American Jews should take a look at Catholic universities - opinion

About a decade ago, my wife and I started a tradition of inviting students from Assumption University, the Catholic liberal arts institution where I serve on the faculty, to our home for Passover. Some have been Jewish; many have been Catholic.

We’ve continued since I became president of Assumption and the first Jew to lead a Catholic college in the United States. On the second night this year, at the section of the Haggadah commenting on the four children and their varying propensities for asking questions, a graduating senior, not Jewish, wondered aloud: “I know there is antisemitism in the world. But why?”

The contrast is stark: Student protesters at America’s “elite” institutions are so certain of their views that they shout “from the river to the sea” without being able to identify either body of water on a map. A senior graduating from a Catholic liberal arts university—one that measures its worth in learning rather than rankings—is aware of what she does not know and is eager to ask.

Who got the better education?

That is a question Jewish students and parents can no longer avoid. The conventional measures of institutional prestige cannot provide two vital pieces of information: What does an institution teach, and what kind of students does it attract?

The student at our seder, un-entitled and curious, is clearly recognizable as the Haggadah’s wise child—the one with the courage and humility to ask a big, bold question. What should we call the student or scholar for whom questions are irrelevant because, consumed by arrogance and hate, they are already certain of every view they hold?

American Jews fought for a century to gain admission to institutions that are now openly signaling that we are no longer welcome or even safe there. What now?  When country clubs excluded Jews, we did not grovel at their gates for approval. We built Jewish Community Centers. That moment has come for higher education.

There are excellent Jewish institutions that have taken courageous stands, Yeshiva University and Brandeis University among them. But they cannot accommodate every Jewish student. Maybe it is time to start building on another foundation in front of us. Many Catholic liberal arts universities like Assumption do not have ivy growing up their walls. But neither do we have students occupying the buildings those walls enclose to demand the eradication of the only Jewish state in the world. 

There is a hopeful, often admirable, view of hate. It is that no one is born a bigot. Instead, hate is the product of ignorance. Learning is therefore the elixir. That can be true. But notice the tacit premise: Those spewing hate are open to learning. The entire post-modern movement of contemporary education, one openly employed on both ends of the political spectrum, is that words and facts are tools of the will, not fodder for the mind. Amid all the news coverage of antisemitism on US campuses, no one has stopped to ask whether the protesters have left their encampments to enter a classroom.”

A shared tradition of intellectual humility

Catholics and Jews share intellectual traditions shaped by the value we place on reason as articulated in the spoken and written word. That intrinsically requires the intellectual humility that protesters, shouting their certainties at the world, lack.

At Catholic universities that define their Catholic identities in educational terms, as Assumption does, students study Greek philosophy, including Socrates’ teaching that philosophy begins with awareness of one’s ignorance.That is the Jewish way of learning too. In Pirkei Avot, we learn: “Who is wise? He who learns from every man, as it is said: ‘From all who taught me have I gained understanding.’” Our paradigmatic teacher is Moses, who Numbers tells us “was very humble, more so than any other human being on earth.” People who are better at screaming certainties than asking questions encase themselves in amber the moment they declare their convictions to be beyond dispute.

Catholic campuses are not perfect on this issue or any other. But while I have heard friends debate over Thanksgiving whether their children should hide Stars of David before returning to campuses known to be home to many Jewish students, I have yet to hear the same concern about a Jewish student attending a Catholic university that emphasizes education.

It is understandably heartbreaking to see one’s alma mater lose its way, just as it is agonizing to tell a child who has worked hard for admission to an elite school that it may not provide the best education. But there is no dodging the question of where our children are best educated or which institutions offer the a genuine educational home for Jewish students. Elite institutions may open doors. But they also close minds.

For American Jews, the question we must ask about higher education distills to this: Do we seek to educate students with the courage to ask questions—and the humility to believe they can learn even, perhaps especially, from those with whom they most disagree—or activists who value knowledge only to the extent to which it justifies their hate?

The Haggadah’s answer is clear.

Greg Weiner is the president of Assumption University in Worcester, Massachusetts, and the first Jewish president of a Catholic university in the United States.