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Performance will mark 150th anniversary of “Origin of the Species”

2009-11-12T14:37:00-05:00

A pair of University of Notre Dame professors will celebrate the 150th anniversary of the publication of Charles Darwin’s “Origin of Species” with a performance of a fictionalized dialogue between Darwin and one of his harshest scientific critics at 8 p.m. Tuesday (Nov. 17) in the Jordan Hall of Science. The event is free and open to the public.

Ronald Hellenthal, professor of biological sciences, will portray Darwin and Phillip Sloan, professor in the Program of Liberal Studies, will portray Sir Richard Owen, founder of the British Museum of Natural History and a harsh scientific critic of Darwin. Edward Manier, professor emeritus of philosophy, will introduce the speakers.

The dialogue will be preceded by a 6 p.m. open house in Jordan Hall’s Museum of Biodiversity.

At 7 p.m., there will be a performance of the sound recording “Time Will Tell,” a comic operetta in the style of Gilbert and Sullivan that depicts Darwin’s life. The piece, written and produced by Robert Pollak and Robert Ashenhurst, was developed for the centennial celebration of the publication of “Origin of Species” in Chicago in 1959. A presentation of the National Film Board of Canada’s 1971 animated short film “Evolution” will follow.

At 9 p.m., there will be a presentation of the Mirage IIID Fulldome production “The Origin of Life” in Jordan Hall’s Digital Visualization Theater.

The anniversary celebration is sponsored by the Department of Biological Sciences, Program of Liberal Studies, College of Science, Digital Visualization Theater and the Museum of Biodiversity.

Vatican Official Archbishop

2009-11-12T00:00:00-05:00

Archbishop Angelo Amato (left) visited Notre Dame and delivered a lecture titled “Catholicism and Secularism in Contemporary Europe.” Learn More

Schmuhl to deliver keynote address at Dublin conference

2009-11-11T16:14:00-05:00

Robert Schmuhl, the University of Notre Dame’s Walter H. Annenberg-Edmund P. Joyce Professor of American Studies and Journalism, will deliver the keynote address at the conference of the Newspaper and Periodical History Forum of Ireland on Nov. 21 (Saturday) in Dublin.

The theme of the two-day conference, involving scholars and journalists, is “History and the Headlines: Contemporary Coverage and the Reassessment of Historical Events in Newspapers and Periodicals.” In his address, titled “Peering through the Fog: American Newspapers and the Easter Rising,” Schmuhl will analyze American news about Ireland in 1916.

The director of Notre Dame’s John W. Gallivan Program in Journalism, Ethics and Democracy, Schmuhl currently is working on a book titled “The ‘Exiled Children’ and Easter 1916: America and Irish Freedom.” Last spring, he served as the inaugural John Hume Visiting Research Fellow in the Hume Institute for Global Irish Studies at University College Dublin.

Schmuhl joined the Notre Dame faculty in 1980. His edited volume, “Making Words Dance: Reflections on Red Smith, Journalism, and Writing,” which collects all the Red Smith Lectures delivered at Notre Dame since 1983, will be published by Andrews McMeel Publishing in the spring.

Contact: Robert Schmuhl, 574-631-5128, rschmuhl@nd.edu

Notre Dame hosts Haiti’s only 2008–09 Fulbright scholar

2009-11-11T16:08:00-05:00

The University of Notre Dame’s Kellogg Institute for International Studies is hosting the only Fulbright visiting scholar selected from Haiti this academic year in the newly re-launched Fulbright Visiting Scholar Program for Central America and the Caribbean.

Gerald Telfort, the director of research for Haiti’s Ministry of Agriculture, will spend two months at the Kellogg Institute, where Rev. Robert Dowd, C.S.C., director of the institute’s Ford Family Program in Human Development Studies and Solidarity, is serving as his faculty associate. To facilitate Telfort’s research, Father Dowd has connected him with researchers at Purdue University’s International Programs in Agriculture, a Ford Program partner.

Haiti has lost more than 40 percent of its vegetative coverage in the last two decades, as wood is cut for fuel or income generation. With the goal of making conservation of trees economically viable in Haiti, Telfort is studying the measurement of carbon sequestered by trees and the international carbon concept. Other interests include the environmental consequences of disposable plastics, which have contributed to devastating flooding in Haiti.

