Month: January 2016

Join Us in Asking LMU to Hire More Catholic Faculty

An Open Letter to LMU President Timothy Law Snyder

Dear President Snyder,

We welcome you to the Office of President. We are excited to work with you and help you to enhance the distinctive mission and identity of LMU as a Catholic university. In this spirit of cooperation, we would like to call to your attention issues of great importance to us as LMU alumni, donors, parents, faculty, and concerned friends. As reported in the LMU Faculty Climate Survey, of the 392 professors who took the survey, only twenty-four percent (24%) identified as Catholic. In Ex corde ecclesiae, Pope St. John Paul II indicated : “the number of non-Catholic teachers should not be allowed to constitute a majority within the Institution, which is and must remain Catholic.”

LMU’s Proactive Publicity Committee Final Report states, “We are institutionally committed to Roman Catholicism….and seek to ensure that Catholicism is ‘pervasively present and effectively operative.'” But the Faculty Climate Survey found not pervasive Catholicism but a “majority secular liberal point of view” at LMU. As the New York Times indicated, “Students said there were few reminders that they attended a Catholic university at all, aside from the glistening white church at the center of campus or the occasional cross on a classroom wall.”

We respectfully request that you take action to hire more Catholic faculty and keep track of the religious identity of newly hired faculty.

Thank you for considering our requests.

Sincerely,

 RenewLMU 

To support this effort to preserve the Catholic identity of LMU,
please sign here and circulate this petition.  We also welcome you to include your own comment. 

Catholic Professors Claim Hostile Environment at Loyola Marymount University

The Cardinal Newman Society ran an article entitled, “Catholic Professors Claim Hostile Environment at Loyola Marymount.” This article draws on a Faculty Climate Survey which reports, “Conservative Catholics feel they are in an environment that is hostile to what they feel are true Catholic values.”  We have also heard from several former, current, and prospective LMU professors who believe that de facto litmus tests are used at LMU to exclude professors with Catholic religious beliefs. In some cases, these professors had the ‘wrong’ view (a Catholic view) on marriage. In other cases, they encountered a ‘red flag’ because of their opposition to abortion or because they were perceived as ‘too conservative’ in their religious beliefs. Catholics like these are warmly welcomed into the LMU community as donors, trustees, or parents paying tuition, but these Catholics experience a rather cool reception or outright rejection as professors.  We believe that professors with Catholic religious beliefs should be treated fairly in recruitment, hiring, as well as in appointment to committees, directorships, and endowed chairs at Loyola Marymount University.

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So, we encourage Catholics who believe they have been subject to unfair treatment to come forward and, confidentially or publicly, to make their voices heard. Tell us about your personal experience. Catholics should not face discrimination, exclusion, or adverse treatment at any university, let alone at a Catholic university funded by many Catholic donors and Catholic parents.