Years ago, Beyer and I met to discuss two projects that we were developing. I proposed to raise the issue that due to a variety of unrecognized challenges, university campuses lacked an environmental awareness of the need for professional ethics, that is, a philosophically based standard of equity that could apply to the treatment of students, faculty, and staff. Beyer wanted instead to focus on the Catholic university and, by specifically using Catholic social teaching, highlight just how these universities were allowing a corporate model to compromise the integrity of its ministry. In this wonderful work, Beyer achieves his dreams.
In six well-developed chapters, Beyer lays out his compelling argument that Catholic higher education stands at the crossroads between allowing itself to be hijacked by a corporatization model in which everything, including faculty, courses, and degrees, are commodified, and pursuing instead its robust Catholic social principles. Because in the corporate world, the value of these commodities is singularly derived from the market, Beyer, with a realistic perspective, makes his case that the corporate model is unsustainable and corruptive and that the common good tradition could restore an awareness of the intrinsic good, dignity, and rights of the varied participants in the Catholic higher educational apostolate.
In the first chapter, he lays out his crossroad’s argument and expounds, briefly and effectively, on such themes as human dignity, rights, solidarity, justice, and participation, all the while emphasizing its all-inclusive scope. The remaining five chapters are about matters that highlight the urgency of Beyer’s claims: the adjunct faculty member, economically disadvantaged students, university investments, racial justice, and finally, gender and LGBTQ equality.
The most striking element of this book is the data, and nowhere is it more convincing than in the second chapter beginning with the self-reporting salaries of adjuncts and then turning to the annual compensation of the president and highest paid employees of major Catholic universities. Indeed, Beyer factualizes his argument with these data and is indisputably convincing. Here, in defense of the adjunct, having highlighted the gross disparities, Beyer makes any attempts to bust unions or justify unjust wages scandalous, precisely in light of Catholic social teaching.
Still, throughout the work, Beyer is magnanimous. He does not shame or alienate, but rather illuminates; his tone is always engaging and inviting rather than judgmental and dismissive. Thus, in the third chapter he highlights mission-driven success stories in fostering environments conducive for economically challenged students.
He then aptly treats socially responsive investments and focuses on the issue of fossil-fuel investments and, in the last two chapters, discusses the makeup of our student bodies and faculty ranks. From our universities’ historical involvement in slavery to the pervasive whiteness of many campuses, Beyer rightly focuses on the feeling of alienation among many of our students. In the fifth chapter, I find Beyer’s argument particularly inclusive as he raises the voices of fellow ethicists well known for their critical advancement of racial equity. As elsewhere, Beyer gives notable ethicists and reformers due recognition, incorporating their positions rather remarkably into the fold of his narrative. Thus women, queer, and allied voices are heard in the final chapter. Wisely, he turns more to ethicists than to the tradition in these last two chapters, in part because on race, gender, and sexual orientation the tradition is not yet adequate enough in upholding equity, dignity, and rights on these matters. Beyer helps us to see that the tradition like the Catholic university must move forward, as Pope Francis unequivocally argues, and in fact demonstrates that the credibility of each should and can be mutually supportive in that advance.
This highly successful book therefore ought to be taught throughout Catholic colleges campuses because it teaches how effective Catholic social teaching is and ought to be precisely in the places where students are learning and faculty are instructing. It helps us to be aware of the old ethical insight that we understand as well as we perceive, and that depends on the environment in which we learn.
