A Summary and Reflection on Dean Brackley’s, S.J., Justice and Jesuit Higher Education

1. A Summary and Reflection on Dean Brackley’s, S.J., Justice and Jesuit Higher Education Heather Z. Lyons Department of Psychology

2. Seven Higher Standards • Giving Priority to Reality • “Citizens of the world’s only super power have a special responsibility to learn about the world beyond their borders” • Becoming scholars while ensuring that our literatures do not dominate us

3. Seven Higher Standards • The Life-and-Death Questions • “Who are the crucified people today?” • “What are they suffering and why?” • “How can we bring them down from their crosses?” • Ensuring that we help to impart wisdom rather than just information

4. Seven Higher Standards • Cognitive Liberation and Reason Integrally Considered • “…distortion is rooted in unconscious commitments and habits of the heart. That means that cognitive liberation requires personal transformation, or conversion. In the end, prejudice is embedded in my identity, so that to question my world is to question me. For these reasons, wholesome crises can expand our horizons.” • Engaging in relationships with the economically poor and suffering • This can happen close to home • Encouraging awakening, acknowledging consolations and desolations, losing yourself in this “wholesome crisis”

5. Seven Higher Standards • Discovering Our Deepest Vocation • “Engaging suffering people and injustice frequently awakens in students the crucial question: What am I doing with my life? And that suggests a fourth higher standard. Education of the whole person, in the Ignatian style, … helps students discover their vocation in life, above all their vocation to love and serve.” • Understanding that our jobs go beyond helping students to select a major or career; we are helping students identify their vocation

6. Seven Higher Standards • Who Gets In? • “In the complex business of managing admissions and finances, a Catholic and Jesuit university has to ensure a substantial presence not just of minorities but of the economically poor.” • Brainstorming ways to support Jesuit institutions’ long-standing tradition of educating the poor and also ensuring that Students of Color are represented

7. Seven Higher Standards • Keeping Faith • “Catholic universities should welcome people of other communions and faiths, and no faith, as first-class citizens. At the same time, they must be places where the Catholic tradition is studied, understood, and handed on.” • Extending hospitality and teachings of this tradition to Catholics and non-Catholics

8. Seven Higher Standards • Social Projection • “Social projection includes all those means by which the university communicates, or projects, knowledge beyond the campus to help shape the consciousness of the wider society.” • Capitalizing on the voice and visibility of Jesuit Institutions of Higher Education to shape consciousness and challenge injustices

9. Five Pending Items for Consideration • How do we help our students unmask deception? • Should not service of some kind among poor and suffering people be required of all students at our institutions? • How do you get your institution to start up, alone or in collaboration, a study abroad program in a poor country? • How can our institutions attract and retain more poor and more African American and other under-represented minorities? • What kind of social projection is appropriate in the U.S. where it raises questions – and eyebrows – both on campus and off?