At Notre Dame, Telfort joins Dr. Marie Denise Milord, the former coordinator of the Haitian government’s malaria and filariasis elimination effort, who previously was awarded a Fulbright fellowship for postdoctoral study. She currently is undertaking research in Notre Dame’s College of Science on a Dorvil fellowship awarded by Notre Dame’s Haiti Program.

Fulbright programs are sponsored by the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs of the U.S. Department of State.

Contact: Elizabeth Rankin, 574-631-9184, erankin3@nd.edu; or Denise Wright, visiting fellows program coordinator, Kellogg Institute, 574-631-8523, dwright1@nd.edu

24-Hour Vigil

2009-11-11T15:16:00-05:00

Members of Notre Dame’s ROTC stood watch at the Clarke Memorial Fountain (war memorial) on Veteran’s Day 2009.

Visionary Research

2009-11-11T00:00:00-05:00

David Hyde, the Rev. Howard J. Kenna, C.S.C., Memorial Director of Notre Dame’s Center for Zebrafish Research, in the Zebrafish Lab in the Galvin Life Science Center. Hyde uses adult stem cells in zebrafish to study how neurons regenerate. Learn More

Sociologist Hans Joas to speak at Notre Dame

2009-11-10T14:26:00-05:00

Internationally known sociologist and social theorist Hans Joas, director of the Max Weber Center for Advanced Cultural and Social Studies at the University of Erfurt in Germany, will present a lecture titled “The Axial Age Debate As Religious Discourse,” at 4 p.m. Thursday (Nov. 12) in the Andrews Auditorium of Geddes Hall at the University of Notre Dame.

The lecture, which is open to all Notre Dame, Saint Mary’s and Holy Cross College faculty, staff and students, is sponsored by the Notre Dame Institute for Advanced Study (NDIAS) and co-sponsored by the Center for Social Concerns.

Since 2000, Joas has served as professor of sociology at the University of Chicago, where he also is a member of the Committee on Social Thought. Formerly a professor of sociology at the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg, Joas also previously taught at the Free University of Berlin and served as a visiting professor of sociology at several universities in Europe and the United States, including Duke University, the University of Toronto, the University of Wisconsin and the University of Vienna.

Joas’ work has been translated into English, French, German, Korean, Polish, Russian and Spanish, and his publications in English include: “G.H. Mead. A Contemporary Re-examination of His Thought,” “Social Action and Human Nature,” “Pragmatism and Social Theory,” “The Creativity of Action,” “The Genesis of Values,” “War and Modernity,” “Do We Need Religion? On the Experience of Self-Transcendence,” and “Social Theory.” His most recent book in German is “Kriegsverdraengung,” a history of social theorizing about war from Hobbes to the present.

NDIAS hosts scholars from around the world and supports research that extends beyond the analysis of particular problems to the examination of larger, often ethical, ultimate questions. The institute is one of the five strategic research investments that Notre Dame recently has funded through a multi-million-dollar commitment of internal financial resources.

Contact: Vittorio Hösle, Director, Notre Dame Institute for Advanced Study, vhosle@nd.edu

Islam and contemporary European literature to be explored at Notre Dame symposium

2009-11-10T12:11:00-05:00

Some of Europe’s most prominent Muslim and Muslim-born writers will discuss the place of Islam in their work at a symposium titled “The Place of Islam in Contemporary European Literature,” to be held Nov. 16 and 17 (Monday and Tuesday) at the University of Notre Dame.

Jointly sponsored by the University’s Nanovic Institute for European Studies, Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies, Kellogg Institute for International Studies and Institute for Scholarship in the Liberal Arts, the symposium will feature a keynote address by Azouz Begag, a novelist, scriptwriter, scholar and former delegate minister for equal opportunities in France who has been awarded Chevalier de L’Ordre du Mérite and Chevalier de La Légion d’Honneur.

Conference panelists also include novelists, statesmen, sociologists, poets, filmmakers, translators and editors. Moderated by Notre Dame faculty, panel discussions will focus on the place of Islam in the writing process; the literature of geography, memory and exile; literature and generational identity; and discussions of literature and power.

In addition to lectures and discussions, the symposium also will feature a screening of “Le Grand Voyage” at 8:30 p.m. Nov. 16 in the Eck Visitors’ Center auditorium. Director Ismaël Ferroukhi is scheduled to introduce the award-winning film, which explores a father and son’s relationship as they travel across Europe to Mecca.

All symposium events are free and open to the public. More information and a complete schedule of events are available here.

