre Dame: The Autobiography of Theodore M. Hesburgh. New York: Doubleday. 1990.
• Travels with Ted and Ned. 1992.
• Editor, The Challenge and Promise of a Catholic University. 1994.

In a flight that took place on February 28, 1979 Hesburgh, one of a very few number of civilians to ride in a Lockheed SR-71 Blackbird, flew at Mach 3.35 (about 2,200 miles per hour) as a favor owed to him by President Jimmy Carter.[117][118]

In 1982, after receiving his ninetieth honorary degree, Hesburgh's name was added to the Guinness Book of World Records as the individual with the "Most Honorary Degrees." As of 2013, he had received more than 150 honorary degrees.[119][50]