A Tale of Two Hittingers
Sat, Mar24, 2007 - Category: University
Dr. F. Russell Hittinger (University of Tulsa) and
his brother Dr. John P. Hittinger (University of St.
Thomas, Houston) share more than just the same last
name. As leading scholars within the Catholic
academic community, they also share the respect and
admiration of many.
What they do not appear to share, however, is a similar view of Tom Monaghan and Ave Maria University. Such disagreement is characteristic of the growing polarization that AMU's Monaghan, Nick Healy, and Fr. Fessio are thrusting upon American orthodox Catholics.
UPDATE, 3/25/07 - John Hittinger responds!
What they do not appear to share, however, is a similar view of Tom Monaghan and Ave Maria University. Such disagreement is characteristic of the growing polarization that AMU's Monaghan, Nick Healy, and Fr. Fessio are thrusting upon American orthodox Catholics.
UPDATE, 3/25/07 - John Hittinger responds!
From 1994 to 2001, Dr. John Hittinger taught in the
US Air Force Academy where he was given the
prestigious "Civilian of the Year Award." Trusting in
the recruitment promises of Nick Healy and Tom
Monaghan, John took a signficant career risk and left
his position as full-professor (with a "long term
appointment", the USAFA equivalent of "tenure") to
become Provost and Academic Dean at St. Mary's
College of Ave Maria University in Orchard Lake,
Michigan. Hittinger was instrumental in rejuvinating
St. Mary's student life, liberal arts rigor, and
orthodox culture.
In 2003, Monaghan decided to pull the plug on St. Mary's. An article ran in the widely-circulated periodical National Catholic Register citing claims from Ave Maria administrators that St. Mary's was closing due to financial deficits. To defend the truth concerning his institution and good work, Hittinger published a follow-up in the Register (excerpts):
"The reason given for the closing of the college, the deficits, is very misleading. The whole financial plan was made by Monaghan and his team, and monitored by them. The expenses were never over budget, but the college failed to bring in sufficient revenue. The greatest failure to raise revenue came from the development department - and it was Ave Maria who agreed to build up this department and did not do so."
"[Ave Maria administration] describes the Monaghan vision as something good - but it has a dark side to it - and it excludes some key Catholic features. The dark side is the dependence upon Monaghan's arbitrary focus or level of interest and its idiosyncratic definitions of Catholic faith - Mr. Monaghan seems oblivious to Church doctrine on social justice in his treatment of faculty and staff as "at will" employees. He also spurns centuries-old academic customs and protocols especially those pertaining to faculty status and governance. Unfortunately, the quest for authentic renewal of Catholic higher education has taken some wrong turns under the Ave Maria auspices."
Later that year, John would describe Tom Monaghan as "a pirate on the high seas of Catholic higher education".
With the abrupt closure of St. Mary's, John assumed a position at Sacred Heart Seminary (Detroit). He salvaged his career momentum and was recently named Vice President of Academic Affairs at the University of St. Thomas, Houston.
With John's issues against Monaghan in the public eye, it is reasonable to speculate that his brother Russell, a prominent Research Professor of Law at Tulsa, was aware of the matter. Given Russell's scholarship in philosophy, religion, and law, there would likely be some interest in the violations of Catholic social teaching experienced first-hand by his brother.
But two months ago, in a move that left some Catholic professors and observers scratching their heads, Russell appeared at AMU in full academic regalia to give the Formal Academic Convocation for the semester. Russell's lecture was titled "Are Societies Real Persons?" - surely one of the most ironic lectures ever delivered in Catholic higher education.
The irony won't be clear to those unfamiliar with Russell's recent writing on the topic of "society". His thesis is that societies have a real unity that exists beyond mere aggregation. Societies are real social forms that are much different than a simple cobbling-together of disparate individuals who share superficial interests or even legal recognition. Hittinger has even used "a college faculty" as an example of a kind of societal social form - a collection of individuals who share a true unity, not because they are mandated by an authority to have a pseudo-unity, and not because they are simply using each other as means to individual ends, but because there is a transcending substance that unites them, akin to family.
