HESBURGH, Theodore Martin

(b. 25 May 1917 in Syracuse, New York), civil rights advocate and president of the University of Notre Dame who, during the 1960s, confronted student unrest, influenced federal legislation, and increased the national prominence of his institution.

Hesburgh was the second of five children born to Theodore Bernard Hesburgh, a salesman for the Pittsburgh Plate Glass Company, and Anne Murphy. Raised in a devout Roman Catholic household, at the age of seventeen he entered the seminary of the Congregation of Holy Cross at the University of Notre Dame du Lac (Notre Dame) in South Bend, Indiana. In 1939 he finished his bachelor of philosophy (Ph.B.) degree at Gregorian University in Rome, and in 1941 he began graduate studies at Holy Cross College in Washington, D.C. Ordained as a priest on 24 June 1943, Hesburgh hoped to serve as a military chaplain; however, in obedience to his superior, he instead pursued a doctorate in theology at Catholic University of America in Washington, from which he graduated in 1945 with an S.T.D. (doctor of sacred theology) degree. Returning to Notre Dame, Hesburgh initially taught theology and served as chaplain to the university's war veterans. In 1948 he became head of the theology department, and in 1949 he was appointed executive vice president of the university. In 1952 the Holy Cross religious community elected him as Notre Dame's president.

Throughout his thirty-five-year tenure, Hesburgh sought to expand the university's faculty, facilities, and academic programs while maintaining its Roman Catholic character. Beginning in 1960 with a Ford Foundation grant of $6 million, the fundraising efforts of Hesburgh and executive vice president Edward P. Joyce increased the university's endowment from $9 million to $35 million. The operating budget grew from $9.7 million to $176.6 million and research funding from $735,000 to $15 million. Enrollment also rose from approximately 5,000 to 9,700 students, and campus facilities increased by forty buildings, including a fourteen-story library constructed in 1963.

In addition to his role as president of Notre Dame, Hesburgh influenced federal policies on civil rights beginning in 1957, when President Dwight D. Eisenhower appointed him to the newly created U.S. Commission on Civil Rights. Throughout the late 1950s and 1960s the civil rights commission collected evidence of abrogated voting rights and discrimination in employment, housing, justice, education, and public facilities; reported this evidence to the U.S. Congress and the public; and recommended civil rights legislation based on the commission's findings. Reports of the Civil Rights Commission resulted in the Omnibus Civil Rights Act of 1964 and subsequent bills in 1965 and 1968. Hesburgh in particular viewed the Civil Rights Commission as "a kind of national conscience" on racial concerns and encouraged individuals to respond to racial inequalities with "moral indignation" and love for their neighbors. In 1964 President Lyndon Johnson awarded Hesburgh the Medal of Freedom in recognition of his contributions to civil rights.

Responding to the Second Vatican Council's call for greater lay involvement in church institutions, as well as to concerns of academic freedom and the increasing complexity of university management, Hesburgh in 1967 facilitated a shift in the university's governing power from the Congregation of Holy Cross to two boards, one of lay trustees and another of lay and clerical fellows. Hesburgh also presided over the establishment of coeducation at Notre Dame in 1972. As president of the International Federation of Catholic Universities, in 1963 he developed an ecumenical institute of Christian theologians in Jerusalem and, from 1963 to 1973, worked with church authorities to modernize Catholic higher education's identity and mission.

However, Hesburgh's administration is best known for its firm handling of student antiwar demonstrations and discouragement of federal intervention in campus discipline. During the late 1960s Notre Dame student protestors threatened to burn the Reserve Officer Training Corps (ROTC) facility and obstructed on-campus recruiters from the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and Dow Chemical Company, a manufacturer of napalm.

Arguing that legal rights and boundaries were essential to free academic inquiry, on 17 February 1969 Hesburgh, in an open letter to the university community, announced that if student protesters who impeded university operations or violated others' rights did not "cease and desist" their activity within fifteen minutes, the offending students would be punished by suspension from the university and confiscation of their student identification cards. If, after five additional minutes, suspended students did not end their disruption, they would be expelled and, if necessary, forcibly removed from campus. Throughout this process, students who refused to surrender their identification cards to university authorities would be reported as trespassers to the local police.

While Hesburgh's "cease and desist" edict provoked some strong student criticism and gave Hesburgh a nationwide reputation as a Vietnam War proponent—an inaccurate image he tried in vain to dispel—in general Notre Dame students and faculty accepted his policy. In February 1969 Hesburgh also persuaded a conference of state governors to vote against requesting federal legislation to control demonstrations on academic campuses, an action for which the American Association of University Professors honored him in 1970.

In March 1969 Hesburgh and a group of concerned students also developed an academic program to study non-violent political action. Perhaps the first university president to take a decisive position on student demonstrations during the 1960s, Hesburgh worked to protect university operations from inside and outside interference while encouraging students to express their idealism peacefully.

Also in 1969, President Richard M. Nixon promoted Hesburgh to chair of the Civil Rights Commission. However, Hesburgh's subsequent criticism of White House policies on civil rights and racial integration prompted Nixon to request Hesburgh's resignation from the commission in November 1972. Hesburgh later founded the Center for Civil Rights at Notre Dame.

In June 1987 Hesburgh resigned the presidency of Notre Dame and retired to offices in the university's main library. In the course of his ongoing career in public service and education he has served in over fifty private and federal organizations, including the National Science Board; theInternational Atomic Energy Agency; the Overseas Development Council; the Select Committee on Immigration and Refugee Policy; the Rockefeller Foundation's board of trustees; the Presidential Clemency Board, which recommended draft evaders and deserters for amnesty; the Knight Commission on Intercollegiate Athletics; the Pontifical Council for Culture; and Notre Dame's Kellogg Institute for International Studies and Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies. Hesburgh also has received several prestigious awards, including the Franklin D. Roosevelt Freedoms Medal, the Distinguished Peace Leader Award, the Elizabeth Seton Award, the National Lifetime Achievement Award, and the Congressional Gold Medal. As of 2002 he held more honorary degrees (135) than any other American.

Works on Hesburgh include an autobiography written with John Reedy, God, Country, Notre Dame: The Autobiography of Theodore M. Hesburgh ( 1990), and John C. Lungren, Jr., Hesburgh of Notre Dame: Priest, Educator, Public Servant (1987). Notre Dame's Office of Public Relations provides information on Hesburgh's career from 1990 until 2002. For a general history of the University of Notre Dame, see Robert E. Burns, Being Catholic, Being American: The Notre Dame Story (1999).

Rae Sikula Bielakowski