SHUSTER, GEORGE N.

American journalist, author, and educator, b. Lancaster, Wis., 1894, d. South Bend, Ind., 25 Jan. 1977. Editor of commonweal 1928–40, president of Hunter College, assistant to the president of the University of Notre Dame, and director of the Center for the Study of Man in Contemporary Society, Shuster was a towering Catholic figure of the 20th century. In World War I he served as a sergeant in Army intelligence. He was later educated at Notre Dame, the Universities of Poitiers and of Berlin, and at Columbia. He was head of the English department at Notre Dame (1920–24), then taught at Brooklyn Polytechnic Institute and St. Joseph's College for Women (1924–34). When he began his 20–year tenure at Hunter (1940), it was the largest public college for women in the world. He returned to Notre Dame as assistant to the president (1961–71), then as professor emeritus of English. In his early career he was interested in the Catholic influence in English literature, a concern reflected in Catholic Spirit in Modern English Literature (1922), English Literature: a Textbook (1926), Catholic Church in America (1927), and Catholic Church in Current Literature (1930). He edited The World's Great Catholic Literature (1942; rev. ed. 1964). In the 1930s he became alarmed at the rise of Hitler, as reflected in his Germans: An Inquiry and an Estimate (1932), Strong Man Rules (1934), Like a Mighty Army: Hitler versus Established Religion (1935), and, with Arnold Bergstraesser, Germany, a Short History (1944). He was a United States delegate to the United Nations Conference on International Education (1945) and thus helped create UNESCO. His book Cultural Co-operation and the Peace (1953) was a sympathetic account of UNESCO's failures and successes. Shuster's chagrin at aspects of the Communist regimes in Eastern Europe is reflected in his Religion behind the Iron Curtain (1954) and in his account of the ordeal of Cardinal Mindzenty, In Silence I Speak (1956, in collaboration with Tibor Horanyi). Shuster's reflections on a lifetime career in education are found in Education and Moral Wisdom (1960) and The Ground I Walked on; Reflections of a College President (1961). He wrote numerous topical articles in the confusion following Vatican Council II. Special mention, however, should be made of two works he edited, containing the results of conferences held at Notre Dame: Freedom and Authority in the West (1967); and Evolution in Perspective: Commentaries in Honor of Pierre Lecomte du Noüy (1968). More controversial was his Catholic Education in a Changing World (1967), his reflections on the results of surveys conducted by Notre Dame and the National Opinion Research Center as part of a study of Catholic education. He recommended that elementary schools be abandoned in order to strengthen other parts of the system and that parochial schools be seen as a matter of lay rather than of clerical concern. At about the same time, he was chairman of a group of 37 scholars who conducted the first population-control research done under Catholic auspices. The group gave qualified endorsement to the use of contraceptives and suggested a change in the church's traditional position on the subject.

Bibliography: g. n. shuster, On the Side of Truth: George N. Shuster, an Evaluation with Readings, ed. w. p. lannie (South Bend, Ind. 1974).

[e. j. dillon]