Religious Freedom, Jesuit Mission, and DEI

The ability of Jesuit educational institutions to pursue a central part of their mission—that of fostering diverse, equitable, and inclusive educational environments—is under attack. This article outlines several dimensions of their religiously grounded mission and the reasons to strongly protect from government interference the rights of Jesuit universities to implement programs and practices that align with DEI values. First, for Jesuit universities these programs and practices are rooted in a much deeper culture of the more than 2,000-year-old Catholic intellectual tradition and the now 500-year-old tradition of Jesuit spirituality. Second, drawing on the classic work of Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, this article highlights the important role that Jesuit universities play in protecting liberty and democracy. Third, a Jesuit university’s control of its curriculum and admissions practices are protected by well-established First Amendment principles, including freedom of religion and the free speech rights of a university. In addition, the First Amendment principle of religious freedom protects Jesuit universities’ ability to have race-conscious programs of student support that advance the Jesuit pedagogic mission. The final section of this article describes some of the curricular and co-curricular innovations and programmatic offerings at Georgetown University Law Center to illustrate how a Jesuit law school might advance the Jesuit mission of creating an inclusive environment that supports reflective practices and the free exchange of ideas across differences.

Keywords:
Jesuit mission; DEI; legal education; First Amendment; Catholic social thought

Introduction^[1]

In March 2025, our Catholic and Jesuit law school fended off an extraordinary incident of unprecedented government overreach when the chief federal prosecutor for our district, Interim United States Attorney Edward R. Martin, Jr., opened an inquiry into the content of our curriculum. This article recounts how such incursions constitute a threat of the highest order to our nation’s First Amendment values, and how now more than ever it is urgent to stand up for our university’s autonomy to make curricular decisions based on Jesuit mission.

As Dean Treanor explained to the Interim US Attorney, what is directly under attack is the principle that is central to Georgetown University’s mission: “serious and sustained discourse among people of different faiths, cultures, and beliefs promotes intellectual, ethical, and spiritual understanding.”^[2]

Over the past year, many other institutions in the United States have been subject to intense scrutiny from the federal government regarding a perceived threat that comes under the umbrella of what is termed “DEI.” The acronym is short for “diversity, equity and inclusion,” and generally refers to a set of programs and practices focused on fair treatment and greater participation, especially of people who have been marginalized or underrepresented in work, educational, and other settings.^[3] In various orders, memoranda, and letters, the current presidential administration has offered a specific narrative and interpretation of why DEI programs and practices should be eliminated.

For us, however, the principle involved is not one that is a product of contemporary concerns about the mandates of justice. It is rather a principle that is central to centuries-old Catholic and Jesuit teachings.

This article has several purposes, none of which has been fully developed in the scholarly literature. First, it will show how the goal of creating inclusive academic communities that promote honest, if sometimes difficult, discourse reflects central Catholic and Jesuit teachings. Second, it will draw on Alexis de Tocqueville’s writings to argue that the Jesuit approach to education should be defended because it helps preserve liberty from attack by government. Third, it will show that a Jesuit university’s control of its curriculum—a control that was recently challenged by the federal prosecutor in the District of Columbia—is protected by well-established First Amendment principles. It will also argue that, because of our religious mission, race-conscious programs of student support are constitutionally protected. Third and finally, it will share a few examples of initiatives at Georgetown University Law Center to advance the Jesuit mission of creating an inclusive environment that supports the free exchange of ideas and reflection.

The article will begin by discussing the current crisis.

The Current Crisis

The administration has been moving forcefully to punish schools that seek in any way to promote diversity, equity, and inclusion, or that even consider race relevant to their programs and decision-making processes.

On January 21, 2025, President Trump issued an executive order titled “Ending Illegal Discrimination and Restoring Merit-Based Opportunity.”^[4] Under the banner of enforcing “longstanding Federal civil-rights laws,” the order denounces what it perceives to be “dangerous, demeaning, and immoral race- and sex-based preferences under the guise of so-called ‘diversity, equity, and inclusion’ (DEI) or ‘diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility’ (DEIA) that can violate the civil-rights laws of this nation.”^[5]

According to the Order, “illegal DEI and DEIA policies” should be eradicated because they

. . . not only violate the text and spirit of our longstanding Federal civil-rights laws; they also undermine our national unity, as they deny, discredit, and undermine the traditional American values of hard work, excellence, and individual achievement in favor of an unlawful, corrosive, and pernicious identity-based spoils system. Hardworking Americans who deserve a shot at the American Dream should not be stigmatized, demeaned, or shut out of opportunities because of their race or sex.^[6]

Thus, Section 2 of the Executive Order propounds: “It is the policy of the United States to protect the civil rights of all Americans and to promote individual initiative, excellence, and hard work.”^[7] With regard to private institutions, the order is for “all agencies to enforce our longstanding civil-rights laws and to combat illegal private-sector DEI preferences, mandates, policies, programs, and activities.”^[8]

On February 14, 2025, the Department of Education issued a letter to educational institutions setting forth its views of the Constitution and Title VI of the Civil Rights Act. The letter declared that schools had “smuggl[ed] racial stereotypes and explicit race-consciousness into everyday training, programming, and discipline . . . under the banner of ‘diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI)’” and these activities were “illegal.” It informed schools that they could not legally consider race in “hiring, promotion, compensation, financial aid, scholarships, prizes, administrative support, discipline, housing, graduation ceremonies, and all other aspects of student, academic, and campus life.”^[9]

On February 28, 2025, the department issued a follow-up letter saying that it would investigate schools that “us[ed] racial classifications and race-based policies to further DEI objectives, ‘equity,’ a racially oriented vision of social justice or similar goals.”^[10]

In March 2025, the Interim United States Attorney for the District of Columbia, Edward R. Martin, Jr., moved from declarations about the law and threats of investigation to an attempt to coerce compliance. He sent a letter to Dean Treanor about the Georgetown University Law Center curriculum:

It has come to my attention reliably that Georgetown Law School continues to teach and promote DEI. This is unacceptable. I have begun an inquiry into this and would welcome your response to the following questions:

First, have you eliminated all DEI from your school and its curriculum?

Second, if DEI is found in your courses or teaching in anyway [sic], will you move swiftly to remove it?^[11]

The letter also included a direct threat to Georgetown Law’s current students and alumni: “At this time, you should know that no applicant for our fellows program, our summer internship, or employment in our office who is a student or affiliated with a law school or university that continues to teach and utilize DEI will be considered.”^[12]

Dean Treanor’s response, dated March 6, 2025, emphasized the foundational bedrock of Georgetown University’s Catholic and Jesuit mission:

As a Catholic and Jesuit institution, Georgetown University was founded on the principle that serious and sustained discourse among people of different faiths, cultures, and beliefs promotes intellectual, ethical, and spiritual understanding. For us at Georgetown, this principle is a moral and educational imperative. It is a principle that defines our mission as a Catholic and Jesuit institution. Georgetown University also prohibits discrimination and harassment in its programs and activities and takes seriously its obligations to comply with all federal and local laws.^[13]

Dean Treanor further explained the flatly unconstitutional nature of Martin’s inquiry and challenge:

Your letter challenges Georgetown’s ability to define our mission as an educational institution. It inquires about Georgetown Law’s curriculum and classroom teaching, asks whether diversity, equity, and inclusion is part of the curriculum, and asserts that your office will not hire individuals from schools where you find the curriculum “unacceptable.” The First Amendment, however, guarantees that the government cannot direct what Georgetown and its faculty teach and how to teach it. The Supreme Court has continually affirmed that among the freedoms central to a university’s First Amendment rights are its abilities to determine, on academic grounds, who may teach, what to teach, and how to teach it.^[14]

The response stated that Martin’s threat was both a violation of the First Amendment and an assault on the University’s mission:

Your letter informs me that your office will deny our students and graduates government employment opportunities until you, as Interim United States Attorney for the District of Columbia, approve of our curriculum. Given the First Amendment’s protection of a university’s freedom to determine its own curriculum and how to deliver it, the constitutional violation behind this threat is clear, as is the attack on the University’s mission as a Jesuit and Catholic institution.^[15]

While Interim US Attorney Martin’s nomination was subsequently withdrawn,^[16] other challenges remain and new fronts of attack on the independence of Jesuit and other universities open up every day.

For example, in a July 29, 2025, memorandum to all federal agencies, the Department of Justice seems to have upped the ante, with extensive guidance for rooting out “illegal” preferential treatment of underrepresented persons and groups by federally funded entities. It instructs: “Preferential treatment occurs when a federally funded entity provides opportunities, benefits, or advantages to individuals or groups based on protected characteristics in a way that disadvantages other qualified persons, including such practices portrayed as ‘preferential’ to certain groups. Such practices violate federal law unless they meet very narrow exceptions.” The memorandum proceeds to detail the practices and proxies that it considers to be unlawful discrimination.^[17]

This article presents a response to these challenges. It shows why Jesuit mission entails a commitment to “the principle that serious and sustained discourse among people of different faiths, cultures, and beliefs promotes intellectual, ethical, and spiritual understanding,”^[18] and it argues that Jesuit universities have a constitutional right to pursue that mission.

Inclusive Academic Communities in Light of Catholic and Jesuit Culture

As noted previously, some of the values, policies, and programs that emerge from adherence to Jesuit mission may dovetail with secular DEI rubrics.^[19] As will be evident in our discussion, when we refer to “diversity,” “equity,” and “inclusion,” these words generally mean what they do in everyday language. For this reason, we can also ground and cross-reference our defense of these values in the much deeper and older culture of the more than 2,000-year-old Catholic intellectual tradition and the now 500-year tradition of Jesuit spirituality.^[20] And in this sense, commitment to what may be termed “DEI” is not an end in itself but a means to better pursue and manifest the mission.

As Dean Treanor explained in his March 6, 2025, response to the Interim US Attorney, one of the moral and educational imperatives that “defines our mission as a Catholic and Jesuit institution” is its founding “on the principle that serious and sustained discourse among people of different faiths, cultures, and beliefs promotes intellectual, ethical, and spiritual understanding.”^[21] This founding principle reflects deep and long-held Catholic and Jesuit commitments to the values of equity and inclusion, and to foster these values in settings in which people may be enriched by their encounter with diversity.

We acknowledge that a second sense of “DEI” may refer to a set of commitments rooted in contested academic theories about epistemology and social change, and the implications of those commitments for university environments and the broader society.^[22] We also recognize that critiques have been made of some DEI theories and frameworks as resting on fragile foundations, especially when compared with the theological resources of Catholic social thought.^[23] But in this article we are not focused on those debates.

Instead, our focus here is on the dangerous conflation between these two senses of DEI.^[24] The March 2025 attack on our school by the Interim US Attorney represented an attempt to weaponize the uncertainty and confusion surrounding the implications of these contested academic theories. In our case, Martin did not define the term “DEI,” but instead attempted to use it as a blunt and destructive instrument, in a way that also threatened to interrupt and interfere with quite ordinary, and quite constructive efforts to build healthy educational communities of dignity and support.

Later in this article, we also refer to the more ordinary meaning of “diversity,” “equity,” and “inclusion” to develop the argument that under the First Amendment of the US Constitution, Jesuit institutions have the freedom to define these terms according to their own philosophical and theological traditions, and to implement practices in accord with these values.