Thus, the questions:
1) Does Tom Monaghan recognize and treat a college community as a social form with real unity, or as a mere aggregation of disposable individuals bound together by his authority, his money, and his whim?
2) Does he see and feel the loss of a faculty member, Provost, student, or employee as a breach of real unity (as students and employees do) or simply as a to-be-expected insignificant event coming from a loose collection of replaceable pieces that only exist because he says 'exist'.
3) Does he think that the people of the college community work "for him" or "for the unity that binds each of them together"?
Monaghan adopted a model of "community" where, as 'creator', he maintains control through the arbitrary imposition of order on an aggregation. Russell Hittinger's work is emphatic that Catholic social thought has something to say about such a model.
Social forms – i.e. burial societies, labor unions, families, college communities – cannot be turned into a bunch of mere aggregations. There is a real living unity in these forms. To claim that Monaghan's financial contributions allow him to ignore these unities – that he "has every right to use his money as he wished" – is to be in error to the point of embarrassment. Even the state, let alone a philanthropist, has to make room for social forms. If the state fails to do so, it violates the justification for its own existence. If a philanthropist fails to do so, he too violates what he claims to be "creating". True academic communities are not "created"; they exist through organic self-organization.
Consider how societies are treated by the states that fail to recognize true social forms, and instead, only recognize the legal aggregations that exist by permission of, and manipulation from, the state. These states pulverize the social forms that possess true unity because such forms are a threat to the false unity of state-sanctioned aggregation. There is a reason why universities are often the first targets of strong-arm revolution. States want to reduce real social forms (family, the Catholic Church, academic communities) to mere aggregations. As such, states can then run college faculty like an aggregation of individual businesses to be manipulated at will.
A substantial part of Catholic social doctrine is a defense against the reduction of social forms to mere legal "approved" aggregations. The strong resistance to Monaghan's management practices at Ave Maria School of Law may originate, at least in part, by that community's rigorous understanding of these principles.
And this is not some over-stretched analogy. AMU's former Chairman of Economics had this to say:
"AMU does not behave like a Catholic employer. As Chair I have attended dozens of meetings and have been generally appalled at how little consideration the views of students, faculty or staff are given, Catholic social teaching principles are never seriously invoked and when I mentioned them, they were politely discarded. Given the problems with living wages it would be natural to unionize the faculty.. yet every faculty member perceives correctly AMU as a union buster, the type of employer the social encyclicals condemn. Justice issues are systematically neglected in the employer-worker relationship. Instead, sacrifice is preached as if charity could justify violations of justice. .. I have decided no longer to teach Catholic social teaching in large part because of the example of AMU administration. It is no wonder Catholic social teaching has no widespread credibility, Catholics do not follow it."
[More on that here]
Some of the Catholic literati who have been coaxed to AMU for keynote speeches are privately criticizing Monaghan, but then defending their lecture appearance by claiming that such talks are not implicit endorsements of the institution's administrative practices. Yet, these same individuals will support the organized efforts of The Cardinal Newman Society to annually protest Catholic colleges who invite and host pro-abortion convocation speakers. Why do they protest these colleges? - because they recognize that institutions and speakers do offer implicit support for the other's activities by mutually accepting the honor of addressing the whole of the academic community.
So, why is Russell Hittinger content to lend his good name to an employer whose behavior is the antithesis of the very ideas that he is championing? His brother has already spoken.
UPDATE, 3/24/07 -
Dr. John Hittinger responds:
I write to defend my brother's decision to visit AMU. First, we cannot forget that AMU has on the faculty some outstanding Catholic scholars -- many of whom are our friends and colleagues; one is a former student of Russ's. We do stand in solidarity with these Catholic scholars and we must continue to carry on our academic exchange -- it would be unwise to impose a strict "embargo" on exchange because of the mistakes of the men at the top, as the USA does with Cuba. So Russ and many of my friends have gone down there to participate in the vibrant Catholic intellectual life that clearly exists there despite the serious problems with the institutional founding. I do not hold that against them. Second, I suspect that Russ knew full well the irony of his talk at AMU. The contrast between the Catholic notion of community and some practices at AMU is precisely made clear to all by his illuminating approach to this issue. Third, you will not find a public utterance by Russ supporting the AMU enterprise. So I would suggest that the divide is between those who are publicly in support of AMU (sit on the board, serve in the administration, defend its policies etc) and those who have serious reservations about the enterprise. It is not too late for divine visitation to lead to change and reconciliation, as happened with Zacchaeus (Luke 19:8).