Contact: Anthony Monta, Nanovic Institute, amonta@nd.edu

Saturday Scholars Visit San Antonio

2009-11-10T00:00:00-05:00

Rev. Daniel Groody, C.S.C. (left), assistant professor of theology and director of the Center for Latino Spirituality and Culture in Notre Dame’s Institute for Latino Studies; Rev. Virgilio Elizondo (center), professor of pastoral and Hispanic theology; and Tim Matovina (right), professor of theology and William and Anna Jean Cushwa Director of Notre Dame’s Cushwa Center for the Study of American Catholicism, take part in the Saturday Scholars Series at the Mariott Rivercenter in San Antonio, discussing “Latinos and the Remapping of American Catholicism” before the “home-away-from-home” Notre Dame-Washington State football game. Learn More

Center for Ethics and Culture to focus annual conference on freedom and virtue

2009-11-09T15:32:00-05:00

During his visit to the United States in April 2008, Pope Benedict XVI said that “the preservation of freedom calls for the cultivation of virtue, self-discipline, sacrifice for the common good, and a sense of responsibility towards the less fortunate. It also demands the courage to engage in civic life and to bring one’s deepest beliefs and values to reasoned public debate.”

Pope Benedict’s remarks have been chosen by the University of Notre Dame’s Center for Ethics and Culture as the theme for its 10th annual fall conference, “The Summons of Freedom: Virtue, Sacrifice, and the Common Good.”

The conference, to be held Nov. 12 to 14 (Thursday to Saturday) in McKenna Hall, will bring together scholars from Catholic, other Christian and secular institutions to discuss the common good from the perspectives of philosophy, theology and religious studies, law, history, the social sciences, literature and the arts.

“The theme of last year’s conference was ‘Family: Searching for Fairest Love’,” said Elizabeth Kirk, associate director of the center. “As we planned our 2009 conference, we thought it important to expand the discussion of family life outward to include the social, political and spiritual common goods in which the common good of the family is nested. The Holy Father’s remarks make clear certain connections of utmost importance not only to us Americans, but also to anyone trying to sort through the enormous moral and political complexities of our dizzyingly globalized world. We decided to focus the conference on the virtues as those moral and intellectual habits that allow us to achieve, solidify and defend the network of common goods in which we human beings realize our happiness.”

The conference will feature two keynote lectures, both given in the McKenna Hall auditorium.

Rev. John J. Raphael, S.S.J., a 1989 Notre Dame alumnus and principal of St. Augustine High School in New Orleans, will give a lecture on “Building a Bridge over Troubled Waters: Inviting African Americans into the Pro-Life Movement,” at 7:30 p.m. Nov. 12 (Thursday).

Thomas Hibbs, Distinguished Professor of Ethics & Culture and Dean of the Honors College at Baylor University, will speak on “Divorce as Fracture of the Common Good: Ingmar Bergman and Confession” at 7:30 p.m. Nov. 13 (Friday).

A full schedule of the conference, which includes 120 presentations and 13 invited lectures, is available online at http://ethicscenter.nd.edu/events/fallconfs/sof/sof.shtml.

Contact: Elizabeth Kirk, 574-631-9656, ekirk@nd.edu

Siemens Regional Competition scheduled for Nov. 13 and 14 at Notre Dame

2009-11-09T15:28:00-05:00

Five individuals and five teams of high school students have been selected to compete Friday and Saturday (Nov. 13 and 14) at the University of Notre Dame in the regional round of the Siemens Competition in Math, Science and Technology, the nation’s premier science research competition for high school students.

The New Jersey-based non-profit Siemens Foundation created the competition to enhance science and mathematics education in America. It is open to individuals and teams of high school students who develop independent research projects in the physical or biological sciences or mathematics. Competitions in six regions across the United States are being held throughout November. Regional scholarship winners advance to the national competition Dec. 3 to 7 in New York City for a top individual prize of $100,000. Members of the top winning team will share a $100,000 scholarship.

The Siemens Foundation has partnered with six of America’s leading research universities to assist in judging and hosting the regional competitions throughout the fall: the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Georgia Institute of Technology (Nov. 6 and 7), the University of Texas and Notre Dame (Nov. 13 and 14), and the California Institute of Technology and Carnegie Mellon University (Nov. 20 and 21).

The Notre Dame regional finalists will present their independent research projects to a panel of judges composed of Notre Dame faculty. The individual regional winner will receive an award of $3,000; members of the winning team will share a prize of $6,000. All regional individual and team runners-up will be awarded $1,000 scholarships.