Catholic Social Thought and DEI

For Catholic institutions, sources and methods for defining their mission and values and the continual reflection on how to stay faithful to these commitments, are generally grounded in Scripture and Tradition. As the Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation from the Second Vatican Council, Dei Verbum, explains: “Sacred tradition and Sacred Scripture form one sacred deposit of the word of God, committed to the Church.”^[25]

When making religious and theologically grounded arguments for a desired approach to public policy, some are tempted to use snippets of Scripture in order to proof-text their claims. For example, to support an educational philosophy based on “merit-based opportunity,” one could amass a number of quotations in which the individual hard work of the meritorious is rewarded.^[26] Similarly, one could craft a compendium of quotes that illustrate a powerful reversal and even rebuke of this concept.^[27]

But faithful Catholics—and faithful Catholic institutions—are not at liberty to simply cherry-pick from Scripture to buttress arguments for their chosen ideology.^[28] Instead, as Dei Verbum explains, “in order to keep the Gospel forever whole and alive within the Church,” the Apostles left bishops as their successors, “‘handing over’ to them the authority to teach in their own place.”^[29] This “handing over” through time—Tradition—enables the Catholic Church to move through history with shared and authoritative insight into how to live and apply the Gospel message in new social and cultural contexts.^[30]

As the choice of name for the recently elected Pope Leo XIV highlighted, the Church has a long history of reflection on how to apply scripturally grounded insights to a vast range of historical settings and social contexts.^[31]

In the modern era, the 1891 promulgation of Rerum novarum generally marks the initiation of modern Catholic social thought encyclicals.^[32] In that encyclical, Pope Leo XIII provided guidance on the Church’s response to the challenges of inhumane working conditions due to rapid industrialization. In the wake of Rerum, the Catholic social thought encyclicals promulgated by the modern popes provide crucial material for reflection and guidance to Catholics throughout the world in their work on a wide range of social and economic conditions, to protect human dignity in a variety of settings and to discern appropriate responses to local and global challenges to peace and justice.^[33]

In the modern era, an important foundation for this work is the Second Vatican Council’s emphasis on human dignity. As the Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World, Gaudium et spes, emphasizes that “reverence” for the human person requires that “everyone must consider his every neighbor without exception as another self, taking into account first of all his life and the means necessary to living it with dignity.”^[34] Against the backdrop of this injunction, the values of equity and inclusion also come into clear relief:

Therefore, although rightful differences exist between men, the equal dignity of persons demands that a more humane and just condition of life be brought about. For excessive economic and social differences between the members of the one human family or population groups cause scandal, and militate against social justice, equity, the dignity of the human person, as well as social and international peace. Human institutions, both private and public, must labor to minister to the dignity and purpose of man.^[35]

Furthermore, the Council’s reflections on the meaning of human dignity are at the foundation and core of the Church’s relationship with the world. The Council explains: “Everything we have said about the dignity of the human person, and about the human community and the profound meaning of human activity, lays the foundation for the relationship between the Church and the world, and provides the basis for dialogue between them.”^[36]

Following the Second Vatican Council, an extensive line of Catholic social thought commentary delves into a theological vision that could also ground and sustain the values of diversity, equity, and inclusion. To note one consistent through-line, in 1967 Pope Paul VI offered an extended analysis of the theme of “integral human development,” emphasizing how social, cultural, and spiritual progress is just as important as economic development.^[37]

Many passages of the encyclical Populorum progressio refer explicitly to the need for greater equity and inclusion when addressing global challenges. They highlight how just as the mission of Jesus Christ is focused in a particular way on concern for the poor, so too is the mission of the Church.^[38] The encyclical’s vision of radical inclusion includes solidarity in action so that “no one is left behind as development advances.”^[39] Obstacles to solidarity and sources of injustice include inequity in trade relationships^[40] as well as isolating nationalism and racism.^[41]

To mark the twentieth anniversary of Populorum, in 1987 Pope John Paul II offered an extended reflection on the meaning of solidarity against the backdrop of the geopolitical reality at the time. Sollicitudo rei socialis described the scandal of the contrasts between “underdevelopment” and “superdevelopment,” and challenged the Church and humanity to address the attitudes and actions typical of “sinful structures,” including the all-consuming desire for profit and the thirst for power.^[42] Here too the vision is one of radical inclusion:

Solidarity helps us to see the “other”—whether a person, people or nation—not just as some kind of instrument, with a work capacity and physical strength to be exploited at low cost and then discarded when no longer useful, but as our “neighbor,” a “helper” (cf. Gen 2:18–20), to be made a sharer, on a par with ourselves, in the banquet of life to which all are equally invited by God.^[43]

Continuing with this theme, in 2009, for the fortieth anniversary of Populorum, Pope Benedict XVI promulgated Caritas in veritate, in which he sets forth a vision of human development as the process of moving forward in the “journey toward unity.”^[44] Recalling the words of Paul VI, Caritas described the “summit of human development” as “unity in the charity of Christ who calls us all to share as sons in the life of the living God, the Father of all.”^[45] Pope Benedict reflected: “The development of peoples depends, above all, on a recognition that the human race is a single family working together in true communion, not simply a group of subjects who happen to live side by side.”^[46]

Further, all this work toward equity and inclusion is sustained through a theological understanding of unity in diversity. Human identity and the quest for meaning may be patterned on the dynamic life of communion at the heart of the Trinity, the relationship of “the Persons of the Trinity within the one divine Substance.”^[47] As Pope Benedict summarized, “God desires to incorporate us into this reality of communion as well: ‘that they may be one even as we are one’ (John 17:22).”^[48] Within this theological vision, unity in diversity is not a zero-sum game that sorts people into “winners” and “losers.” Instead, true openness to the distinct reality of other persons leads not to a “loss of individual identity” but rather to “profound interpenetration.”^[49]

When one considers how this vision might inform proposals for law, policy, and social structures, the consequences are profound. When one’s fundamental stance and core sense of identity are grounded in and shaped by a sense of being a member of the universal human family, then openness to and love for one’s brothers and sisters becomes one’s path to fulfillment in God. Concrete work and even sacrifice in order to improve economic and social structures may be framed not as a loss—much less as a “zero-sum game”—but as an opportunity for a reciprocal exchange through which we discover all the ways in which we have been created as a “gift” for one another.^[50]

Within this vision, diversity in the human condition is a fact, which offers an opportunity to live a life of love and gift patterned on the life of the Trinity. Work for equity is a direct consequence of one’s identity as a member of the universal human family. Efforts to manifest inclusion and foster a sense of belonging flow from Jesus’ own prayer that humanity might share in the life of divine communion: “that they may be one.” (John 17:22).^[51]

Pope Francis’s Fratelli tutti, issued in October 2020, in the midst of the global pandemic, further fleshed out a vision of how a “social friendship” can help humanity be concrete in its commitments to foster a greater sense of inclusion and belonging. He wrote: “A love capable of transcending borders is the basis of what in every city and country can be called ‘social friendship.’ Genuine social friendship within a society makes true universal openness possible.”^[52]

Pope Francis’s concerns touched on many examples and aspects of exclusion. He wrote: “Let us admit that, for all the progress we have made, we are still ‘illiterate’ when it comes to accompanying, caring for and supporting the most frail and vulnerable members of our developed societies. We have become accustomed to looking the other way, passing by, ignoring situations until they affect us directly.”^[53]

The path forward is to grow in love: “Only a gaze transformed by charity can enable the dignity of others to be recognized and, as a consequence, the poor to be acknowledged and valued in their dignity, respected in their identity and culture, and thus truly integrated into society.”^[54]

Those on the “periphery” are to be included because they truly have something to offer: “For they have another way of looking at things; they see aspects of reality that are invisible to the centers of power where weighty decisions are made.”^[55] Specifically with regard to the inclusion of migrants, he notes: “An individual and a people are only fruitful and productive if they are able to develop a creative openness to others.”^[56]

Finally, it would also be important to note that Catholics in specific regions of the world also look to their regional conferences of Catholic Bishops for reflections and guidance that can inform their work to respond to social and cultural challenges in their region. Guidance by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops includes a strong condemnation of racism as a sin:

Racism is not merely one sin among many; it is a radical evil that divides the human family and denies the new creation of a redeemed world. To struggle against it demands an equally radical transformation, in our own minds and hearts as well as in the structure of our society.^[57]

The bishops also note that responsibility “to resist and undo injustices” of racism extend beyond the realm of personal fault. They write:

The structures of our society are subtly racist, for these structures reflect the values which society upholds. They are geared to the success of the majority and the failure of the minority. Members of both groups give unwitting approval by accepting things as they are. Perhaps no single individual is to blame. The sinfulness is often anonymous but nonetheless real. The sin is social in nature in that each of us, in varying degrees, is responsible. All of us in some measure are accomplices. As our recent pastoral letter on moral values states: “The absence of personal fault for an evil does not absolve one of all responsibility. We must seek to resist and undo injustices we have not caused, lest we become bystanders who tacitly endorse evil and so share in guilt in it.”^[58]

Within the Catholic social thought tradition, the sources that articulate the moral imperative to foster appreciation for diversity and the values of equity and inclusion, are long-standing, wide-ranging, and deep. Further, as the US bishops have exhorted, in a country that continues to suffer from the radical evil of racism, all of us share responsibility for the work “to resist and undo” this continuing injustice.^[59]

The often unstated premise for the attack on DEI programs and policies is that they necessarily push down or squash the identity and interests of those who are not the beneficiaries of these efforts. This “zero-sum game” vision sorts the world into undeserving winners and otherwise deserving losers, and in the scramble for scarce resources, it concludes that this is unjust and unfair.

But as described above, this is not the only way to see and respond to a world of diverse identities and needs. This is not the only way to characterize institutional strategies to lift up the voices and experiences of those who have been underrepresented and their efforts to remedy and repair the social and economic harms inflicted on those who have been marginalized.

Through the lens of a less individualistic Catholic social thought worldview, what comes into relief are the historical, social, and cultural gaps and flaws in the mythic exhortation to “pull yourself up by your bootstraps” of hard work and individual achievement.^[60]

But most poignantly, through this lens we see that particularized attention and care for the growth and development of those who have been historically excluded or who have suffered from discrimination is not a zero-sum game but an opportunity for the harmonious growth of the entire community and all of its participants. In educational environments, similar efforts to sustain learning environments that encourage encounters with even deep differences help to foster the settings that lead to the kind of growth and insight that inspire and drive the core of their mission.

Encounter with Difference as Core to Jesuit Mission and Pedagogy

As a second dimension of Tradition, how the faith is “handed on” through time in order to better embody its message and work in history, is through receptivity to various “charisms”—particular gifts of the Holy Spirit given to the Church in order to help people grow in holiness, and to discern new ways to respond to humanity’s specific needs and concerns. The Society of Jesus, or the Jesuit Order, was founded by St. Ignatius of Loyola (1491–1556). Already during his lifetime, the Jesuits had a distinct dedication to the work of education. As Jesuit historian John O’Malley describes this dedication, “They threw themselves into it unreservedly.”^[61] As university graduates, Ignatius and his colleagues were “almost by definition committed to the ‘war against ignorance and superstition’ that in the sixteenth century engaged both Protestants and Catholics. Moreover, he recognized that in Paris the first Jesuits had learned certain pedagogical techniques that made them particularly effective teachers.”^[62]

Other aspects of Jesuit history evidenced the order’s distinctive contribution to the Church’s efforts to understand and respectfully engage with other peoples, cultures, and belief systems throughout the globe. For example, according to O’Malley, “The best-known instance of Jesuit adaptation and even identification with non-European culture is the mission to China that [Matteo] Ricci inaugurated but his superior and mentor, Valignano, masterminded.”^[63] Thus Ricci immersed himself in Chinese culture, explored parallels between Confucian thought and Christianity, and became an advisor to the imperial court of the Chinese emperor.^[64] As O’Malley summarizes, “for well over a century, the Jesuits in the Chinese mission carried their pastoral principle of accommodation to times, places and circumstances to its utmost expression.”^[65] Similar paths of “radical adaptation” and “sweeping inculturation” were adopted in Japan and India.^[66]

When examining the early Jesuits’ encounters with the plurality of religions, we must be cautious not to insert an anachronistic view of the early Jesuit’s openness to religious pluralism.^[67] Nonetheless, it is not difficult to find a clear through-line from this history to the directional commitments expressed after the Second Vatican Council. In fact, the Thirty-Fourth General Congregation (“GC 34”), held in 1995, included important decrees on promoting cross-cultural understanding (Decree 4) and interreligious dialogue (Decree 5).^[68]

