Originally published Dec. 9, 2004
Several members of the Fordham faculty have requested that their names be added to the Cardinal Newman Society's Oct. 21 report detailing presidential campaign donations made by Catholic university employees. To date, at least 15 members of the faculty have sent e-mail messages to the Society, but President Patrick J. Reilly says that these names will not be added to the report.
The report showed that employees at the 10 largest Catholic institutions, six of them Jesuit, donated $196,025 to Senator John Kerry's campaign compared to $21,200 donated to President George W. Bush's. At Fordham, the split was $19,460 for Kerry and $4,000 for Bush. Reilly and the report state that this show of support for a pro-choice candidate is inconsistent with Catholic views on abortion, and is indicative of a strong liberal bias on campuses.
In the Nov. 18 issue of The Observer, Susan Beck and Thomas S. DeLuca Jr., associate professors of political science, labeled the report as an attempt to stifle the faculty's freedom of speech. "This is a transparent effort by the Newman Society to chill our political speech and association, and also our academic freedom by making us afraid," DeLuca told The Observer last month.
When other faculty members learned of the Society's report, they felt it appropriate to submit their names to the Society. The e-mail campaign, according to S. Elizabeth Penry, associate professor of history and associate director of Latin American and Latino studies, will allow members who donated to Kerry's presidential campaign but were not listed "to stand in solidarity with those on the list."
Penry copied her initial e-mail, sent to the Newman Society on Nov. 19, to 66 other faculty members. "There has been a tremendous response from the faculty on this issue," Penry said. "This has really touched a chord with many people."
Doron Ben-Atar, associate professor of history, said that he first learned of the "Society's blacklisting of faculty members who gave money to the Kerry campaign and the Democratic National Committee" through Penry's e-mail to the history faculty.
The faculty's show of support, Reilly believes, only serves to further his argument about the "extreme liberal and anti-Catholic bias" on campuses. "The more we hear from pro-Kerry faculty members, many of whom proudly told us of their support for other far-left and pro-abortion causes," he said, "the stronger our argument.
"We are grateful for the e-mails we received from unlisted faculty members," he continued, "which indicate that the 5-to-1 bias in support of Kerry-a dissenting Catholic and avowed abortion-rights advocate-probably carries over to less-generous faculty donors."
The messages, which Penry encouraged her colleagues to send, ranged from simple one-liners like "I am proud to add my name to your list of Fordham University faculty members who contributed to the Kerry campaign," which was the entirety of Penry's own e-mail, to more in-depth criticisms of the Society like the message sent by Vincent Atchity, assistant dean for Lincoln Center sophomores, juniors and transfers students, and adjunct professor of English and literary studies.
In his e-mail Atchity wrote, "I strongly encourage the Cardinal Newman Society to find a way of channeling all of the energy that it has for good works into something more positive, more productive, and more truly Christian than this virulent critique of the high principles of the very people who dedicate their lives to educating people in the Jesuit Tradition of service to our community. After all, the high principles that motivate my colleagues on the faculty and in the administration here at Fordham to support social causes that are progressive and humane-both within the classroom and without-are the very lifeblood of the Jesuit Tradition of education, not indications of some moral weakness at the heart of our institution."
Other faculty members criticized the Society's information-gathering tactics and noted in their e-mails that they were excluded from the report because the amount of their donations were not high enough. "My only regret," wrote Michael E. Latham, associate professor of history, "is that [my wife and I] didn't give the full $250 apparently required to get on your list."
Others added that their contributions to other liberal, progressive organizations were not taken into account. "For the record," wrote Daniel Soyer, associate professor of history, "other political causes to which I contributed include MoveOn, the Frank Barbaro for Congress campaign, the Working Families Party, Citizens for Tax Justice, and Brit Tzedek v'Shalom."
Despite the influx of e-mail messages, Reilly said he would not alter the Society's report. "We will not sporadically add names to the list, unless we can publish a complete list of all donors to both campaigns, verified by the Federal Exchange Commission," he said. "We just wanted to report this timely information as it pertains to our concerns."
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