The public can view student posters at 5:30 p.m. Friday (Nov. 13) in the study lounge of the Jordan Hall of Science.

The competition keynote address will be delivered by Carolyn Porco, a planetary scientist and the leader of the imaging science team on the Cassini mission presently in orbit around Saturn. In late 1999, she was selected by the London Sunday Times as one of 18 scientific leaders of the 21st century. She is director of the Cassini Imaging Central Laboratory for Operations (CICLOPS) within the Space Science Institute. CICLOPS is the center of operations for the imaging experiment on Cassini and the place where images are processed for release to the public.

Porco’s address, which is free and open to the public, will take place at 8 p.m. Saturday (Nov. 14) in the Sargento Auditorium of the Jordan Hall of Science.

A new feature of this year’s Notre Dame regional Siemens competition is an outreach workshop for students from five South Bend area schools on Friday afternoon (Nov. 13). Students from LaSalle Intermediate Academy, Trinity School, St. Joseph’s High School, Marian High School and Adams High School will receive a briefing on scientific research at the Jordan Hall of Science after the school day before attending the competition’s poster session.

The Notre Dame individual finalists are: Angela Ma, Carmel High School, Carmel, Ind.; Arjun Puranik, William Fremd High School, Palatine, Ill.; Marissa Suchyta, University of Chicago Laboratory School, Chicago; Dennis Tseng, William Mason High School, Mason, Ohio; and Kevin Wang, Wylie E. Groves High School, Beverly Hills, Mich.

The Notre Dame team finalists are: Qingyuan Chen, University of Chicago Laboratory School, Chicago, and Fred Schmitt, Naperville Central High School, Naperville, Ill.; Randy Jia and David Lu, Detroit Country Day School, Beverly Hills, Mich.; Renjay Lui and Bingjie Qui, Troy High School, Troy, Mich., and Lucille Zhang, Detroit Country Day School, Beverly Hills, Mich.; QinQin Yu and Sarah Kang, Rock Bridge High School, Columbia, Mo.; and David Zheng and Michael Luo, Carmel High School, Carmel, Ind.

The Siemens Competition in Math, Science and Technology is a program of the Siemens Foundation, a national leader in math and science education. The competition is administered by the College Board.

Nobel Peace Laureate

2009-11-09T00:00:00-05:00

Shirin Ebadi, an Iranian lawyer, human rights activist and the recipient of the 2003 Nobel Peace Prize, meets with Notre Dame President Emeritus Rev. Theodore M. Hesburgh, C.S.C., after delivering the 15th annual Hesburgh Lecture in Ethics and Public Policy at the Debartolo Performing Arts Center. Learn More

Research with a vision

2009-11-06T14:38:00-05:00

To the naked eye, humans may not appear to have much in common with the zebrafish, a small tropical freshwater species belonging to the minnow family.

But a Notre Dame biologist is taking a much closer look at the two species and finding potential for treating a number of diseases and conditions.

Research by David Hyde, the Rev. Howard J. Kenna, C.S.C., Memorial Director of Notre Dame’s Center for Zebrafish Research, uses adult stem cells in zebrafish to study how neurons regenerate. The work holds promise for treatments for such human problems as glaucoma and macular degeneration in the eyes, Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s in the brain, and even spinal cord injuries.

“We are actively engaged in using adult neuronal stem cells to examine the processes involved in regenerating neurons,” Hyde explains. “We’re doing this in the central nervous system where these stem cells already reside. We’re working on zebrafish because it’s much easier to manipulate the organism and the regeneration response is very robust. These adult neuronal stem cells also exist in the human nervous system, but they do not generate significant regeneration responses.”

Zebrafish eyes, the size of a large pinhead, have an advanced visual system similar to the human eye, with different types of neurons located in different layers — photoreceptor cells in the outer layer of the retina, ganglion neurons in the inner layer, and different classes of neurons in specific layers between. Hyde’s research focuses on cells in the retina, part of the central nervous system, but the cells also are in the brain. He came to Notre Dame more than 20 years ago and has been involved in the project for more than 13 years.

The research has shown that zebrafish repair retinal degeneration within just four weeks. The regeneration apparently occurs because something is signaling the adult stem cells and radial glial cells to proliferate, divide and differentiate at an enormous rate. Furthermore, the regeneration replaces precisely the right kinds of lost photoreceptors in the area of the retina where they were lost. That’s important, because growth of inappropriate cells could further damage the organism.