As Jesuit theologian David Hollenbach explains, GC 34 “sees the pursuit of inter-religious and cross-cultural understanding as an essential expression of Christian love for one’s neighbor and universal respect for the dignity and rights of all people.”^[69] Thus, GC 34 stressed that Jesuit ministry has four closely interconnected dimensions: “service of faith, promotion of justice, adaptation to other cultures, and commitment to interreligious dialogue.”^[70]

As the predecessor to the current superior general, Fr. Adolfo Nicolás, wrote: “The Jesuit tradition of learned ministry . . . has always combined a healthy appreciation for human reason, thought, and culture, on the one hand, and a profound commitment to faith, the Gospel, the Church, on the other. And this commitment includes the integration of faith and justice in dialogue among religions and cultures.”^[71]

Recent reflections on the identity of Jesuit universities by the current Superior General of the Society of Jesus, Fr. Arturo Sosa, also highlight the importance of culturally diverse educational environments:

Recognizing cultural diversity as a richness leads us to join with a current that bases an interconnected or globalized world on multiculturality as a fundamental characteristic of the world of today and tomorrow . . . Because “the world is our home,” as the first Jesuits said, every culture that dwells in it is our sister. That is why we want to go beyond multiculturality and open ourselves to interculturality as a process of human enrichment.^[72]

From this perspective, engagement and dialogue promote growth, understanding, knowledge, and wisdom. As Flannery O’Connor succinctly and memorably summarized this vision: “Everything that rises must converge.”^[73]

Thus, a driving vision for Jesuit education is to enable those from different traditions, backgrounds, and faiths to be in dialogue with and learn from each other, while “remaining true” to themselves. To riff on Jesuit-educated Marc Morial’s homespun metaphor, the Jesuit approach is not to blend diverse cultures together in a melting pot with a dominant culture. It is rather to make gumbo in which each ingredient brings its own flavor.^[74]

On the specific commitment to justice and equitable treatment for those who have been marginalized and treated unjustly, the reflections of Superior General Fr. Peter-Hans Kovenbach at Santa Clara University in 2000 are an important source of guidance. His address concluded with a very strong challenge: “Jesuit universities have stronger and different reasons than many other academic and research institutions for addressing the actual world as it unjustly exists and for helping to reshape it in light of the Gospel.”^[75]

More recently, Fr. Arturo Sosa also highlighted how Jesuit university education can carry forward the Jesuit mission to overcome the “great social gaps” in contemporary society:

Drawing on the identity that grounds our university institutions, the integral formation of persons requires developing the citizenship of each person, of the university communities and of their institutions, expressed in a consistent commitment to the common good. As university institutions with local roots and universal vision, they are able to promote a global citizenship that works to overcome the great social gaps of today’s world. In these universities, research and the transmission of knowledge are understood as effective instruments to contribute to orienting the geopolitical dynamic toward reconciliation and justice.^[76]

How do Jesuit history and Jesuit approaches to pedagogy and university culture connect with DEI scholarship and practices? As noted above, Jesuit universities may “incorporate nominally secular practices in a distinctively religious way.”^[77]

A recent Association of Jesuit Colleges and Universities (AJCU) discussion paper on the nexus of DEI values and the resources of Scripture and theological reflection helps to flesh out the “specifically Jesuit framework” for engaging these ideas and programs.^[78] The initial note is instructive: “We wish to clarify, above all, that Jesuit colleges and universities are unequivocally committed to the advancement of DEIB because the Gospel of Jesus calls for the full and absolute inclusion of every human being in the kingdom of God. This is not a fad or a trend for us. It is bedrock to who we are as Catholic and Jesuit.”^[79]

At many Jesuit universities, what may now in some contexts be described as DEI initiatives, are not a new development. They have a long history. Specifically, regarding the battle against racism in the United States, after the “long hot summer of 1967,” in which the United States experienced nearly 160 race riots, the superior general of the Society of Jesus, Fr. Pedro Arrupe, engaged in extensive discussions with civil rights leaders and US Jesuits about the potential for the Jesuit Order in the United States to help address these concerns.^[80]

Fr. Arrupe’s November 1967 letter “On the Interracial Apostolate,” was addressed to every Jesuit in the United States. It closely tracked the spirit of the Second Vatican Council, urging the Jesuits in the United States to move beyond individual initiatives in order to do their part “to make all phases of American institutions and practices an environment in which the human dignity and rights of all will be acknowledged, respected and protected.”^[81] Such work, he surmised, would lift up not only African Americans who were “determined to gain their rightful status as men and as full-fledged citizens,” but “all who struggle with [them] for the realization of human equality.”^[82] Racism, he declared—whether manifesting the form of unjust law or policy, or “by force of un-Christian practices”—is “objectively a moral and religious evil.”^[83] In contrast, “The dignity of human personality, the unit of the human race and the equality of all men are of the very essence of the Christian Gospel, which proclaims our common origin, our common purpose, our common redemption and our common destiny.”^[84]

Fr. Arrupe’s letter also included an important mea culpa (or better, nostra culpa) for the sinful racist practices of the Jesuit Order itself. “It is chastening to recall that, before the Civil War, some American Jesuit houses owned Negro slaves.”^[85] He also noted the Jesuits’ own discriminatory practices: “It is humbling to remember that, until recently, a number of Jesuit institutions did not admit qualified Negroes, even in areas where civil restrictions against integrated schools did not prevail, and this even in the case of Catholic Negroes.”^[86] A further cause of “embarrassment” was the fact that until that time, some Jesuit institutions had only a token number of Black students.^[87] On this basis—a core sense of mission in light of the Second Vatican Council, and repair for past wrongs and failures—Fr. Arrupe encouraged the Jesuit Order in the United States to step up their capacity to attack the “twin evils of racial injustice and poverty in the United States.”^[88]

The letter included many specific suggestions for Jesuit educational institutions, including “increased efforts to encourage the enrollment of qualified Negroes” and to provide them financial assistance. It called for attention to diversity in faculty hiring, urging that “we should use our influence that qualified Negroes be recruited for services on the faculties and administrative staffs of Jesuit institutions.”^[89] It also acknowledged the need for on-the-ground leadership to help assess how best to respond to the particular circumstances of each province or region.^[90]

A full history of the response to this letter is of course beyond the scope of this article. Here we note just a few examples of how race-conscious practices helped to bring Jesuit institutions in line with this aspect of Jesuit mission.

Vincent Rougeau recounts the commitment of Holy Cross College president, Fr. John Brooks, S.J., who “drove around the country to personally recruit Black high school students to the college’s all-male, primarily white campus.” Justice Thomas was among the students successfully recruited. As Rougeau observes: this initiative was “the most overt example of race-based admissions I can imagine.”^[91]

Administrators at Jesuit universities also recognized that, in addition to the recruitment of Black students, they needed to work to ensure that these students who attended Jesuit universities flourished and that they were supported in their ability to draw on their background and experiences in the classroom and their academic work, a prerequisite to full participation in the intellectual dialogue that lies at the core of Jesuit pedagogy. As a result, in the late 1960s and 1970s, Jesuit schools across the United States launched a broad range of race-conscious initiatives. They established living-learning communities for Black students.^[92] They created Black student unions that promoted a sense of belonging.^[93] They “establish[ed] affinity spaces in support of students’ identities.”^[94] They started summer educational programs that provided academic enrichment and that were designed to keep students from feeling isolated as they entered communities that had previously had few, if any, Black students.^[95]

Returning to the vision that animates the Georgetown University mission, “serious and sustained discourse among people of different faiths, cultures, and beliefs [that] promotes intellectual, ethical, and spiritual understanding”^[96] occurs only when students, and all members of a university community, are supported in their efforts to voice their opinions. When people feel isolated and there are no others in the community who share their experiences, often they are less likely to speak. In Jesuit educational settings, race-conscious initiatives have long served as important support to creating the conditions that allow all members of an educational community to encounter each other, dialogue, and, in the words of Fr. Sosa, recognize “cultural diversity as a richness.”^[97]

When the Jesuits received Fr. Arrupe’s 1967 letter, action in accordance with his directives was mandatory. Similarly, Jesuit universities today are accountable to the Jesuit Order, and specifically to the Jesuit Superior General, for how their work aligns with their Jesuit mission. According to the AJCU:

At the request of the Jesuit Superior General, the Provincials of North America and the Presidents of the member institutions within the Association of Jesuit Colleges and Universities (AJCU) have established a process for reaffirming the Jesuit, Catholic mission of U.S., Belizean, and Canadian Jesuit higher education institutions. Titled the “Mission Priority Examen (MPE),” the process integrates a centuries-old practice of Ignatian reflection known as the Examen with clear pathways for dialogue and mission growth.^[98]

Each school is required to engage in the Mission Priority Examen every seven years, aided by an initial self-study.^[99] A team of peers from other Jesuit institutions, jointly appointed by the AJCU and the local Jesuit province, then visits the campus, engages in discussions and provides feedback to the self-study committee. Finally, advised by the local provincial, the Jesuit Superior General reviews all submitted materials, to determine if priorities are aligned with Jesuit and Catholic mission and to provide guidance for its growth.

Jesuit universities are accountable to the Superior General of the Society of Jesus, and ultimately to the Church, for how their work aligns with their Jesuit mission. Thus, for Georgetown University, the animating principle of our mission statement—that “serious and sustained discourse among people of different faiths, cultures, and beliefs promotes intellectual, ethical, and spiritual understanding”—is not optional. It is, instead, as Dean Treanor emphasized in his March 6, 2025, letter to the Interim US Attorney, “a moral and educational imperative.”^[100]

Tocqueville, Democracy, and Jesuit Education

When we consider the historical and cultural resources that might help us meet current challenges to democracy, we are taken by how Alexis de Tocqueville’s classic work Democracy in America helps us understand both the threat to liberty and democracy and the important role that Jesuit universities play in protecting them.^[101] The current presidential administration is attacking the independence of universities, law firms, and the media. Each attack is grave, but together they represent a fundamental challenge to democracy.

Already in the 1830s, Tocqueville was concerned about democracy’s tendency to degenerate into “soft despotism,” and to descend into a “tyranny of the majority.” He wrote: “It is clear that if each citizen, as he becomes individually weaker and consequently more incapable in isolation of preserving his freedom, does not learn the art of uniting with those like him to defend it, tyranny will necessarily grow with equality.”^[102]

Tocqueville’s central insight was that, in the United States, what he called intermediary institutions preserved democracy and liberty from abuse by temporary majorities.^[103] Intermediary institutions are where citizens develop the capacity to work together. He wrote: “Sentiments and ideas renew themselves, the heart is enlarged, and the human mind is developed only by the reciprocal action of men upon one another. I have shown that this action is almost nonexistent in a democratic country. It is therefore necessary to create it artificially there. And this is what associations alone can do.”^[104]

Fortunately for the new experiment, the United States in the 1830s was teeming with intermediary bodies that offered the possibility to participate in some experience of government. As Tocqueville observed,

Americans of all ages, all conditions, all minds constantly unite. Not only do they have commercial and industrial associations in which all take part, but they also have a thousand other kinds: religious, moral, grave, futile, very general and very particular, immense and very small; Americans use associations to give fêtes, to found seminaries, to build inns, to raise churches, to distribute books, to send missionaries to the antipodes; in this manner they create hospitals, prisons, schools. Finally, if it is a question of bringing to light a truth or developing a sentiment with the support of a great example, they associate. Everywhere that, at the head of a new undertaking, you see the government in France and a great lord in England, count on it that you will perceive an association in the United States.^[105]

During Tocqueville’s time, intermediary associations preserved democracy and liberty from abuse by temporary majorities in two ways. First, they were a locus of power that could check majorities. He described, for example, the way in which the newspapers of his day prevented majorities from successfully attacking liberty. They could organize people to defend liberty from governmental intrusion.^[106] In our time, the Trump administration’s attack on universities, media, and law firms is a coordinated assault on the institutions that can oppose the administration. The attack on Jesuit universities is part of this larger attack. Second, already in Tocqueville’s time, intermediate institutions promoted the principles of wise democratic government. They educated people to be good citizens who would participate in politics thoughtfully rather than being governed by passions. His great example was the New England town meeting as a particularly effective platform for citizens to develop “a taste” for the kind of order and “harmony of powers” that could sustain a flourishing democracy.^[107]

