Georgetown invited community leaders and social justice experts to speak in eight dialogues last Thursday and Friday on how members of a university community should be involved in service and social justice programs. The dialogues were part of inaugural events for President John J. DeGioia, who was formally inaugurated Saturday.
Marion Wright Edelman, director of the Children’s Defense Fund, called on universities to play a role in building a movement to make sure that no child was left in poverty.
“It is unacceptable in this day and age to have a child born into poverty every 44 seconds,” Edelman said. “I don’t believe that in this [time] of increasing wealth, we can’t afford to give all children hope and opportunity.”
According to Edelman, more children are living in poverty today than in the 1960s.
Youth violence was another aspect of social justice that Edelmansaid her organization wants to focus on. According to Edelman, a child dies of gun violence every two hours and 20 minutes.
“What has happened to us that the killing of children has become routine,” she said.
Edelman’s organization has lobbied for a bill in Congress that would provide hundreds of billions of dollars in aid and programs to poor children. She said the group has been told that Congress will never pass such expensive legislation.
“Anyone who voted for a $1.3 trillion tax cut for people who didn’t need it ought to vote for a bill for needy children,” she said.
Edelman called on universities to foster debate, set up structures for helping children and, most importantly, lead by example.
Michael J. Buckley, S.J. affirmed the importance of a strong theology department, saying that the promise of a Catholic and Jesuit education provides an environment where questions of faith and God can be explored.
Buckley, the Canisius Professor of Theology and director of the Jesuit Institute at Boston College, said that a Catholic university must have a strong theology department in order to consolidate all other academic disciplines in their struggles to deal with questions of faith.
He said that “the presence of a Catholic tradition does not make a university Catholic, but makes it more of a university.”
Jane Dammen McAuliffe, dean of the College, supported Buckley’s remarks by explaining how secular universities are often too squeamish to confront religion. Buckley is insistent that “this discipline of God should be introduced as an integral part of the mind.”
Mamphela Ramphele, the managing director of the human development network at the Word Bank, spoke on the changing technological landscape and how the University ought to capitalize on it.
“The world is globalized, and the University [is] called upon to be a globalite,” Ramphele said.
She was joined by a panel of faculty respondents including James V. Feinman, professor of Asian legal studies, Diane Wallace, professor of biology, and Donald F. McHenry, SFS professor in the practice of law and diplomacy.
Ramphele, a native of South Africa, said that universities must enable all continents to have access to “tertiary” education. She cited the Massachusetts Institute of Technology as being one of the first to offer courses online.
Ramphele asked students to learn languages, study international disciplines and spend time doing development work.
“You are privileged to study in a globalized university. It is time to globalize ourselves,” she said.