Understanding the process of how adult stem cells regenerate the zebrafish retina can lead to discovery of why humans lack the ability. Hyde suspects that some inhibiting mechanism has developed in humans, but the research could reveal ways to restore the power and, using adult stem cells, bring about healing of diseases that result from damage to nervous system cells.

As a Catholic university, Notre Dame realizes the moral and ethical implications of working with embryonic stem cells and is taking a proactive approach in using adult stem cells.

“Notre Dame science is distinctive from other institutions,” said Gregory Crawford, dean of the College of Science. “Our science is not just science alone; we also engage in other broader issues that influence science – ethics and morals and aspects of how our science will better other people’s lives.”

For more information on Notre Dame’s Initiative on Adult Stem Cell Research, visit http://adultstemcell.nd.edu on the Web.

Notre Dame EMBA ranked No. 20 by Business Week

2009-11-06T14:30:00-05:00

The Executive MBA program (EMBA) at the University of Notre Dame ranked No. 20, while its custom programs earned a No. 19 slot in the BusinessWeek biennial survey of the world’s top 25 executive education programs. The ranking was announced online Nov. 5 and is available in the print magazine on newsstands now.

“The combination of rigor and values-based leadership in our programs resonates with those who are charged with leading teams and organizations through complexity,” said Sharon Keane, director of Notre Dame Executive Education at the Mendoza College of Business. “These rankings are a wonderful affirmation of our approach and work.”

The Notre Dame Executive MBA received an “A+” for teaching and an “A” for curriculum, making it one of only 13 Executive MBA programs to receive an “A” or better in both areas. Graduate comments accompanying the survey lauded the program for its ethics-focused curriculum and for bringing real-world cases and executive guest speakers into the classroom, particularly during an extraordinary time when the financial crisis was unfolding in the country.

“It’s important that leadership takes a holistic approach, as with our integral leadership model,” said Carolyn Y. Woo, Martin J. Gillen Dean of the Mendoza College of Business. “We want to inspire our students to create economic value, while also achieving social good.”

The Notre Dame EMBA enrolls approximately 240 students total in its 21-month program in South Bend, Ind., which has an off-site classroom in Cincinnati, and its 17-month program in downtown Chicago.

Northwestern University, the University of Chicago and the University of Pennsylvania took the top three spots in the EMBA ranking. BusinessWeek utilizes two main sources of data to determine how the schools stack up — a survey of recent EMBA graduates and a survey of EMBA program directors.

The No. 19 ranking of the Notre Dame Executive Education custom programs was based on a survey of 188 corporate clients across schools. Custom programs provide individualized developmental opportunities for corporations, non-profit organizations and government entities. Clients for Notre Dame’s custom programs include Biomet, Bayer Corp., OfficeMax, Chevron, the U.S. Navy and Bon Secours Health System. The rankings were determined by survey results of high-level executive education contacts within the corporate clients’ organizations. The goal is to identify the programs that are considered best-in-class by the vast majority of companies that are familiar with them.

The Mendoza College of Business has offered Executive Education programs since 1982. In addition to custom and EMBA programs, Notre Dame’s Executive Education department offers open-enrollment and online courses for executives, managers and supervisors.

More information about the Notre Dame Executive Education program is available at 574-631-5285, 800-631-3622, or www.business.nd.edu/executive_education

For information on the Notre Dame Executive MBA program, call (574) 631-4948 or (866) 218-4948, or visit http://business.nd.edu/executive_mba/

Reflections on the fall of the Berlin Wall, 20 years later

2009-11-06T14:05:00-05:00

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University of Notre Dame political scientist James McAdams recalls the first time he stepped over the border from West Germany to East Germany in 1973 as a 19-year-old college student studying in West Berlin.

“The first time I entered East Berlin, it felt like I was going to an anti-Disneyland. It was like going from color television in West Berlin to black and white in East Berlin,” says McAdams, the William M. Scholl Professor of International Affairs and director of Notre Dame’s Nanovic Institute for European Studies.

An internationally recognized scholar of the two-state period in modern German history (1949 to 1989) and its aftermath, and author of several books including “Germany Divided: From the Wall to Reunification,” “East Germany and Détente,” and “Judging the Past in Unified Germany,” McAdams was living in West Germany in November 1989 when the Berlin Wall fell.