Participation in intermediate institutions also helps citizens appreciate the challenges of working together and navigating their differences. As Arthur Goldhammer observed, for Tocqueville, “the primary function of local participation was not to impart the skills needed to govern. It was rather to teach humility, to counter democratic man’s prideful assumption that everything can be bent to his will.”^[108]

In recent decades, it seems, we have been witnessing a decline in opportunities to develop this second virtue through local participation. In 2000 Robert Putnam’s Bowling Alone famously diagnosed the extent to which people in the United States have disengaged from community involvement, attendance at public meetings, and participation in community associations.^[109] Putnam also acknowledged certain tensions in the US tendency to form associations. “Strong in-group loyalty” may create “strong out-group antagonism.”^[110]

In a 2008 study, sociologist Bill Bishop described a further layer to the reasons for social fragmentation: the tendency to cluster into like-minded communities. Given “unprecedented choice about where and how they want to live,” many in the United States gravitate to the groups that make them comfortable.^[111] “Technology, migration, and material abundance all allow people to ‘wrap themselves into cocoons entirely of their own making.’”^[112]

Finally, the sense of isolation, division, and what is now toxic polarization has been enormously exacerbated by social media habits. These habits create “echo chambers,” a dynamic in which, due to a breakdown of trust, different perspectives are actively discredited. At this point, outsiders are not simply mistaken, but are perceived as “malicious, manipulative, and actively working to destroy” the other.^[113]

Notwithstanding these challenges, Jesuit universities continue to rise to the challenge of preparing people to be wise citizens and to fulfill the function that Tocqueville envisioned intermediary institutions serving. Recently Fr. Sosa described the contribution of a Jesuit university education to sustaining democratic values in this way:

A characteristic identity of Jesuit universities is to find . . . meaning in our public life . . . to better understand how to contribute to the deepening of the expansion of democracy which is threatened today even in those countries in which democracy has a long tradition, and one would suppose a deeply rooted consciousness of democratic values as the basis of political stability.^[114]

Building on the work of Joel Westheimer and Joseph Kane, a 2024 report of the Association of Jesuit Colleges and Universities reflected the specific capacity of Jesuit universities to cultivate the “Justice-oriented citizen,” one who is not only personally responsible and an active participant, but who also “critically assesses social, political, and economic structures to see beyond surface causes”; the kind of citizen who “explores why people are hungry and acts to solve root causes.”^[115]

While recognizing the social and cultural challenges noted earlier, what is striking about the AJCU account is how readily Jesuit universities can draw on the deep well of Catholic and Jesuit resources to foster the values of democratic citizenship.

Echoing Tocqueville’s account of settings where “sentiments and ideas renew themselves, the heart is enlarged, and the human mind is developed,”^[116] Jesuit universities strive to respond to the invitation of Pope Francis: to become “experts in the art of encounter,” and in so doing to better help members of a university community “to be guided by the Gospel idea of humility and engagement with ‘the other.’”^[117] Even in the midst of toxic polarization, hope can be drawn from interactions inspired by St. Ignatius’s “presupposition”: “It should be presupposed that every good Christian ought to be more eager to put a good interpretation on a neighbor’s statement than to condemn it.”^[118]

The report also notes that because the threats of “popularism, polarization, and post-truth . . . simultaneously challenge democracy and the mission of a Jesuit university,” the current state of affairs requires that Jesuit universities “more intentionally align with democracy, and more consciously prepare our students for democratic citizenship.”^[119]

Interestingly, while Tocqueville was drawn to the setting of governance in a small township, in our times “preparing students for citizenship means helping them learn how to understand not only the local realities where our institutions sit but also about global citizenship . . .”^[120] Working within a vibrant network not only of other schools but also of projects for justice and the common good, Jesuit universities are often a privileged place to lift one’s gaze beyond the limits of the domestic context, keeping in mind “our brothers and sisters struggling for democracy abroad.”^[121]

As will be discussed more fully in the final section of this article, the Jesuit principle of “care for the whole person”—intellectually, morally, spiritually—also makes Jesuit universities uniquely poised to foster settings to cultivate democratic virtues and habits. The website for Georgetown University’s College of Arts & Sciences explains:

Our long-held Jesuit tradition of cura personalis means a profound care and responsibility for one another, attentive to each person’s circumstances and concerns and gifts. It means that the university is committed not just to your academic achievement but also to your mental and physical health, your spiritual growth, and your development as a citizen of the world.^[122]

Amidst the current crisis, there is much at stake for Jesuit universities: their deepest values and the heart of their mission. For this reason, they can play an especially vigorous role in how they defend the values, skills, and practices that make democratic citizenship possible.

As Tocqueville intuited early on, intermediary associations where people can meet face to face to cultivate settings where “sentiments and ideas renew themselves, the heart is enlarged, and the human mind is developed,”^[123] can serve as a bulwark against the excesses and dangers in a democratic experiment. Jesuit universities that are faithful to their religious mission are precisely the kinds of institutions that can foster the values of democratic citizenship so needed in our polity and our world today. For this reason, we owe it to our fellow citizens to vigorously defend and protect the model from the abusive overreach of the current administration.

First Amendment Protections for University Control over Curriculum

As described in the first section of this article, Interim US Attorney Martin’s inquiry included a question about the inclusion of DEI in Georgetown Law’s curriculum and threatened to punish our students and alumni by denying them internships and jobs if DEI was not removed from “your courses or teaching.”^[124]

Those threats were unconstitutional.

It is well-established that the First Amendment protects the free speech rights of organizations (as well as individuals) because they are speakers. For example, in NRA v. Vullo,^[125] the Supreme Court recently held that the National Rifle Association had First Amendment rights and that, as a result, New York State financial regulators could not punish the organization for its gun promotion advocacy.

Thus, universities have First Amendment free speech rights as organizations. It is well-established that for universities this First Amendment right includes the right to determine their curriculum. In a now classic statement of the “four essential freedoms” of a university, in Sweezy v. New Hampshire, Justice Frankfurter explained:

. . . It is the business of a university to provide that atmosphere which is most conducive to speculation, experiment and creation. It is an atmosphere in which there prevail “the four essential freedoms” of a university—to determine for itself on academic grounds who may teach, what may be taught, how it shall be taught, and who may be admitted to study.^[126]

Embracing Frankfurter’s concurrence in Sweezy, the Court in Regents of University of Michigan v. Ewing wrote: “Academic freedom thrives . . . on autonomous decision-making by the academy itself.”^[127]

As institutions whose free speech rights are protected by the First Amendment, a Jesuit university, like any university, has the right to control its own curriculum—“to determine for itself on academic grounds . . . what may be taught [and] how it shall be taught.”^[128] Thus, contrary to Martin’s actions and threats, because Jesuit universities have the constitutionally protected right to control their curriculum, they have the right to teach the values and practices that align with what he calls DEI.^[129] Federal prosecutors cannot dictate what a Jesuit university—or any university—teaches.

A second reason that a prosecutor cannot dictate what a Jesuit university teaches lies in the First Amendment’s guarantee of religious freedom. In challenging Georgetown’s ability to control our curriculum, Martin was asserting that he—a federal prosecutor—had the authority to decide what should be taught at a religiously affiliated university. As explained before, Georgetown Law’s curricular decisions regarding how to foster the values of equity and inclusion for the diverse members of its community are core to its Catholic and Jesuit mission to foster a learning environment in which “serious and sustained discourse among people of different faiths, cultures, and beliefs promotes intellectual, ethical, and spiritual understanding.”^[130]

As the US Supreme Court held in Our Lady of Guadalupe School, it is clear that the First Amendment’s guarantee of religious freedom protects a religious institution’s autonomy, especially in these kinds of decisions that go to the heart of an institution’s “central mission.”^[131]

In that case, the Supreme Court refused to consider employment discrimination claims brought by two teachers at a Catholic elementary school. One teacher contended that she had been the victim of age discrimination; another, that she had been fired because she asked for a leave of absence so her breast cancer could be treated.

Writing for the majority, Justice Alito declared, “The independence of religious institutions in matters of ‘faith and doctrine’ is closely linked to independence in what we have termed ‘matters of church government.’”^[132] The Court held that the First Amendment mandated judicial deference to a religious school’s decisions about employment matters involving those who can be considered ministers because of their role in formation:

The religious education and formation of students is the very reason for the existence of most private religious schools, and therefore the selection and supervision of the teachers upon whom the schools rely to do this work lie at the core of their mission. Judicial review of the way in which religious schools discharge those responsibilities would undermine the independence of religious institutions in a way that the First Amendment does not tolerate.^[133]

Thus, under the ministerial exception, “courts are bound to stay out of employment disputes involving those holding certain important positions within churches and other religious institutions.”^[134]

In contrast to a university’s right to control its curriculum, here the constitutional rule is not clearly established. Nonetheless, the best view of the Constitution is that the federal government cannot prevent religiously affiliated universities from carrying out their mission-based commitments. While the Court has not yet considered an analogous argument in the context of the type of diversity initiatives that Jesuit schools have used to aid in the formation of their students for more than a half century, the same deference to schools’ decision-making is warranted. Indeed, it is more compelling with respect to these diversity initiatives.

Our Lady of Guadalupe School stands for the proposition that because the formation of students is central to the mission of a religious school, schools must have the right to determine who teaches and courts cannot overturn those determinations even in the face of claims of discrimination based on illness or age. What is at stake with diversity initiatives, however, is not simply who assists in students’ formation; the more fundamental issue is whether Jesuit schools can determine how best to advance the formation of our students.

In subsequent attacks on the legality of race-conscious educational initiatives, the administration has expanded the challenge far beyond Interim US Attorney Martin’s attack on the ability of a university to determine its own curriculum. Some of the challenges also go the heart of mission-driven programs that aim to create and sustain diverse and inclusive learning environments.

These challenges—like the attempt to control curriculum—would also be unconstitutional, as they run afoul of a religiously affiliated university’s First Amendment right of religious exercise.

As discussed previously, for more than 50 years, in the wake of Fr. Arrupe’s 1967 letter, Jesuit schools have considered race when providing support for students in a range of ways—including summer academic programs, Black student unions, and space dedicated to building community among Black students.^[135] This approach reflects core principles of Jesuit pedagogy.

Jesuit pedagogy promotes dialogue among people from different backgrounds, faiths, perspectives, and life experiences and promotes learning across differences. Jesuit universities in the United States have long recognized that race-conscious initiatives help lay the groundwork for its participants’ full engagement in that dialogue. They also recognize that this support benefits all members of the community because it advances the process of collective learning and debate that is central to Jesuit pedagogy.

Let us quote again the recent AJCU discussion paper on DEI and mission: “We wish to clarify, above all, that Jesuit colleges and universities are unequivocally committed to the advancement of DEIB because the Gospel of Jesus calls for the full and absolute inclusion of every human being in the kingdom of God. This is not a fad or a trend for us. It is bedrock to who we are as Catholic and Jesuit.”^[136]

In Students for Fair Admissions, Inc. v. President and Fellows of Harvard College (SFFA),^[137] the Supreme Court ruled that some approaches to affirmative action in admissions at state and private universities are unconstitutional.^[138] But the Trump administration’s attack on race consciousness is not limited to admissions. It is an attack on schools’ ability to take race into account under any circumstances.