AveWatch responds:
Luke 19: (6) And he [Zacchaeus] made haste and came down; and received him [Jesus] with joy. (7) And when all saw it, they murmured, saying, that he was gone to be a guest with a man that was a sinner. (8) But Zacheus standing, said to the Lord: Behold, Lord, the half of my goods I give to the poor; and if I have wronged any man of any thing, I restore him fourfold.
Indeed, the Lord will have visited the house of Mr. Monaghan, Fr. Fessio, and Mr. Healy if they repent and restore four-fold the increasingly long line of good Catholic men and women duped by their treatment. The reality, however, is that the threesome's scotoma has grown so large as to eclipse their conscience from seeing even a fleeting glance of the damage they inflict on the communities entrusted to their stewardship. You need only look at this week's Fessio Kerfuffle (1, 2, 3) and ask "Did they even pause to think how this might impact students and professors, mid-semester, mid-week?" And what of Ave Maria School of Law, and Monaghan's terse dismissal of the faculty's "vote-of-no-confidence" in their Dean?
John Hittinger and I appear to agree on this point - a stark contrast exists between "the Catholic notion of community and some practices at AMU". So, let's focus on whether it is "unwise to impose a strict 'embargo' on exchange" with the scholars at AMU.
AveWatch is not advocating "a strict embargo". One would hope that the Hittingers and other scholars continue to engage AMU's academicians through collaborative research, communication, shared authorship, conferences, and even guest lectures. But a very important distinction must be made between "guest lectures" and "convocation addresses".
Giving talks and Bibles to small groups of oppressed Catholics behind the Iron Curtain is quite different from standing on a dais in full regalia next to Generals when neither the crowds nor allies know the speaker's position on the community's treatment. It may be true that there was nary "a public utterance by Russ supporting the AMU enterprise". But did he need to?
Like it or not, "Russell Hittinger" is now an endorsement for Monaghan's Ave Maria "brand"; a photo of Hittinger in regalia on a dais with the Generals was on the front page of AMU's website, and his name will surely be invoked many times, in multiple forms, to solicit donations and recruit. John Paul II didn't worry about the Cuban & Polish governments using him in their propaganda after his "convocations" in Havana and Krakow; the pontiff had many a "public utterance" that made his position clear about those regimes specifically.
Hittinger = credibility, and as a start-up, AMU is in dire need of it like no other university. This fact also makes the acceptance of giving a keynote at AMU quite unlike giving a lecture at an established institution.
Those who offer major addresses at AMU must be made aware of the cognitive dissonance they're creating on the institutional credibility of AMU/Monaghan among those who consume and work in Catholic higher education. These speakers must also be ready to bear the risk and scrutiny of being rolled-out as the next smiling-face to promote the Ave Maria brand after another Kerfuffle breaks-out.
But, let's be clear. Visiting speakers do not bear a fraction of the responsibility of apologist Board members like Michael Novak and Fr. Richard John Neuhaus. Novak claims that faculty complaints about governance are just "carping by academics" because "If it weren't for Monaghan, it would be dissatisfaction with whomever." Novak would do well to read Hittinger. Neuhaus recently had the temerity to explain-away the Fessio Kerfuffle as a "clash of great talents" and Monaghan as "exemplifying Our Lord's counsel to turn worldly means to apostolic ends." If Neuhaus believes that Monaghan's "right to spend his money as he sees fit" gives license to use any means to achieve a so-called "good" end, then Neuhaus deserves to be ignored in the public square.