“There were several events happening in that part of Europe at that time that set the stage for the fall of the Berlin Wall,” McAdams says.

“The East German government was slowly allowing short visits to the West, and at the same time, there was a feeling of looseness; for the first time, people were publicly voicing complaints about their own government.”

The rise and success of Mikhail Gorbachev in the Soviet Union also played a role in helping to open the gates of reform. In October 1989, on the 40th anniversary of the existence of East Germany, Gorbachev visited East Berlin and told the East German government, “Those who come too late are punished by history.”

His words – a stinging indictment of Communist rule – conveyed to the East German government that if their country is to survive (not be “punished by history”), then the time had come to reform its politics and economy and begin thinking in new ways about its responsibility to its people.

On Nov. 9, 1989, the Berlin Wall fell.

“East Germans were filled with excitement just to have the opportunity to leave their country and visit West Berlin, just the spirit of choosing how to live their lives,” McAdams says.

“But there was this realization that suddenly this coming together of two countries that hadn’t had ties for nearly a half century, and throughout the 1990s, East Germans were convinced that they were being treated as second-class citizens by their West German kinsmen.”

They felt German, certainly, but felt they were regarded as the “lesser” cousins from the East who were “generously brought into the West German economy and culture,” McAdams says.

So the big question with which Germans will grapple in the coming decades, according to McAdams, is what happens to the chunk of the country brought into unified Germany?

“And more importantly,” he added, “what do you do with the history of this part of Germany in dealing with the fact that this part of Germany was ruled by a dictatorship for 40 years? Or do you just ignore it and pretend it never happened?”

Contact: James McAdams, amcadams@nd.edu, 574-631-5253

Notre Dame theologian Father Groody to advise Vatican conference on migration

2009-11-06T14:01:00-05:00

While human migration is as old as human history, there are more migrants today than ever before.

Displaced from their homelands by wars, genocide, famine, natural catastrophes, and collapsed or withering economies, there are 200 million such people worldwide, roughly the equivalent of the population of Brazil, according to Rev. Daniel G. Groody, C.S.C., assistant professor of theology and director of the Center for Latino Spirituality and Culture in the University of Notre Dame’s Institute for Latino Studies.

Father Groody is one of seven academic experts selected to participate in the Vatican’s sixth World Congress on the Pastoral Care of Migrants and Refugees, which will be held Nov. 9 to 12 in Rome. The theme of the meeting, convened by the Pontifical Council for the Pastoral Care of Migrants and Itinerant People, is “a pastoral response to the migratory phenomenon in the era of globalization,” and Father Groody will help write its concluding document, or “instruction.”

A glance at Father Groody’s résumé makes it easy to understand the Vatican’s invitation. In addition to having spent many years doing pastoral work and research in Latin America, particularly along the U.S.-Mexican border, he teaches, writes and lectures on U.S. Latino spirituality, globalization and the relationship of Christian spirituality to social justice. In addition to the numerous articles and books he has written on the plight and predicament of migrant people, he is the producer of award-winning documentary films on them as well, including “One Border, One Body: Immigration and the Eucharist,” and “Dying to Live: A Migrant’s Journey.” In recent years he has visited, accompanied and spoken with migrants in, among other countries, Slovakia, Ukraine, Libya, Malta, Morrocco and Spain.

Father Groody, who spent the 2007-08 academic year as a visiting research fellow at Oxford University’s Refugee Centre, seems keenly aware of the complexity and urgency of the global phenomenon of migration and quick to acknowledge that broadly interdisciplinary research is indispensable to understanding and coping with it. In an article in the fall issue of the journal Theological Studies, he listed economics, politics, geography, demography, sociology, psychology, law, history, anthropology and environmental studies as among the disciplines which are crucial to the relatively new field of migration studies.

“Theology, however, is almost never mentioned in major works or at centers of migration studies,” Father Groody admonished. “Some research has been done on migration and religion from a sociological perspective, but there is virtually nothing on the topic from a theological perspective. Theology seems to enter the academic territory from the outside, as if it were a ‘disciplinary refugee’ with no official recognition in the overall discourse about migration.”

As a theologian, Father Groody seems intent upon crossing that disciplinary border, pioneering what he calls “the foundation of a theology of migration and refugees,” the subject of a book on which he is now at work.

At the core of this theology is the notion of the Imago Dei, (the “Image of God”), God’s creation of human beings in his “image and likeness” as recounted in the first verses of scripture (Gen.1:26-27).