As previously noted, the Department of Justice has declared: “Preferential treatment occurs when a federally funded entity provides opportunities, benefits, or advantages to individuals or groups based on protected characteristics in a way that disadvantages other qualified persons, including such practices portrayed as ‘preferential’ to certain groups. Such practices violate federal law unless they meet very narrow exceptions.”^[139]

It is certainly the case that not all adherents of Catholic social thought embrace race consciousness as a guide to action, but for more than a half century Jesuit universities have. Crafting policies and practices based on our judgment of what our religious beliefs and Jesuit mission require, our universities have undertaken a range of race-conscious initiatives with the goal of fostering both individual formation and the dialogue that is central to Jesuit mission and pedagogy. The First Amendment’s guarantee of religious freedom protects our continuing to make these choices. Any attempt by the administration to block such initiatives would be unconstitutional because it “undermine[s] the independence of religious institutions in a way that the First Amendment does not tolerate.”^[140]

Accompanying Future Legal Professionals with Hope

In this final section, we turn from the constitutionality of the types of race-conscious initiatives that Jesuit universities have long supported. We focus now on a separate question that builds on our reflections on the work of preparing citizens to contribute to sustaining healthy democracies in the face of current threats. How might intermediary institutions, such as Jesuit law schools, offer their students opportunities to understand “the harmony of powers” and the skills to exercise their rights and duties as citizens and as professionals in this complex world?

Our focus is not an argument that these programs are directly threatened by the administration’s DEI orders. They are not. Our concern here is with maintaining the creative energy and spark that often fuels the kinds of programs that we describe. Rather than playing continual “defense” in a climate of crisis and fear, the energies of university administrators, faculty, staff, and students is much better spent in the work of sustaining constructive projects that help to bring our communities together.

Based on our experience as law school administrators and teachers in the current educational environment, it would be an understatement to say that this work is difficult. As noted before, political polarization exacerbated by social media habits and echo chambers make it difficult for everyone, including students, to engage across profound differences. In many classrooms, conversations about controversial topics are chilled and more complex “middle” voices are often silent for fear of being misunderstood.

And yet: Jesuit mission urges our institutions to bring all of our creative energy and insight to meet these challenges precisely under the conditions where our students find themselves.^[141] Notwithstanding the decline in associational life in the broader culture, many aspects of Jesuit University life still provide settings for face-to-face encounters with people from different backgrounds and experiences, who think differently. Similarly, they offer myriad opportunities to draw out the experience and the sentiments that cultivate commitments to a flourishing democracy.

Encouraged by the Jesuit Order’s “Universal Apostolic Preferences,” we offer a few examples of how a Jesuit law school may sustain a learning environment that “accompanies young people in the creation of a hope-filled future.”^[142] Specifically, we note how its culture, curriculum, and programs may foster the necessary professional and life skills for the kind of value-based discernment that will help them flourish as persons who are attentive to others and how they may serve the broader community and the common good.

Finally, we delve into how many Jesuit law school settings—seminars and leadership courses, clinics and practicums, opportunities for leadership in student organizations, and the like—provide opportunities to encourage what Pope Francis termed “a culture of encounter.”^[143]

As Dean Treanor has described elsewhere, for a Jesuit Law School, commitments to justice and concern with access to legal education are profoundly linked. He wrote: “As the Catholic Bishops have stated, ‘A basic moral test is how our most vulnerable members are faring. . . . [We must] put the needs of the poor and vulnerable first.’ Our commitment to access grows from our commitment to justice.”^[144]

Jesuit law schools have been committed to access since their inception. Georgetown, for example, started as an evening school more than 150 years ago for people who worked during the day. It was committed to the proposition that legal education should be available not only to the wealthy.

A commitment to access makes possible the creation of an environment in which to experience a culture of encounter across all kinds of differences. To quote Georgetown’s brief in SFFA, Jesuit schools have the goal of “encouraging students to test ideas and challenge assumptions through exposure to, and dialogue with, classmates whose background may be geographically, religiously, culturally, socioeconomically, racially or otherwise different from their own.”^[145]

To facilitate a culture of encounter, Georgetown Law’s student orientation program highlights the value of dialogue and learning from each other. As Dean Treanor said to new students in his 2024 orientation talk, “We have more than 10,000 applicants, and we chose you because you can make a difference. So speak. We want to hear your voice and learn from you. And remember that we also chose everyone in this room because they have something to say. So, listen. That is how we learn. Speaking and listening.”^[146]

In addition to prioritizing staffing and resources for spiritual accompaniment through Campus Ministry offices and programs, Jesuit mission can infuse many facets of the ordinary work of educating the “whole person” as students move through a law school program. Notwithstanding the “bowling alone” decline of associations, for many schools, student government, affinity groups, and other associations remain a vibrant space for the “reciprocal action” where, as Tocqueville put it, “sentiments and ideas renew themselves, the heart is enlarged, and the human mind is developed. . . .”^[147]

At Georgetown Law, for the work of accompanying the leaders of our robust religious student groups (Jewish, Muslim, Christian, Catholic, and Dharmic), in September 2023 we launched the Interfaith Advisory Council for which each student groups selected liaisons. At the first meeting, there was a wonderful spirit of open cooperation and curiosity to learn more about each other’s traditions and specific hopes for the growth and development of each group. When the shock of the October 7, 2023, terrorist attack hit, the students themselves insisted that we continue this effort, saying that they really needed this, “now more than ever.” After a particularly profound moment of mutual recognition when the Jewish and Muslim leaders realized that they were experiencing the mirror image of the other’s pain, trust continued to grow and in their face-to-face meetings they were able to broach even some of the most difficult topics.^[148]

Examples of mutual investment in each other’s associational life included not only showing up for each other’s events, even helping with cleanup, but also shared concern to improve transportation to major religious events in the city; giving each other a helpful “heads-up” on potentially controversial speakers; a shared meal in the campus sukkah during the Jewish Festival of Booths; and even fasting for a day in solidarity with Muslim colleagues prior to an interfaith Iftar dinner during Ramadan. The Council’s current focus is to develop avenues for concrete collaboration on shared service projects for unhoused people in the neighborhood, to do something together to build strong foundational bonds for when we need to work through our differences.

Experiential and Clinical Education

In his 2000 address, Fr. Kolvenbach challenged universities to raise Jesuit educational standards in order to better “educate the whole person of solidarity for the real world.”^[149] Quoting an address by Pope John Paul II, he noted that “Solidarity is learned through ‘contact’ rather than through ‘concepts.’”^[150]

When the heart is touched by direct experience, the mind may be challenged to change. Personal involvement with innocent suffering, with the injustice others suffer, is the catalyst for solidarity which then gives rise to intellectual inquiry and moral reflection. Students, in the course of their formation, must let the gritty reality of this world into their lives, so they can learn to feel it, think about it critically, respond to its suffering, and engage it constructively. They should learn to perceive, think, judge, choose, and act for the rights of others, especially the disadvantaged and the oppressed.^[151]

Clinics and other experiential learning settings offer numerous opportunities to be formed by direct contact with the “gritty reality” of suffering and injustice in the world. A commitment to clinical legal education flows not just from a pedagogic commitment but from the belief that these settings help to advance the goal of educating lawyers with the tools and the skills to work to make this a more just world. While many law schools have strong clinical programs, for Jesuit law schools clinics are an essential part of our mission.

Leadership and Values Formation

At times we hear arguments that professional education is not a proper forum for “character formation” because graduate students are already “formed” in their character. Even if this were true, graduate students are certainly not fully formed in their “professional identity.” As Professor Uelmen has reflected elsewhere, “the process of understanding what it means to be a doctor, lawyer, accountant or engineer in society, and how to integrate [one’s] own perspectives, beliefs, and values into this social role requires critical and sustained reflection.”^[152]

At Georgetown Law, Dean Treanor taught a course called Lawyers as Leaders that focused on professional formation. The central “text” of the course was his interviews with faculty members who had had, in different ways, substantial influence both as educators and in the public realm—either as public intellectuals or through their involvement in government or other public policy roles. They were asked about the decisions that had shaped their careers and to reflect on how life choices are made and evaluated. Students then wrote reaction papers. The hunger for such a course at Georgetown was reflected in the enrollment: more than 300 students took the course, making it the largest enrollment of any class in the history of the law center.^[153]

In a different way, clinics also focus on formation. Students represent clients and faculty lead them through analysis of what their role should be when they act as lawyers and how they serve their clients and larger social interests—and, if the two are in conflict, how they handle the conflict.

As a general matter, perhaps even more than in college, in law school students often struggle with the ways in which their values shape their lives and their professional identity—a central issue underlying formation. For this reason, thoughtful accompaniment that includes all aspects of their identity and experience is especially important for students at this stage of their formation.

Skill-Building for the Capacity to Lean into and Learn from Differences

One of the most difficult challenges of our time is how to help students, and all members of our community, learn to live with the profound difference, even—and especially—when these generate conflicts for which no clear resolution is in sight.^[154] As Pope Francis set out the challenge in Fratelli tutti: “Authentic social dialogue involves the ability to respect the other’s point of view and to admit that it may include legitimate convictions and concerns.”^[155]

At a Jesuit law school, the commitment to a “culture of encounter” can sustain settings in which to learn the skills of leaning into and learning from profound differences. For example, in our community over the past year we have been edified by the depth and breadth of our students’ engagement with the weekly Daniel Webster Debate Series. Sponsored by the student chapter of the Federalist Society, it has managed to bring together truly diverse political perspectives for a thoughtfully moderated debate about some of the most contentious issues in law and policy. Events are open to the whole community, live-streamed, and recorded.^[156] Even when broaching difficult topics, speakers and audience model a capacity to maintain respect and consideration.

Curricular offerings provide space for even more iterative and in-depth exchange. Relatively small seminars (capped at about sixteen students) that focus on methods of communication across political and religious differences offer structured face-to-face opportunities to practice the listening and dialogue skills that deepen students’ capacity to hold even strong tensions and disagreements while maintaining an atmosphere of learning and respect for each other’s dignity. For many, the upshot is that being open to learning something new and growing in the capacity for nuance in one’s own position are not the same as “compromising” one’s values.^[157]

Finally, like many other Jesuit universities, we have benefitted from “round table” dialogue events where participants with different perspectives, or who are serving in roles that are often perceived to be in tension, have conversations that prioritize face-to-face interactive discussion about a given topic. One recent event, The Church’s Mission in a Polarized World, gathered those with a commitment to reduce culture-war rhetoric in their religious communities and civic circles.^[158] Other events have explored the role of law and lawyers in the clergy abuse crisis; the extent to which antisemitic tropes in preaching and teaching have been exacerbated by caricatures of the Pharisees;^[159] and resources within the Catholic tradition for criminal justice reform.

All of these settings could be described as part of the fabric of a culture of encounter. For many in our educational communities who participate, Tocqueville’s observation about the salutary effect of participatory democracy ring true. The goal or result need not be an exuberant celebration of new-found common ground. Instead, success can be measured by the extent to which a class or gathering engenders a humble appreciation for the effort to come together across differences while also sparking the desire to make that effort.

When these values are centered throughout the curricular and co-curricular programs and offerings, our students have the best possible chance to gain the formative skills and dispositions that they need to serve in professional and leadership roles in these challenging times.^[160]

Conclusion

What is at stake in the recent conflicts between the current administration and institutional efforts to protect the autonomy of law schools in shaping their own curricula? In our case, nothing less than our nation’s most dearly held values, including religious freedom. The mission-driven vision for education that emerges from Catholic social thought and Jesuit mission is a precious gift for our entire polity. We owe it to our fellow citizens to protect this “moral and educational imperative” with every fiber of our being.^[161]

Notes:

^[1]          A condensed version of this analysis was published in America online: “At Jesuit Universities, the Government’s D.E.I. Crackdown Is an Attack on Religious Freedom,” September 2, 2025; and in print: “A Tradition of Inclusion: D.E.I. and the Mission of Jesuit Universities” (October 2025): 36.

^[2]          Dean William Michael Treanor, to Interim United States Attorney Edward R. Martin, Jr., March 6, 2025; Georgetown University, “University Mission Statement,” accessed May 27, 2025, https://governance.georgetown.edu/mission-statement/.

^[3]          Some materials we reference add “Belonging”; thus “DEIB.”