Russell Hittinger is a scholar and gentleman of the highest order. Let's hope that he will speak plainly and direct the light emanating from his scholarship toward Ave Maria's leadership. If Russell is unwilling to publicly recognize Monaghan's pathetic treatment of academic communities, one can only hope that prospective professors and students will heed yesterday's words from Phil Lawler, Editor of Catholic World News - "..if you're a tenured professor at another Catholic university and you see this happening, you say to yourself, 'If it could happen to Father Fessio, it could happen to anyone -- so what's my incentive for going to work at Ave Maria?'
John Hittinger was the first to pierce-the-veil of Monaghan's dysfunctional management in academia. It took courage that few could muster. He suffered for it, and should be held in high esteem for his principled actions.
The time has come for Catholic academics who genuinely care about the treatment of their brethren at Ave Maria University and Ave Maria School of Law to stand in solidarity with a public admonition, and stop being used as cover to perpetuate Mr. Monaghan's disregard for the real unity that binds an academic community.
In 2003, Monaghan decided to pull the plug on St. Mary's. An article ran in the widely-circulated periodical National Catholic Register citing claims from Ave Maria administrators that St. Mary's was closing due to financial deficits. To defend the truth concerning his institution and good work, Hittinger published a follow-up in the Register (excerpts):
"The reason given for the closing of the college, the deficits, is very misleading. The whole financial plan was made by Monaghan and his team, and monitored by them. The expenses were never over budget, but the college failed to bring in sufficient revenue. The greatest failure to raise revenue came from the development department - and it was Ave Maria who agreed to build up this department and did not do so."
"[Ave Maria administration] describes the Monaghan vision as something good - but it has a dark side to it - and it excludes some key Catholic features. The dark side is the dependence upon Monaghan's arbitrary focus or level of interest and its idiosyncratic definitions of Catholic faith - Mr. Monaghan seems oblivious to Church doctrine on social justice in his treatment of faculty and staff as "at will" employees. He also spurns centuries-old academic customs and protocols especially those pertaining to faculty status and governance. Unfortunately, the quest for authentic renewal of Catholic higher education has taken some wrong turns under the Ave Maria auspices."
Later that year, John would describe Tom Monaghan as "a pirate on the high seas of Catholic higher education".
With the abrupt closure of St. Mary's, John assumed a position at Sacred Heart Seminary (Detroit). He salvaged his career momentum and was recently named Vice President of Academic Affairs at the University of St. Thomas, Houston.
With John's issues against Monaghan in the public eye, it is reasonable to speculate that his brother Russell, a prominent Research Professor of Law at Tulsa, was aware of the matter. Given Russell's scholarship in philosophy, religion, and law, there would likely be some interest in the violations of Catholic social teaching experienced first-hand by his brother.
But two months ago, in a move that left some Catholic professors and observers scratching their heads, Russell appeared at AMU in full academic regalia to give the Formal Academic Convocation for the semester. Russell's lecture was titled "Are Societies Real Persons?" - surely one of the most ironic lectures ever delivered in Catholic higher education.
The irony won't be clear to those unfamiliar with Russell's recent writing on the topic of "society". His thesis is that societies have a real unity that exists beyond mere aggregation. Societies are real social forms that are much different than a simple cobbling-together of disparate individuals who share superficial interests or even legal recognition. Hittinger has even used "a college faculty" as an example of a kind of societal social form - a collection of individuals who share a true unity, not because they are mandated by an authority to have a pseudo-unity, and not because they are simply using each other as means to individual ends, but because there is a transcending substance that unites them, akin to family.
Thus, the questions:
1) Does Tom Monaghan recognize and treat a college community as a social form with real unity, or as a mere aggregation of disposable individuals bound together by his authority, his money, and his whim?
2) Does he see and feel the loss of a faculty member, Provost, student, or employee as a breach of real unity (as students and employees do) or simply as a to-be-expected insignificant event coming from a loose collection of replaceable pieces that only exist because he says 'exist'.
3) Does he think that the people of the college community work "for him" or "for the unity that binds each of them together"?
Monaghan adopted a model of "community" where, as 'creator', he maintains control through the arbitrary imposition of order on an aggregation. Russell Hittinger's work is emphatic that Catholic social thought has something to say about such a model.
