FROM THE PRESIDENT AND CEO MICHAEL J. GARANZINI, S.J.
As one year closes
and another opens,
we reflect on all that we have accomplished and all we have to be grateful for. We are also reminded of our responsibility to those who have less. What does that mean for those of us at Loyola—a univer- sity and a Catholic institution? It is not our responsibility to be neutral, to have no position. As a uni- versity, our job is to give voice to the voiceless, to study and communicate what we find, to train young people to see things more clearly, and to challenge their presuppositions, especially about the poor and the marginalized. But in today’s stressed and polarized political environment, how do we speak up about our respon-
sibilities to the underserved without finding ourselves tagged in one political camp or another? It is the case that some systems are stacked against the underprivileged and the poor. It’s harder to find employment. It’s harder to find decent housing. It’s harder to get an education. And, without an educa- tion, it’s harder to advance. These are facts. Our obligation to work for equality concerns all people, regardless of where they fall on the politi-
cal spectrum. But communication trends lean toward oversimplification and soundbites that betray reason and squander good thought. We lose nuance in favor of false absolutes, and we equate stances on individual issues with wholesale subscriptions to ideologies on either side. When everything is pre- sented in black and white, it’s difficult to stake out a moderate and reasonable position. But universities are founded on reason, and, in our case, on reason informed by faith—both of
which require us to work for fairness and justice. It is therefore the University’s role to help maintain reasonable and ethically responsible civic discourse. We must make the effort to analyze and commu- nicate with our rational minds what we know in our hearts, and we must use our gifts to serve those who most greatly need them. Have a happy and healthy new year, and thank you for reading.
2 LOYOLA UNIVERSITY CHICAGO
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44