^[4]          Executive Order 14173 of January 21, 2025, “Ending Illegal Discrimination and Restoring Merit-Based Opportunity,” Federal Register, 90, n. 20, 8633. Numerous challenges to this executive order have been filed, and the merits are under review. Challenges include that the orders are unconstitutionally vague; that they violate First Amendment free speech protections; and that they violate Fifth Amendment Due Process guarantees.

^[5]          Executive Order 14173, 8635.

^[6]          Executive Order 14173.

^[7]          Executive Order 14173.

^[8]          Executive Order 14173. Note also that section 5 includes an order for the Attorney General and the Secretary of Education to jointly issue guidance not only to “all State and local educational agencies that receive Federal funds” but also to institutions of higher education that receive federal grants or participate in the federal student loan assistance program under Title IV of the Higher Education Act, on measures and practices regarding affirmative action policies in order to comply with Students for Fair Admissions, Inc. v. President and Fellows of Harvard College, 600 U.S. 181 (2023) (hereafter SFFA).

^[9]          Acting Assistant Secretary of Education for Civil Rights Craig Trainor, February 14, 2025.

^[10]         United States Department of Education, Office for Civil Rights, February 28, 2025, 9.

^[11]         Edward R. Martin, Jr., to Dean Treanor, February 17, 2025, and via email March 3, 2025, accessed May 28, 2025, https://www.ncronline.org/files/2025-03/3.7.24%20Ed%20Martin%20letter%20%20to%20Georgetown%20law.pdf.

^[12]         Martin to Treanor, March 3, 2025.

^[13]         Treanor to Martin, March 6, 2025.

^[14]         Treanor to Martin, March 6, 2025.

^[15]         Treanor to Martin, March 6, 2025.

^[16]         On May 8, 2025, President Trump announced his intention to withdraw the nomination of Edward R. Martin, Jr., for US Attorney for the District of Columbia. See Seung Min Kim and Michael Kunzelman, “Trump Pulls the Nomination of Ed Martin for DC US Attorney after Concerns of Partisanship,” Associated Press, May 8, 2025, https://apnews.com/article/donald-trump-ed-martin-white-house-justice-department-thom-tillis-cecf801799faa2b56fd1bb4fac48379e. The successor interim, Jeanine Pirro, was sworn in on May 14, 2025, and confirmed by the Senate on August 2, 2025.

^[17]         Attorney General Pam Bondi, “Guidance for Recipients of Federal Funding Regarding Discrimination,” memorandum for all federal agencies, July 29, 2025, https://www.justice.gov/ag/media/1409486/dl.

^[18]         Treanor to Martin, March 6, 2025.

^[19]         See discussion in note 3.

^[20]         As Jesuit ethicist William O’Neill explained, “aspects of DEI may be considered as integral to a Jesuit/Catholic university’s mission which is distinctly religious but not sectarian (applying only to co-religionists). The mission of a faith-based university may thus incorporate nominally secular practices in a distinctively religious way.” O’Neill, “The Catholic/catholic mission of our universities,” unpublished background paper prepared for May 2024 deliberations at the Ignatian Center for Jesuit Education, which is part of the Markkula Center for Applied Ethics at Santa Clara University. Quoted with permission from the author.

^[21]         Treanor to Martin, March 6, 2025.

^[22]         Here we limit our reference to a thoughtful summary and reflection on the theological critiques of these contested academic theories by Cardinal Christophe Pierre, serving at the time as the Apostolic Nuncio to the United States: “Woke Culture and Post-Liberalism: The Response of the Social Doctrine of the Church,” September 13, 2025, accessed April 3, 2026, https://nuntiususa.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/2025-09-13-EnglisVersion-WokeCulturePostLiberalism-TheResponseoftheSocialDoctrineoftheChurch.pdf.

^[23]         For example, Christopher J. Devron, S.J., “A Catholic alternative to diversity, equity and inclusion in education,” America, March 14, 2024, is well worth an extensive quote: “The rationale school leaders typically use for their D.E.I. programs and policies is devoid of the image of King’s ‘beloved community’; the principle of the imago Dei and its insistence on centering human dignity as a moral imperative; and resources from Scripture and church teaching on the demands of justice. It feels as if we have traded the ‘thick’ description of our moral tradition and its resources for a ‘thin’ vision of procedural and legal goals that are inherently soulless. This thin vision is increasingly failing as a motivating force to effectively change our practices and actions, much less transform our hearts and minds. In relying solely on a fragile and defensive D.E.I. framework, educators are failing to leverage the most powerful tool we possess to raise awareness about our personal biases, examine our consciences, and oppose structural and social evils such as racism, classism, ableism, misogyny, antisemitism and other injustices that exist within and outside of our communities.”

^[24]         We are indebted to Eduardo Peñalver for comments that helped us to clarify these “two senses” of DEI and for conversations and feedback throughout our writing process.

^[25]         Second Vatican Council, Dei Verbum [Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation] (hereafter DV), November 18, 1965, §10.

^[26]         For example, 2 Thess. 3:10 (“For even when we were with you, we gave you this command: Anyone unwilling to work should not eat”). The New Revised Standard Version Catholic Edition translation will be used throughout this article.

^[27]         For example, Luke 14:13–14 (“But when you give a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind. And you will be blessed, because they cannot repay you, for you will be repaid at the resurrection of the righteous”); Matt. 25:40 (“Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me”).

^[28]         We realize that the relationship between DEI values and interpretation of scriptural passages is a topic that would merit extensive study and scholarship. In this article, we emphasize the magisterial authority of the Catholic Church as expressed in Catholic social teaching because we believe this frame of analysis has a direct bearing on the legal arguments for the religious freedom claims at stake. For an accessible example of a study of scriptural authority on inclusion read in light of the Catholic Church’s magisterial authority and Catholic social teaching, see Donald Senior, C.P., What Does the Bible Say About Inclusion? (New City Press, 2022). For an interesting example of a magisterial correction of what was determined to be a distortion of a theological concept regarding obligations to care for others, see Pope Francis, Letter to the Bishops of the United States of America, February 10, 2025 (“The true ordo amoris that must be promoted is that which we discover by meditating constantly on the parable of the ‘Good Samaritan’ [cf. Luke 10:25–37], that is, by meditating on the love that builds a fraternity open to all, without exception”).

^[29]         DV, §7.

^[30]         See DV, §8 (“For there is a growth in the understanding of the realities and the words which have been handed down. This happens through the contemplation and study made by believers, who treasure these things in their hearts (see Luke, 2:19, 51) through a penetrating understanding of the spiritual realities which they experience, and through the preaching of those who have received through Episcopal succession the sure gift of truth. For as the centuries succeed one another, the Church constantly moves forward toward the fullness of divine truth until the words of God reach their complete fulfillment in her”).

^[31]         Pope Leo XIV’s address to the College of Cardinals, May 10, 2025 (“Pope Leo XIII in his historic Encyclical Rerum novarum addressed the social question in the context of the first great Industrial Revolution. In our own day, the Church offers to everyone the treasury of her social teaching in response to another industrial revolution and to developments in the field of artificial intelligence that pose new challenges for the defense of human dignity, justice and labor”).

^[32]         See Michael J. Schuck, “Early Modern Roman Catholic Social Thought, 1740–1890,” chap. 4 of Kenneth R. Himes et al., Modern Catholic Social Teaching (Georgetown University Press, 2005) (hereafter Himes), 99–100 (noting the standard narrative that Roman Catholic social thought begins with Rerum novarum but also highlighting the importance of early modern sources and history).

^[33]         For example, Pius XI, Quadragesimo anno [On the Reconstruction of the Social Order], May 15, 1931; Paul VI, Populorum progressio (hereafter PP) [On the Development of Peoples], March 26, 1967; John Paul II, Centesimus annus [On the Hundredth Anniversary of Rerum novarum], May 1, 1991. Also John Paul II, Evangelium vitae [On the Value and Inviolability of Human Life], March 25, 1990. Generally, Vincent D. Rougeau, Christians in the American Empire: Faith & Citizenship in the New World Order (Oxford University Press, 2008), 5 (“. . . Catholic social thought, which represents Catholicism’s most comprehensive exploration of the Church’s relationship to the modern world, sees the individual, the state, politics, and the economy proceeding from understandings of freedom rooted in theological and philosophical traditions that stress human interdependence. It also rejects as a theoretical starting point for understanding democracy and human liberty any notion of the completely autonomous individual”).

^[34]         Second Vatican Council, Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World, Gaudium et spes (hereafter GS), December 7, 1965, §27.

^[35]         GS, §29.

^[36]         GS, §40. For a current application of this principle, see Rougeau, Christians in the American Empire, 8 (“In a democracy, Christian citizens should look closely at the assumptions and values that shape law and public policy and then determine whether, on balance, the apparatus of state strives to promote the dignity and participation of citizens in the nation’s common life”).

^[37]         PP, §14 (“The development We speak of here cannot be restricted to economic growth alone. To be authentic, it must be well rounded; it must foster the development of each man and of the whole man”).

^[38]         PP, §12. See John Paul II, Sollicitudo rei socialis [The Social Concern of the Church] (hereafter SRS), December 30, 1987, §42 (explaining that “the option or love of preference for the poor” is “a special form of primacy in the exercise of Christian charity, to which the whole tradition of the Church bears witness. It affects the life of each Christian inasmuch as he or she seeks to imitate the life of Christ, but it applies equally to our social responsibilities and hence to our manner of living, and to the logical decisions to be made concerning the ownership and use of goods”). Also Allan Figueroa Deck, S.J., “Commentary on Populorum progressio,” in Himes, 298 (discussing early formulations of the “preferential option for the poor”).

^[39]         PP, §44.

^[40]         PP, §59.

^[41]         PP, §§62–63.

^[42]         SRS, §37.

^[43]         SRS, §39.

^[44]         Benedict XVI, Caritas in veritate [On Integral Development in Charity and Truth] (hereafter CV), June 29, 2009, §8.

^[45]         CV, §19.

^[46]         CV, §53.

^[47]         CV, §54.

^[48]         CV, §54.

^[49]         CV, §54.

^[50]         CV, §34. Generally, Amelia J. Uelmen, “Caritas in veritate and Chiara Lubich: Human Development from the Vantage Point of Unity,” Theological Studies 71, no. 1 (March 2010): 29 (summarizing points of convergence between Lubich’s spirituality of unity and the theological vision of Caritas).

^[51]         CV, §54 (“Relationships between human beings throughout history cannot but be enriched by reference to this divine model”). See Uelmen, “Caritas in veritate,” 38 (noting projects for inclusion and economic justice emerging from a Trinitarian vision of human relationships). Also Karen J. Johnson, One in Christ: Chicago Catholics and the Quest for Interracial Justice (2018) (tracing the development of Catholic interracial activism in the 1960s).

^[52]         Francis, Fratelli tutti [On Fraternity and Social Friendship] (hereafter FT), October 3, 2020, §99.

^[53]         FT, §64.

^[54]         FT, §187

^[55]         FT, §215.

^[56]         FT, §41.

^[57]         National Conference of Catholic Bishops (currently the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, or USCCB), Brothers and Sisters to Us, November 14, 1979, accessed May 30, 2025, https://www.usccb.org/committees/african-american-affairs/brothers-and-sisters-us. For a more recent statement by the conference, see USCCB, Open Wide Our Hearts: The Enduring Call to Love—A Pastoral Letter Against Racism, November 2018, accessed May 30, 2025, https://www.usccb.org/resources/open-wide-our-hearts_0.pdf. Also Francis Cardinal George, O.M.I., Dwell in My Love: A Pastoral Letter on Racism, April 2, 2001 (proposing reflections and strategies to address the sin of racism and eradicate it from the Church), accessed May 30, 2025, https://www.catholic.org/featured/headline.php?ID=390.

^[58]         NCCB, Brothers and Sisters to Us.

