- Well, thanks for coming
out, everyone, this afternoon,
on the first absolutely
gorgeous day of the year.
That we have a good audience,
that speaks something about the issue.
I'm Tom Landy.
I'm the Director of the McFarland Center
for Religion, Ethics and Culture
and last summer,
in response to the Mulledy/Healy
Legacy Committee Report,
Father Boroughs, The
President of Holy Cross,
expressed his commitment to exploring
how the history and
meaning of the Crusader
and how the name and how
it reflects our mission
and identity at Holy Cross,
particularly in the
sense and to the extent
that we think of ourselves
as an institution open
to people of all faiths.
After hearing from a
number of constituents
across the college, we at
the McFarland Center decided
that it would be good to provide
an academically-focused
entree to that discussion
and, really, this is an entree.
This is not the discussion,
whatever happens with
that comes in the fall,
but some way to frame,
did I scare you?
(woman laughing)
To frame what's coming ahead
and to help us think about that, I think,
in the ways we can do best
as a liberal arts college.
Several weeks ago, the McFarland
Center sponsored an event
which brought Professor Kevin
Madigan of the Class of '82.
As a historian, Kevin took
seriously his responsibility
to avoid what historians call presentism.
That's to say he aimed
instead to describe the past
and the work of the medieval
Crusaders on their own terms
and I'm grateful for how
clearly he did that for us.
Today, we'll think about
some of those issues
in ways that our disciplines,
different disciplines, help us
to think about that,
so that provided one part of the answer,
in terms of the history, and as he said,
"and perhaps a historian can
have the first say on that
"but not the last say."
I just want to introduce
the people who are here
to help us do some of that thinking.
Father John Baldovin is a
Jesuit, a former trustee,
is a Professor of Historical
and Liturgical Theology
at Boston College's School
of Theology and Ministry,
is the Class of 1969.
If you haven't noticed, I'll point out
that he was a purple tie, a purple watch
and generally wears
purple socks, I'm told,
if you get a chance to see,
(audience laughing)
so you get some sense of
where his loyalties lie.
Those are not maroon
colors, maroon and gold,
that I've ever seen him in.
- Not revealing anything
(audience and panel laughing)
- about the underwear.
- Professor Vickie Langhor
from Political Science;
Mat, Professor Mat Schmalz
from Religious Studies;
Professor Kendy Hess, in the
middle, not showing her face;
and Professor Mark Freeman
and Professor Sahar Bazzaz.
What we're doing today is not a debate,
there is time for all of that,
but, really, a way, when we framed it,
that we wanted to have
people think a little bit
from the perspective of their disciplines
about the matters of
identity, meaning, memory,
belonging, history wrapped
up in one name, Crusaders.
And, at one level, we can say
it's hardly the most pressing
moral issue of our day
or in a time when there are
some really remarkable things
that need to be thought
about, but it is a moniker
and it is the way that we
present ourselves to the world
and, I think, something that
we should take seriously
and think about together.
I take it as obvious that
everyone on the panel approaches
these questions as whole persons,
but we've asked, we thought,
what would be most helpful
about a panel like this is to think,
since we're a liberal arts college,
how are the ways our
disciplines have brought us
to actually do, how our
disciplines do impact
the way that we think
about matters like these.
So, I've asked our panelists, today,
to think about the issues raised here
and some of the ways
that their disciplines
teach them to think about it
and then we'll move from
there into some broader ways.
We'll have a chance for some
comments from the audience.
We're being recorded, both ways,
so when we get the
questions from the audience,
we can see who you are and
we'll come back to that.
Anyway, we'll open it
eventually to comments from,
perspectives from the audience,
but, let me ask, since
Kendy's looking at me
instead of hiding her head,
now, I ask you, sort of,
what's, how do you frame
what's at stake here?
- Okay, well, I'm an ethicist
by training and profession
and so, one of the things
that I always bring,
or try to bring, to any of
the issues that I confront is
sort of a multiplicity of values,
a lot of different perspectives.
One of the things that I teach is
different sytems of values.
None of us has a uniquely
privileged insight
into what's right and what's wrong.
All of us live as members of a community
and, in this case, a
very diverse community
in which a lot of these different
values sytems are present
and active and very deeply
felt and deeply held.
So, in approaching any kind of issue,
this is a lot of what we do in my classes,
one of the things that I try to do,
that I try to teach my students how to do,
is how to take on different perspectives.