“No text is more foundational or more significant in its implication for the immigration debate,” Father Groody says. “It reveals that immigration is not just about a political ‘problem’ but about real people. The Imago Dei is the core symbol of human dignity, the infinite worth of every human being, and the divine attributes that are part of every human life, including will, memory, emotions, understanding, and the capacity to love and enter into relationship with others. Listening to stories of immigrants along the U.S.-Mexico border, as well as the borders between Slovakia-Ukraine, Malta-Libya, and others, I have discovered that a common denominator around the world among all who migrate is their experience of dehumanization.”

An appropriate response to this dehumanization, not only for Christians, but for all people, will be the predominant concern of all in attendance at the sixth World Congress on the Pastoral Care of Migrants and Refugees, and Father Groody will play a vital role in helping them articulate it.

Contact: Father Groody, 574-631-3233, dgroody@nd.edu

In Concert

2009-11-06T00:00:00-05:00

Internationally recognized tenor Mark Beudert, director of Opera Notre Dame, performs in Leighton Concert Hall. Beudert and pianist Dalton Baldwin performed a program of songs by Duparc, Berlioz, Richard Strauss, Poulenc, Bowles, Ives, Hundley, Hoiby and Duke Ellington.

ND alumna Joan Orie Melvin elected to Pennsylvania Supreme Court

2009-11-05T15:27:00-05:00

Superior Court Judge Joan Orie Melvin of Pittsburgh, a 1978 University of Notre Dame alumna, was elected Nov. 3 (Tuesday) to a seat on the Pennsylvania Supreme Court.

Melvin, a Republican, defeated her superior court colleague, Democrat Jack Panella, with 53 percent of the vote.

A native of Pittsburgh, Melvin majored in economics at Notre Dame, where she lived in Lyons Hall, and earned a law degree from Duquesne University School of Law in 1981.

A judge for more than 24 years, Orie Melvin first served in the Pittsburgh Municipal Courts, where she created the first domestic violence court in Pennsylvania. She was appointed to the Allegheny County bench in 1990 and seven years later became the first female Republican elected to the state Superior Court, where she has heard more than 8,000 cases.

Tylenol case expert to speak at Notre Dame

2009-11-05T14:04:00-05:00

In 1982, seven people in the Chicago area died after taking Tylenol pain-relief capsules that had been laced with potassium cyanide. The crime, still unsolved, eventually led to large-scale reforms in the way food and drug products are packaged and sold in the United States.

For Johnson & Johnson, the drug’s manufacturer, the “Tylenol crisis” resulted in a new level of corporate crisis management; namely, how does a company show its concern for public safety, while at the same time, survive as a business in the face of controversy and fear?

John R. Mullen, a 1953 University of Notre Dame graduate and the vice president for corporate affairs who was instrumentally involved in Johnson & Johnson’s response, will speak at Notre Dame about the experience. His talk, “Leadership in a Corporate Crisis: Johnson & Johnson and Tylenol,” will take place Nov. 10 (Tuesday) at 8 a.m. in the Jordan Auditorium at Notre Dame’s Mendoza College of Business.

“The Tylenol case is one of the most-cited business ethical leadership and crisis management teaching cases in business ethics education,” said Jessica McManus Warnell, management assistant professional specialist at the Mendoza College. “It exemplifies values-based leadership and decision-making rooted firmly in corporate policy and culture, as evidenced by the J & J credo statement of values, one of the first ‘ethics mission statements’ in business.”

The event, sponsored by the Notre Dame Institute for Ethical Business Worldwide, is free and open to the public. All Notre Dame undergraduate business ethics students will attend the talk to supplement their in-class exploration of the case.

Mullen joined Johnson & Johnson’s Law Department in 1960, thereafter serving in a number of positions, including assistant counsel, assistant secretary and vice president of personnel. He then became vice president of corporate relations, and finished his career with Johnson & Johnson in 1997 as vice president of corporate affairs.

Mullen’s Notre Dame appointments include vice president of the National Alumni Board, member and former chairman of the Mendoza College of Business Advisory Council, member of the International Advisory Council, member of the Ad Hoc Public Relations Council, and chairman of the Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies Advisory Council.

Contact: Jessica McManus Warnell, 574-631-9182, jmcmanus@nd.edu.