^[59]         The Bishops of the United States held this position even in the face of strong resistance among Catholics in the 1950s. See National Catholic Welfare Conference, “Discrimination and Christian Conscience” (1958) (pastoral letter on racial equality). For historical background, Dennis J. Wieboldt III, “The Natural Law and Interreligious Social Advocacy: The Civil Rights Movement–Era Case of William J. Kenealy, S.J.,” American Catholic Studies 134 (Spring 2023): 76n1; Justin Poche, Religion, Race and Rights in Catholic Louisiana (PhD diss., University of Notre Dame, 2007), 222 (discussing the reception in Louisiana of the 1958 Bishops’ statement), accessed April 3, 2026, https://curate.nd.edu/articles/thesis/Religion_Race_and_Rights_in_Catholic_Louisiana_1938-1970/24730623?file=43554846.

^[60]         The idiom predates the stories of Horatio Alger, but his “rags to riches” narratives of the “self-made man” are well known for popularizing the notion that success and upward mobility are achieved through individual initiative and hard work. For example, Horatio Alger, Jr., Ragged Dick (1868), and Fame and Fortune, or The Progress of Richard Hunter (1868).

^[61]         John W. O’Malley, S.J., The Jesuits: A History from Ignatius to the Present (Rowman & Littlefield, 2014), 12.

^[62]         O’Malley, The Jesuits, 13. Also O’Malley, “Historical Perspectives on Jesuit Education and Globalization,” in The Jesuits and Globalization, ed. Thomas Banchoff and Jose Casanova (Georgetown University Press, 2016) (hereafter Banchoff and Casanova), 147.

^[63]         O’Malley, “Historical Perspectives,” 158. Generally, Andrew C. Ross, “Alessandro Valignano: The Jesuits and Culture in the East,” in The Jesuits: Cultures, Sciences, and the Arts, 1540–1773, ed. John W. O’Malley, S.J., et al. (University of Toronto Press, 1999), 336.

^[64]         William V. Bangert, S.J., A History of the Society of Jesus (Institute of Jesuit Sources, 1986), 157. See Nicolas Standert, S.J., “Jesuit Corporate Culture as Shaped by the Chinese,” in O’Malley et al., The Jesuits: Cultures, 352.

^[65]         John W. O’Malley, S.J., The First Jesuits (Harvard University Press, 1993), 342 (noting that wearing clothing “not much different from Chinese custom” was “only the most obvious sign of an adaptation to local customs and mentality that was as radical as one could possibly imagine by the Europeans of the time”). O’Malley credits the Jesuits’ openness to their humanistic education, through which “they had come to respect and learn from the pagan cultures of Greece and Rome, and through their study of rhetoric, they had learned the key importance of accommodation to times, places, cultures, and circumstances if they wanted their message to be heard.” O’Malley, “Historical Perspectives,” 158–59. See Francis X. Clooney, S.J., “Could Matteo Ricci Have Done It Today?” America, July 7, 2010 (quoting Pope Benedict: “Father Ricci is a unique case of a felicitous synthesis between the proclamation of the Gospel and the dialogue with the culture of the people to whom he brought it”).

^[66]         O’Malley, “Historical Perspectives,” 158.

^[67]         Daniel A. Madigan, S.J., “Global Visions in Contestation,” in Banchoff and Casanova, 82. According to Madigan, “the assumption that pluralism in religion logically follows from a healthy process of globalization needs to be critically examined. The experience of plurality of religions—an undeniable phenomenon—is one thing; quite another is the adoption of a pluralist understanding of the relationship among religions.”

^[68]         Jesuits (Euro-Mediterranean Province), General Congregation Decrees, accessed April 3, 2026, https://jesuits-eum.org/gc-decrees/.

^[69]         David Hollenbach, S.J., “The Jesuits and the More Universal Good,” in Banchoff and Casanova, 179.

^[70]         Banchoff and Casanova, 179.

^[71]         Adolfo Nicolás, S.J., “Depth, Universality and Learned Ministry: Challenges to Jesuit Higher Education Today,” Mexico City, April 23, 2010, accessed April 3, 2026, https://www.sjweb.info/documents/ansj/100423_Mexico%20City_Higher%20Education%20Today_ENG.pdf.

^[72]         Arturo Sosa, S.J., “Discerning the Present to Prepare the Future of the University Education of the Society of Jesus,” Assembly of the International Association of Jesuit Universities (IAJU), Boston, August 4, 2022, accessed April 3, 2026, https://www.jesuits.global/sj_files/2022/09/2022-08-04_IAJU-Speech_EN.pdf.

^[73]         Flannery O’Connor, Everything That Rises Must Converge (Farrar, Straus & Giroux 1996). The line is attributed to the thought of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, not as a stand-alone sentence, but as a formulation of a broader idea. See Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, The Phenomenon of Man, trans. Bernard Wall (Harper 1959), 259.

^[74]         See Marc Morial, The Gumbo Coalition: 10 Leadership Lessons That Help You Inspire, Unite, Achieve (Harper Collins 2020).

^[75]         Peter-Hans Kolvenbach, S.J., “The Service of Faith and the Promotion of Justice in American Jesuit Higher Education,” Santa Clara University, Santa Clara, California, October 6, 2000, accessed April 3, 2026, https://scholarcommons.scu.edu/sc_lectures/23/.

^[76]         Sosa, “Discerning the Present.”

^[77]         O’Neill, “Catholic/catholic Mission,” 1.

^[78]         Generally, Association of Jesuit Colleges and Universities, Just Universities: Reflections on the Contributions of DEIB to the Mission of Jesuit Higher Education (April 2024) (hereafter AJCU, Just Universities), accessed May 29, 2025, https://ajcunet.edu/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/Just-Universities-Reflections-on-the-Contributions-of-DEIB-to-the-Mission-of-Jesuit-Higher-Education-2024-FINAL.pdf.

^[79]         AJCU, Just Universities, 2.

^[80]         Generally, Dennis J. Wieboldt III, “Civil Rights and Prophetic Indictment: A Discursive History of Jesuit Superior General Pedro Arrupe’s ‘On the Interracial Apostolate,’” Journal of Catholic Social Thought 21, no. 1 (2024): 107. For a historical analysis that situates the project against the backdrop of race relations at Jesuit institutions in the 1940s and 1950s, see James M. O’Toole, “A Challenge to Our Sincerity: American Jesuits Discover ‘The Negro,’” in Jesuits and Race, ed. Nathaniel Millett and Charles H. Parker (University of New Mexico Press, 2022), 213.

^[81]         Pedro Arrupe, S.J., “On the Interracial Apostolate,” November 1, 1967, §1.

^[82]         Arrupe, “Interracial Apostolate.”

^[83]         Arrupe, “Interracial Apostolate,” §4.

^[84]         Arrupe, “Interracial Apostolate,” §5.

^[85]         Arrupe, “Interracial Apostolate,” §5. This of course brings to mind Georgetown University’s nostra culpa, acknowledging the 1838 sale of 272 enslaved persons, to save the university from financial ruin. Rachel L. Swarms, The 272: The Families Who Were Enslaved and Sold to Build the American Catholic Church (Random House, 2023). In September 2015, Georgetown convened the Working Group on Slavery, Memory, and Reconciliation, which explored its historical relationship to slavery, worked to engage the community in dialogue, outlined recommendations, and issued a report to guide future efforts. “Georgetown Reflects on Slavery, Memory and Reconciliation,” https://www.georgetown.edu/slavery/. Other Jesuit universities in the United States have engaged in similar processes. For example, Nathaniel Millett, “The Memory of Slavery at Saint Louis University,” in Millett and Parker, 185.

^[86]         Arrupe, “Interracial Apostolate,” §5.

^[87]         Arrupe, “Interracial Apostolate,” §5.

^[88]         Arrupe, “Interracial Apostolate,” §8.

^[89]         Arrupe, “Interracial Apostolate,” §8, point 5.

^[90]         Arrupe, “Interracial Apostolate,” §9 (encouraging development of procedures to appoint and train a full-time director of the Interracial Apostolate for each province or region).

^[91]         Vincent Rougeau, “A Diverse Learning Environment Is Essential,” Boston Globe, May 29, 2023.

^[92]         Alessia Turner, “55 years ago, Georgetown’s Black House Began as a Hub for Community and Inclusivity,” Georgetown Voice, March 14, 2025.

^[93]         Holy Cross Magazine, “Black Student Union Celebrates 50 Years at Holy Cross,” accessed April 3, 2026, https://news.holycross.edu/stories/black-student-union-celebrates-50-years-holy-cross.

^[94]         Sonya Cotero Arriola, Fifty Years of Underrepresented Student Advocacy at One Jesuit Secondary School (PhD diss., University of San Francisco, 2022).

^[95]         For example, “About Charles Hamilton Houston Pre-Law Institute,” accessed August 30, 2025, https://chhlawschoolprep.institute.

^[96]         Georgetown University, “University Mission Statement.”

^[97]         Sosa, “Discerning the Present.”

^[98]         AJCU, “Mission Priority Examen,” accessed May 28, 2025, https://ajcunet.edu/mission-and-identity/mission-priority-examen/.

^[99]         AJCU, Characteristics of Jesuit Higher Education: A Guide for Mission Reflection, accessed May 28, 2025, https://ajcunet.edu/wp-content/uploads/attachments/A-Guide-for-Mission-Reflection_09-21-4.pdf.

^[100]       Treanor to Martin, March 6, 2025.

^[101]       After traveling throughout the United States in 1831, Alexis de Tocqueville returned to France to write what is widely considered to be one of the best critical observations of the new republican representative democracy to date. Published in two volumes in 1835 and 1840, in Democracy in America Tocqueville noted several risks likely to plague the fledgling political, social, and cultural experiment. Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, ed. and trans. Harvey C. Mansfield and Delba Winthrop (University of Chicago, 2000) (hereafter DA).

^[102]       DA, 489.

^[103]       In contrast to aristocratic nations where “secondary bodies form natural associations that halt the abuses of power,” Tocqueville warned that in countries where such associations do not exist, “if particular persons cannot create artificially and temporarily something that resembles them, I no longer perceive a dike of any sort against any sort of tyranny, and a great people can be oppressed with impunity by a handful of factious persons or by one man.” DA, 183.

^[104]       DA, 491.

^[105]       DA, 489.

^[106]       DA, 174 (the press is “an extraordinary power” without which “freedom cannot live . . .”). Also, DA, 174 (“The sovereignty of the people and the freedom of the press are therefore two entirely correlative things . . . ”); DA, 172 (“I love [the freedom of the press] out of consideration of the evils it prevents much more than for the good it does”).

^[107]       DA, 65 (“The inhabitant of New England is attached to his township because it is strong and independent; he is interested in it because he cooperates in directing it; he loves it because he has nothing to complain of in his lot; he placed his ambition and his future in it . . . in this restricted sphere that is within his reach he tried to govern society; he habituates himself to the forms without which freedom proceeds only through revolutions, permeates himself with their spirit, gets a taste for order, understands the harmony of powers, and finally assembles clear and practical ideas on the nature of his duties as well as the extent of his rights”).

^[108]       Arthur Goldhammer, “The Democracy of the Spectacle,” The Tocqueville Review 43, no. 2 (2022): 207. See DA, 65 (“The town taught that the citizen’s powers are limited rather than infinite and thus deflated revolutionary hubris. It offered instruction in the need for tradeoffs among competing interests. It imparted knowledge of fiscal, physical, procedural, and organizational constraints. It chastened those who imagined that the purpose of political activity was to impose their own will or serve their own interests. The town was meant, Tocqueville claimed, to enlarge the concept of individual interest so as to achieve that harmonic convergence of individualities he hopefully dubbed ‘self-interest properly understood’”).

^[109]       Robert Putnam, Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community (Simon & Schuster, 2000).

^[110]       Putnam, 23.

^[111]       Bill Bishop, The Big Sort: Why the Clustering of Like-Minded America is Tearing Us Apart (Mariner Books, 2008), 12.

^[112]       Bishop, 14 (quoting J. Walker Smith).

^[113]       C. Thi Nguyen, “Escape the Echo Chamber,” Aeon Essays, April 9, 2018, accessed May 18, 2025, https://aeon.co/essays/why-its-as-hard-to-escape-an-echo-chamber-as-it-is-to-flee-a-cult. For an extended version of this argument, see Nguyen, “Echo Chambers and Epistemic Bubbles,” Episteme 17, no. 2 (June 2020).