It's important that you
know your own values
and that's crucial and
harder than it might sound,
but it's also important to be
able to understand the value,
the perspectives that other people bring,
even if you don't share it,
to be able to at least see
how and why somebody could care,
could legitimately care
about this just as much
as you care about the
things that you care about.
And so, when I come to
this particular issue,
one of the first things that I ask is,
what are the different
values sytems in play?
What have I heard people talking about?
What are the kinds of values
that people are referring to
when they start talking about
this whole Crusader thing?
And so, among the kinds of values
that I've heard referenced, it's every,
it's all the standard values.
It's the same things that come into play
in all of the moral issues and
all of the political issues,
so they're pretty familiar.
Avoiding harm, that's a classic.
Morally speaking, we usually
want to not harm people,
so avoiding harm.
Respecting and supporting human dignity,
this the Kantian system,
this is the Enlightenment.
Safety and belonging,
these are important values.
Identity and integrity and
community and tradition,
that's a smattering of the values
that people ar bringing to these.
Now, all of these are legitimate values.
Not everybody is using all of them.
Not everybody cares about
all of them equally,
but all of these are
present in the discourse.
They're certainly all
present in our community
and I think it's really important
that even if we don't personally ascribe
to some of these values or
we don't give them priority,
that we're able to hear them
when other people are referring to them
and acknowledge them as legitimate values,
things that human beings
have traditionally turned to
in an effort to govern the ways
that they talk to each other,
the ways they treat each other
and the ways that they live together.
So, my first thing about
this is to be cognizant
of the different value
systems that are in play
and of the fact that all of them are real
and that they're all present
and that they're all deeply held
for some people in our community.
The other thing that I wanted specifically
to sort of bring out is
not just the multiplicity
and the legitimacy of these
different kinds of values,
but that those values need to
play out not just in the way
we assess the target,
but the way we go about
pursuing our actions
and I'm not sure if
that makes sense or not,
but, so, if you just walk up
to random people on campus,
which I've tried to avoid doing, and say,
"What do you think about the Crusaders?
"Right, call it:
(pounding desk)
"yes or no, up or down,"
and somebody says, "Yes,"
and somebody says, "No,"
and you say, "Great, why?"
You know, "Give me your reasons,"
when we confront a decision like that,
it's relatively easy for us
to fall back on our values
and trot out whichever
of our values justify
that specific outcome.
And, that's a starting point.
You've got to start there, right,
but that's just a starting
point; it's not the ending point.
It's not the ending point for
you making your own decision.
It's certainly not the ending point
for all of us collectively.
So, we start by identifying
our first position
and citing the values
that lead us to choose it,
but then the next step
is how you pursue that.
If you think we shouldn't be
Crusaders, how do you go about
having that discussion with other people?
If you think we should be Crusaders,
how do you go about approaching that?
And, the thing that I've
been most struck by is
the ways that people
give excellent reasons
for why they say yes or no
and then seem to just abandon those values
the minute it's time to
have a discussion about it,
you know, that they cite
the importance of community
and then start othering people
who don't agree with them
or, "I'm not going to talk to them
"because they don't agree with me,
"because community's important
"and that's why we need
to keep this name,"
or, "The Jesuit identity is so important
"and so, I'm not going to talk to people
"who don't agree with me about that."
And so, that's the kind of thing
that I think I'm most
concerned about, here,
not so much about which
way we end up coming out
on Crusaders or not Crusaders,
but that whatever values are
leading us to our conclusion,
that we embrace those
in the way we pursue it.
- So, questions around othering...
- Yeah,
- So--
- that whatever your values are,
bring those to the process
as well as to the conclusion.
- So, some people might say,
and that may be for anyone,
that, in fact, the name Crusaders
is a process of othering,
that when we're choosing
it, there's a kind of,
an us and a them and that that's
at the core dilemma to it.
You're shaking your head, yes;
Sahar is shaking her head, yes.
Is that central for either
of you, as a problem?
Is it?
- Is this a, should I start saying
what I was supposed to say
or shall I--
(audience laughing)
- Well, I was just going
to answer whatever,
whatever--
- Well, no, I mean, yes.
I do think, I mean,
this gets into the
question of interpretation:
what does history mean to people, right?
And, the Crusades happens to
mean very different things
to different people and, increasingly,
I mean, I unfortunately wasn't here
for the talk of Professor Madigan,
so I am sorry if I am repeating
anything that he said,
but, you know, this,
there is an increasing sense
in, among medievalists,
that the Crusades actually was a very,
when we even evaluate it
on its own terms, right,
which is what historians
are always claiming to do,
that there is, there
was immense destruction
and loss of life, right,
that anti-Semitism
as we know it in the context
of Europe really emerges
with the Crusades, right?