The Review of Politics turns 70

2009-11-05T13:54:00-05:00

We can be grateful that the world of 2009 is so unlike the world of 1939, in which The Review of Politics was first published at the University of Notre Dame.

But agreeable as it is to leave the totalitarian regimes of Hitler and Stalin, the invasion of Poland, the concentration camps and fire bombings uniquely associated with that earlier time, it is not difficult in this one to share what the journal’s first editors described as a feeling “that we are living in a kind of interval of history, in a duration of formlessness and fury.” That generation-spanning resemblance may account for the Review’s enduring status as an indispensable journal of political philosophy.

The Review of Politics was founded during the tenure of Notre Dame’s 13th president, Rev. John F. O’Hara, C.S.C., who was, to put it mildly, an unlikely patron for this or any other intellectual project. Suspicious of philosophy and all but apologetic theology, he forbade the campus sale of publications he found objectionable—Time magazine was one such—and routinely banned the many books he disliked from the University library. Even one of his admirers, the late professor of American studies and former editor of the Review, Thomas Stritch, saw fit to describe him as “a censorious prude, one with the popularly caricatured nuns of Catholic schooling.”

Nevertheless, it was Father O’Hara (later to become cardinal archbishop of Philadelphia) who, as Stritch put it, “founded the University of Notre Dame,” by overseeing its most transformative growth, establishing and fostering a graduate school and welcoming into the ranks of the faculty a stellar array of English, Irish and European scholars. Most of the Europeans were refugees, fleeing both the fascist regimes and the spiritual and intellectual toxins these had released in European culture.

One of these had been recommended to Father O’Hara by an already prominent visiting professor, the French Thomist philosopher, Jacques Maritain. Maritain’s friend, the political philosopher and historian Waldemar Gurian, had run predictably afoul of German authorities for lectures and essays critical of fascism (and so of Hitler) and had fled with his family to Switzerland, where he languished for a couple of years before receiving Father O’Hara’s invitation. The journals of Catholic intellectual opinion for which Gurian had written in Germany had by then been shut down or hopelessly censored, and he arrived at Notre Dame in 1937 determined to found a new one. Two years later, with help from Rev. Leo R. Ward, C.S.C., another professor of philosophy, Gurian persuaded Father O’Hara to back the project.

The terse statement of purpose which appeared on the first page of the inaugural issue was written by a professor of English named Frank O’Malley, then at the beginning of what would become a legendary teaching career at Notre Dame. It applies equally well to the Review today: “The Review of Politics, without neglecting the analysis of institutions and techniques, is primarily interested in the philosophical and historical approach to political realities.”

Gurian’s new publication became central to a community of thinkers understandably convinced that the West had lost its moral bearings and could not regain them without rediscovering what Jacques Maritain, in the Review’s first article, called “integral humanism.” In addition to Maritain, the earliest contributors to the journal include some of the 20th century’s most influential political thinkers, among them Hannah Arendt, Carl Friedrich, Leo Strauss, Russell Kirk and Eric Voegelin.

While sharing a common concern, even alarm, about their culture’s integrity and will, these writers were a highly eclectic group. According to A. James McAdams, the William M. Scholl Professor of International Affairs and director of Notre Dame’s Nanovic Institute for European Studies, “some of their political differences were far-reaching. Although none would have adhered to extremist positions, their personal enthusiasms ranged across the political spectrum, from Christian Democracy to social progressivism, agrarianism and Burkean conservatism.” The subjects on which they brought these enthusiasms to bear were no less diverse, ranging from nihilism to totalitarianism, war and peace, human rights, mass culture, and the relationship of the intellectual to the spiritual life.

With the review’s present editor, Catherine H. Zuckert, the Nancy Reeves Dreux Professor of Political Science at Notre Dame, McAdams has begun to edit a series of anthologies gathering the most noteworthy essays in the journal’s 70 years of publication. Two of these, “The Crisis of Modern Times,” edited by McAdams, and “War Peace and International Political Realism,” edited by Keir A. Lieber, associate professor of political science at Notre Dame, have already been published by the University of Notre Dame Press. Former editor Donald Kommers, the Joseph and Elizabeth Robbie Professor of Government and International Studies and professor of law at Notre Dame, is at work on another.

According to one critic, Steven B. Smith, Cowles Professor of Political Studies at Yale University, the collected essays “demonstrate why the Review of Politics is a national treasure [which] has remained the premier journal for serious students of political philosophy.”

Such praise should make any septuagenarian’s day.