^[114]       Sosa, “Discerning the Present.”

^[115]       AJCU Commission on Citizenship and Democracy, “Toward a Hope-Filled, Democratic Future: Educating for Democratic Citizenship in the AJCU,” 2024, 6, accessed May 28, 2025, https://ajcunet.edu/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/Educating-for-Democratic-Citizenshipfinaldraft-1.pdf. [Quoting Joel Westheimer and Joseph Kane, “Educating the ‘Good’ Citizen: Political Choices and Pedagogical Goals,” PS Political Science and Politics 37, no. 2 (2004).]

^[116]       DA, 491.

^[117]       AJCU Commission, “Democratic Future,” 3.

^[118]       AJCU Commission, 3.

^[119]       AJCU Commission, 4.

^[120]       AJCU Commission, 4. Also Thomas Banchoff, “Jesuit Higher Education and the Global Common Good,” in Banchoff and Casanova, 239.

^[121]       AJCU Commission, “Democratic Future,” 4.

^[122]       Georgetown University, College of Arts and Sciences, “Cura Personalis,” accessed May 28, 2025, https://college.georgetown.edu/academics/cura-personalis/

^[123]       DA, 491.

^[124]       Martin to Treanor, February 17, 2025.

^[125]       National Rifle Association of America v. Vullo, 602 U.S. 175 (2024).

^[126]       Sweezy v. New Hampshire, 354 U.S. 234, 263 (1957) (Frankfurter, J., concurring in the result).

^[127]       Regents of University of Michigan v. Ewing, 474 U.S. 214, 226 n.12 (1985).

^[128]       Sweezy, 354 U.S. at 263.

^[129]       See discussion and O’Neill’s explanation in note 20. Also, Eugene Volokh, “May Government Refuse to Hire Notre Dame Students Because Notre Dame Teaches and Promotes Anti-Abortion Ideology?” Reason, March 7, 2025.

^[130]       Georgetown University, “University Mission Statement.”

^[131]       Our Lady of Guadalupe School v. Morrissey-Berru, 591 U.S. 732, 747 (2000) (the independence of religious institutions in “matters of church government” protects “their autonomy with respect to internal management decisions that are essential to the institution’s central mission”).

^[132]       Our Lady of Guadalupe, 747.

^[133]       Our Lady of Guadalupe, 738.

^[134]       Our Lady of Guadalupe, 748.

^[135]       See discussion at notes 91–95.

^[136]       AJCU, Just Universities, 2.

^[137]       600 U.S. 181 (2023).

^[138]       Georgetown University took the lead in preparing an amicus brief in SFFA arguing on behalf of Catholic universities and colleges. See SFFA Brief for Georgetown University et al. as Amici Curiae, 18, in support of the constitutionality of affirmative action. In her dissent, Justice Sotomayor noted that the majority had reserved the question whether service academies could constitutionally practice affirmative action because of their “potentially distinct interests,” SFFA, 600 U.S., 213, n. 4 (majority opinion), and she suggested that religious institutions might make a similar claim for exemption. See SFFA, 600 U.S., 355 (dissenting opinion). President Eduardo Peñalver and Professor Kent Greenfield argue that the Free Exercise clause protects the ability of religiously affiliated institutions to consider race in admissions decisions. Kent Greenfield and Eduardo Peñalver, “How the First Amendment Can Save Affirmative Action,” The Hill, July 19, 2023. We do not discuss that issue here. If, however, it is finally determined that service academies are permitted to engage in affirmative action in admissions, see SFFA v. Naval Academy, 758 F. Supp. 3d 423 (D. Md. 2024) (holding constitutional the Naval Academy’s use of affirmative action in admissions), established Supreme Court case law would seem to require that religious institutions of higher education be able to do so as well. Tandon v. Newsom, 593 U.S. 61 (2021) (government regulations trigger strict scrutiny when religious institutions are treated less favorably than comparable secular institutions). Note, however, that the Fourth Circuit granted a joint motion to dismiss and vacate the District Court’s opinion as moot in light of the current administration’s rejection of affirmative action. SFFA v. Naval Academy, 2025 U.S. App. Lexis 16343 (July 2, 2025).

^[139]       Bondi Memorandum, July 29, 2025.

^[140]       Our Lady of Guadalupe, 738.

^[141]       See Amelia J. Uelmen, “The Distinctive Questions of Catholics in History,” Journal of Catholic Legal Studies 58, no. 1 (2019): 105 (noting that the distinctive task in Catholic legal education is “to help young people find and internalize a sound system of values for themselves”); Amelia J. Uelmen, “A Response to Kenneth Garcia: ‘Where They Are, Just as They Are,’” Theological Studies 73, no. 2 (2012): 909 (extrapolating from Jesuit John Courtney Murray’s 1944 two-part article, “Towards a Theology for the Layman,” in which lay theology reaches a subject “as grace reaches him, where he is, just as he is,” an approach to graduate professional education to reach students “where they are, just as they are”).

^[142]       The “Universal Apostolic Preferences” (UAPs), promulgated in 2019 for the Jesuit Order as a whole, to identify how the Jesuits and Jesuit institutions should focus their energy and resources for the period 2019–29 include these: Showing the Way to God through Discernment and the Spiritual Exercises; Walking with the Excluded; Journeying with Youth; and Caring for our Common Home. “Universal Apostolic Preferences,” Jesuits, accessed May 28, 2025. See “The story behind,” Jesuits, accessed May 28, 2025, https://www.jesuits.global/uap/the-story-behind/.

^[143]       See FT, §216 (“To speak of a ‘culture of encounter’ means that we, as a people, should be passionate about meeting others, seeking points of contact, building bridges, planning a project that includes everyone”). Also Francis, “For a Culture of Encounter,” Morning Meditation in the Chapel of the Domus Sanctae Marthae, September 13, 2016.

^[144]       William Michael Treanor, “Reflections on a More ‘Catholic’ Catholic Legal Education,” Journal of Catholic Legal Studies 58, no. 1 (2019): 99 (quoting USCCB, “Option for the Poor and Vulnerable”)

^[145]       SFFA Georgetown Brief, 1.

^[146]       William Treanor, Welcome to New Students (August 22, 2024).

^[147]       DA, 491. See discussion at notes 116–18.

^[148]       For a more fulsome description of the development of Georgetown Law’s Interfaith Advisory Council, see Amelia J. Uelmen, “Spiritual Dispositions to Build and Sustain Educational Communities for Civil Discourse,” University of St. Thomas L.J. (forthcoming 2026).

^[149]       Kolvenbach, “Service of Faith.”

^[150]       Kolvenbach (quoting John Paul II’s address to Catholic University of the Sacred Heart, Milan, May 5, 2000, n.9). Also, Amelia J. Uelmen, “An Explicit Connection between Faith and Justice in Catholic Legal Education: Why Rock the Boat?,” University of Detroit Mercy Law Review 81, no. 5 (2004): 921 (expressing appreciation for clinics, outreach programs, and pro bono opportunities, but cautioning that unless such experiences of “contact” are also anchored to the intellectual “concepts” to sustain commitments to justice in other contexts, “young lawyers will find themselves adrift”).

^[151]       Kolvenbach, “Service of Faith.”

^[152]       Amelia J. Uelmen, “Professional Education and the Paschal Mystery,” in In the Logos of Love: Promise and Predicament in Catholic Intellectual Life, ed. James L. Heft, S.M., and Una Cadegan (Oxford, 2016), 77.

^[153]       See Susan Svrluga, “Most Popular Course Ever at Georgetown Law? How to Fight for Justice,” Washington Post, November 6, 2020.

^[154]       Note an interesting shift in some of the recent literature away from conflict “resolution” to conflict “resilience.” For example, Robert Bordone and Joel Salinas, Conflict Resilience: Negotiating Disagreement Without Giving Up or Giving In (HarperCollins, 2025). For spiritually grounded reflections on leaning into difficulty, see Uelmen, “Professional Education,” 89–93 (reflection on “Good Friday: The Meaning of the Cross in Professional Education”); David Hollenbach, S.J., “The Catholic University under the Sign of the Cross: Christian Humanism in a Broken World,” in Finding God in All Things: Essays in Honor of Michael J. Buckley, S.J., ed. Stephen Pope and Michael Himes (Crossroad, 1996), 279.

^[155]       FT, §203.

^[156]       For a list of topics and speakers, see “Georgetown Law Daniel Webster Debate Series,” Federalist Society, accessed May 29, 2025, https://fedsoc.org/georgetown-law-daniel-webster-debate-series.

^[157]       For an outline of course methods complemented by student reflections on them, see Amy Uelmen and Michael Kessler, Five Steps to Healing Polarization in the Classroom (New City Press, 2018). Also, Amelia J. Uelmen, “Religious Lawyering in a Polarized Society,” University of Detroit Mercy Law Review 102, no. 1 (2024): 99.

^[158]       See Aaron Wessman, The Church’s Mission in a Polarized World (New City Press, 2023).

^[159]       Siobhan Cooney, “What We Don’t Know Can Hurt Us: An Interfaith Dialogue on Combatting Stereotypes on the Pharisees,” Georgetown University Berkley Center for Religion, Peace & World Affairs, March 6, 2023, https://berkleycenter.georgetown.edu/features/what-we-don-t-know-can-hurt-us-an-interfaith-dialogue-on-combating-stereotypes-on-the-pharisees. A video recording of introductory presentations, “The Pharisees: What We Don’t Know Can Hurt Us,” is available at the Berkley Center, February 6, 2023, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MdiEDkNyeFI&t=28s.

^[160]       As discussed previously, attention to all these dimensions reflects a typically Jesuit concern to educate “the whole person.” Kolvenbach, “Service of Faith” (“For 450 years, Jesuit education has sought to educate ‘the whole person.’ intellectually and professionally, psychologically, morally, and spiritually”); Cardinal Blase J. Cupich, “What Jesuit Catholic universities can do to stay true to their mission,” America, September 18, 2023 (“Jesuit universities in particular are known as places for the intellectual, social, spiritual, and physical development of the student—the education of the ‘whole person’”).

^[161]       Treanor to Martin, March 6, 2025. 

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Title: Religious Freedom, Jesuit Mission, and DEI
Author(s): William Michael Treanor; Amelia J. Uelmen
Article Type: Research Article
DOI: https://doi.org/10.51238/jeq.VYn10hj
Language: English
Pages: 195–235
Keywords: Jesuit mission; DEI; legal education; First Amendment; Catholic social thought
In: Jesuit Educational Quarterly
In: 2nd ser., Volume 2, Issue 2
Received: 26 June 2025
Accepted: 09 October 2025
Publication Date: 22 July 2026
Last Updated: 22 July 2026
Publisher: Institute of Jesuit Sources
Print ISSN: 2688-3872
E-ISSN: 2688-3880

APA

Treanor, W. M., & Uelmen, A. J. (2026). Religious freedom, Jesuit mission, and DEI. Jesuit Educational Quarterly, 2(2), 195–235. https://doi.org/10.51238/jeq.VYn10hj

CMOS

Treanor, William Michael, and Amelia J. Uelmen. “Religious Freedom, Jesuit Mission, and DEI.” Jesuit Educational Quarterly, 2nd ser., 2, no. 2 (2026): 195–235. https://doi.org/10.51238/jeq.VYn10hj.

MLA

Treanor, William Michael, and Amelia J. Uelmen. “Religious Freedom, Jesuit Mission, and DEI.” Jesuit Educational Quarterly, 2nd ser., vol. 2, no. 2, 2026, pp. 195–235. https://doi.org/10.51238/jeq.VYn10hj.

Turabian

Treanor, William Michael, and Amelia J. Uelmen. 2026. “Religious Freedom, Jesuit Mission, and DEI.” Jesuit Educational Quarterly. 2nd ser., 2 (2): 195–235. https://doi.org/10.51238/jeq.VYn10hj.