Social forms – i.e. burial societies, labor unions, families, college communities – cannot be turned into a bunch of mere aggregations. There is a real living unity in these forms. To claim that Monaghan's financial contributions allow him to ignore these unities – that he "has every right to use his money as he wished" – is to be in error to the point of embarrassment. Even the state, let alone a philanthropist, has to make room for social forms. If the state fails to do so, it violates the justification for its own existence. If a philanthropist fails to do so, he too violates what he claims to be "creating". True academic communities are not "created"; they exist through organic self-organization.
Consider how societies are treated by the states that fail to recognize true social forms, and instead, only recognize the legal aggregations that exist by permission of, and manipulation from, the state. These states pulverize the social forms that possess true unity because such forms are a threat to the false unity of state-sanctioned aggregation. There is a reason why universities are often the first targets of strong-arm revolution. States want to reduce real social forms (family, the Catholic Church, academic communities) to mere aggregations. As such, states can then run college faculty like an aggregation of individual businesses to be manipulated at will.
A substantial part of Catholic social doctrine is a defense against the reduction of social forms to mere legal "approved" aggregations. The strong resistance to Monaghan's management practices at Ave Maria School of Law may originate, at least in part, by that community's rigorous understanding of these principles.
And this is not some over-stretched analogy. AMU's former Chairman of Economics had this to say:
"AMU does not behave like a Catholic employer. As Chair I have attended dozens of meetings and have been generally appalled at how little consideration the views of students, faculty or staff are given, Catholic social teaching principles are never seriously invoked and when I mentioned them, they were politely discarded. Given the problems with living wages it would be natural to unionize the faculty.. yet every faculty member perceives correctly AMU as a union buster, the type of employer the social encyclicals condemn. Justice issues are systematically neglected in the employer-worker relationship. Instead, sacrifice is preached as if charity could justify violations of justice. .. I have decided no longer to teach Catholic social teaching in large part because of the example of AMU administration. It is no wonder Catholic social teaching has no widespread credibility, Catholics do not follow it."
[More on that here]
Some of the Catholic literati who have been coaxed to AMU for keynote speeches are privately criticizing Monaghan, but then defending their lecture appearance by claiming that such talks are not implicit endorsements of the institution's administrative practices. Yet, these same individuals will support the organized efforts of The Cardinal Newman Society to annually protest Catholic colleges who invite and host pro-abortion convocation speakers. Why do they protest these colleges? - because they recognize that institutions and speakers do offer implicit support for the other's activities by mutually accepting the honor of addressing the whole of the academic community.
So, why is Russell Hittinger content to lend his good name to an employer whose behavior is the antithesis of the very ideas that he is championing? His brother has already spoken.
UPDATE, 3/24/07 -
Dr. John Hittinger responds:
I write to defend my brother's decision to visit AMU. First, we cannot forget that AMU has on the faculty some outstanding Catholic scholars -- many of whom are our friends and colleagues; one is a former student of Russ's. We do stand in solidarity with these Catholic scholars and we must continue to carry on our academic exchange -- it would be unwise to impose a strict "embargo" on exchange because of the mistakes of the men at the top, as the USA does with Cuba. So Russ and many of my friends have gone down there to participate in the vibrant Catholic intellectual life that clearly exists there despite the serious problems with the institutional founding. I do not hold that against them. Second, I suspect that Russ knew full well the irony of his talk at AMU. The contrast between the Catholic notion of community and some practices at AMU is precisely made clear to all by his illuminating approach to this issue. Third, you will not find a public utterance by Russ supporting the AMU enterprise. So I would suggest that the divide is between those who are publicly in support of AMU (sit on the board, serve in the administration, defend its policies etc) and those who have serious reservations about the enterprise. It is not too late for divine visitation to lead to change and reconciliation, as happened with Zacchaeus (Luke 19:8).
AveWatch responds:
Luke 19: (6) And he [Zacchaeus] made haste and came down; and received him [Jesus] with joy. (7) And when all saw it, they murmured, saying, that he was gone to be a guest with a man that was a sinner. (8) But Zacheus standing, said to the Lord: Behold, Lord, the half of my goods I give to the poor; and if I have wronged any man of any thing, I restore him fourfold.
