Hurray for Dr. Hibbs! Hurray for UD!

I rejoiced today when I saw the news that Dr. Thomas Hibbs has been selected as the new president of the University of Dallas. Dr. Hibbs earned his bachelor's and master's degrees at UD before completing his studies at the University of Notre Dame. These past several years he's served as the inaugural dean of Baylor University's rigorous, 1,300-student Honors College. He is a scholar's scholar and a shrewd leader, and I'm convinced that he "gets" UD.

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I've sadly observed the turmoil at UD this past year, beginning with the abrupt dismissal of president Thomas Keefe. Not that I disagree with that dismissal. I remember, when I was doing my graduate work at UD, thinking of him as a brash institution-builder without a thinker's bone in his body, the consummate, no-holds-barred type of businessman who doesn't stop until he's accomplished what he set out to accomplish. I wrote for the Diocese of Dallas' Texas Catholic on-and-off during my time in Dallas, and every time Keefe sat with me for an interview and expressed his vision for the school, I remember thinking how odd a duck he was for a place like UD.

Those who aren't familiar with the University of Dallas may not realize how unique an institution it is. The school's legacy is the work and vision of the late Donald and Louis Cowan, the latter of whom I had the blessed opportunity to know just a little during my time in Dallas. Joining the faculty at the school's founding, the Cowans took a college that the Diocese of Dallas had conceived of in the cookie-cutter mold of Catholic institutions of higher learning in the '50s and reinvented it as a one-of-a-kind bastion of the liberal arts. To this day, undergraduates are all required to follow a rigorous core curriculum (simply, the "Core") before choosing a major. And unlike other admirable liberal arts institutions like, say, Thomas Aquinas College in California, UD is a true university, with a wide array of majors and disciplines, as well as the healthy intellectual environment of the robust liberal arts graduate program that I myself am proud to have studied in.

I don't know whether to credit UD's faithfulness to its mission mainly to the enduring presence of Louise Cowan, or the sizeable donations that the Cowans attracted in the early years, or the like-minded, devoted faculty that they brought to Dallas. But the sad state of things by the time I arrived in Dallas nearly a decade ago was that the administration was seeking significant change while, largely, the faculty and the type of students the school attracted put up a spirited resistence. This exhibited itself in silly little things, like the replacement of the university's traditional seal with the so-called "cupcake" branding image. But it exhibited itself in bigger things, too, like, just before my arrival, the proposed establishment of a pharmacy school wholly unrelated to the university's core liberal arts mission, and, under Keefe, the proposed establishment of a dumbed-down, fast-track version of the bachelor's degree for students transferring in from the local community colleges. 

These sorts of boondoggles were what other institutions of higher learning were embarking on in order to survive in an increasingly competitive higher education marketplace, and for years UD presidents from Msgr. Milam Joseph, to Dr. Frank Lazaruz, to Thomas Keefe hammered away in like manner. All the while, the faculty resisted, and the alumni raised an outcry. Aspersions were cast that the board no longer understood the school's mission, and alumni, for their part, largely withheld their donations. UD's endowment shrank by tens of millions of dollars, and the throbbing intellectual heart of the university, when I was studying there, existed in the looming shadow of an administration whose intention seemed to be bringing out about stability mainly by destabilizing everything that the school stood for.  

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One of the brightest moments in my years at UD, though, was a very fine lecture on Catholic education given by a certain Dr. Hibbs, who was visiting from Baylor University. I recall clearly that he spoke about Cardinal Newman's Idea of a University and reviewed the history of Catholic higher education, highlighting in particular UD's unique role in the revival of the liberal arts. In fact, the first thing I thought of when I read the news this morning was that lecture nearly a decade ago. I don't know much else of Hibbs. But what I do know is that he has a far better shot of saving UD than pretty much anybody else the board could have selected.

Hurray for their choice! Hurray for Hibbs! Hurray for UD!