Indeed, the Lord will have visited the house of Mr. Monaghan, Fr. Fessio, and Mr. Healy if they repent and restore four-fold the increasingly long line of good Catholic men and women duped by their treatment. The reality, however, is that the threesome's scotoma has grown so large as to eclipse their conscience from seeing even a fleeting glance of the damage they inflict on the communities entrusted to their stewardship. You need only look at this week's Fessio Kerfuffle (1, 2, 3) and ask "Did they even pause to think how this might impact students and professors, mid-semester, mid-week?" And what of Ave Maria School of Law, and Monaghan's terse dismissal of the faculty's "vote-of-no-confidence" in their Dean?
John Hittinger and I appear to agree on this point - a stark contrast exists between "the Catholic notion of community and some practices at AMU". So, let's focus on whether it is "unwise to impose a strict 'embargo' on exchange" with the scholars at AMU.
AveWatch is not advocating "a strict embargo". One would hope that the Hittingers and other scholars continue to engage AMU's academicians through collaborative research, communication, shared authorship, conferences, and even guest lectures. But a very important distinction must be made between "guest lectures" and "convocation addresses".
Giving talks and Bibles to small groups of oppressed Catholics behind the Iron Curtain is quite different from standing on a dais in full regalia next to Generals when neither the crowds nor allies know the speaker's position on the community's treatment. It may be true that there was nary "a public utterance by Russ supporting the AMU enterprise". But did he need to?
Like it or not, "Russell Hittinger" is now an endorsement for Monaghan's Ave Maria "brand"; a photo of Hittinger in regalia on a dais with the Generals was on the front page of AMU's website, and his name will surely be invoked many times, in multiple forms, to solicit donations and recruit. John Paul II didn't worry about the Cuban & Polish governments using him in their propaganda after his "convocations" in Havana and Krakow; the pontiff had many a "public utterance" that made his position clear about those regimes specifically.
Hittinger = credibility, and as a start-up, AMU is in dire need of it like no other university. This fact also makes the acceptance of giving a keynote at AMU quite unlike giving a lecture at an established institution.
Those who offer major addresses at AMU must be made aware of the cognitive dissonance they're creating on the institutional credibility of AMU/Monaghan among those who consume and work in Catholic higher education. These speakers must also be ready to bear the risk and scrutiny of being rolled-out as the next smiling-face to promote the Ave Maria brand after another Kerfuffle breaks-out.
But, let's be clear. Visiting speakers do not bear a fraction of the responsibility of apologist Board members like Michael Novak and Fr. Richard John Neuhaus. Novak claims that faculty complaints about governance are just "carping by academics" because "If it weren't for Monaghan, it would be dissatisfaction with whomever." Novak would do well to read Hittinger. Neuhaus recently had the temerity to explain-away the Fessio Kerfuffle as a "clash of great talents" and Monaghan as "exemplifying Our Lord's counsel to turn worldly means to apostolic ends." If Neuhaus believes that Monaghan's "right to spend his money as he sees fit" gives license to use any means to achieve a so-called "good" end, then Neuhaus deserves to be ignored in the public square.
Russell Hittinger is a scholar and gentleman of the highest order. Let's hope that he will speak plainly and direct the light emanating from his scholarship toward Ave Maria's leadership. If Russell is unwilling to publicly recognize Monaghan's pathetic treatment of academic communities, one can only hope that prospective professors and students will heed yesterday's words from Phil Lawler, Editor of Catholic World News - "..if you're a tenured professor at another Catholic university and you see this happening, you say to yourself, 'If it could happen to Father Fessio, it could happen to anyone -- so what's my incentive for going to work at Ave Maria?'
John Hittinger was the first to pierce-the-veil of Monaghan's dysfunctional management in academia. It took courage that few could muster. He suffered for it, and should be held in high esteem for his principled actions.
The time has come for Catholic academics who genuinely care about the treatment of their brethren at Ave Maria University and Ave Maria School of Law to stand in solidarity with a public admonition, and stop being used as cover to perpetuate Mr. Monaghan's disregard for the real unity that binds an academic community.