So, whether we want to
emphasize the negative aspects
or the alleged positive
aspects of the Crusade,
I think in either case
what it comes down to is
that people are increasingly
seeing the Crusades as this,
as something to be
reevaluated or, you know,
a series of historical phenomena
that need to be reevaluated
instead if valorized.
And, besides that, I think that there are
and I know that there are many people
for whom Crusader evokes
a lot of anxiety about othering,
about being separate, about
being not included, right,
because it is a story, in some senses,
about taking something back
that is ours, right, the Holy Land,
so that's sort of a long-winded response
to your question on it, in relation
to what Kendy was saying.
- Mat?
- Yeah, I'm particularly
fortunate, this semester,
to have a really great
class, Religion and Violence,
and we've been talking about
some of of these issues
and, just to give you an example
of how provocative it can be,
we were talking today about whether or not
the Irish Republican
Army could be understood
as a Catholic terrorist group,
that based upon blood sacrifice
that worked both memetically
and in the temporal realm
and also mystically in
the supernatural realm
or, at least, so it was intended.
So, everything kind of gets
on the table in this course
and we have talked at great
length about the Crusader issue.
No one in the class wanted
to valorize or praise
the historical reality of the Crusades,
which involved tremendous loss of life,
massacring of combatants
and non-combatant Muslims,
massacring of Jews.
No one wanted to affirm
those kinds of values,
but the question was raised,
whether or not you can separate out
the symbol of the Crusader
from its historical context
and whether, when we're
talking about symbols,
we are, or totems, we're
talking about something
that inheres in the symbol
or its impact upon us.
And, as a thought experiment,
a student raised a very interesting issue.
"I went to a high school," he said,
"where the devil was the mascot," okay,
and I told him I would say this
and I told him, also,
that people would chuckle,
but for Evangelical Christians,
for traditional Catholics,
that's a sign of othering, okay,
and also the response would be,
"Well, we don't intend
it, you know, as something
"that is related to the
Devil," historically understood
either within the Christian
or the Islamic tradition,
but in doing so, what you're doing is
you are separating out the symbol
from its discursive context
and historical context.
So, the question would be,
for me, in approaching this is
that it's really important, obviously,
to reflect upon our own values
and how we imbue this particular symbol
with our own values,
fears and experiences,
but that the discussion
needs to move, also,
to thinking about, as a
community, how we can re-think
or consider the kinds of images
that we hold precious
as reflecting the values
that we hold precious
and sometimes the connection
between history and the image
is not necessarily the only criterion
by which that discussion
should move forward.
- John you can have that one.
- Yeah, that's a--
- John deals with symbols, so,
the word symbol,
- Right, right.
- I'm sure, got to him.
- I teach Sacrament and Liturgy,
so I deal a lot with symbols
and I can piggyback on
what you said, Mathew.
I think that's right on target
because symbols do get
a life of their own,
so I think to get stuck
in the historical context
of the Crusades might be a mistake.
I understand that it's got
resonances and meanings.
I mean, since I've been thinking,
since Tom asked me about
this a couple of months ago,
my thinking has been all
over the place about this
and the basic thing I think,
right now, is I'm very happy
I don't have to be in your shoes next year
in trying to figure this out.
But, when I think about symbols, I do,
symbols are, by their nature, multivalent.
They mean an awful lot of things.
We bring ourselves to them
and they're very different,
when I teach Sacraments,
I try to distinguish
between sign and symbol
and I use the, it's kind
of a pedestrian example,
not to pun, a Stop sign.
A Stop sign, you know,
is a red-colored octagon
with the words S-T-O-P in the front
and what, well, a Stop sign
connotes something to you,
it denotes, I should say; it
denotes that you should stop.
So, you better stop that car,
otherwise you might run into somebody
or you might get a ticket.
Okay, so that's a, pretty much,
a one-to-one correspondence,
but, if you lived as I did
for many years in Berkeley,
where I first met Father Boroughs,
you'd go down the street
and sometimes you'd see on Stop signs,
"Stop wearing fur,"
or, "Stop eating meat."
So, then the Stop sign had
turned into a symbol, right,
so what a symbol does
is it implicates you.
It makes you come to a decision.
So, the way, the various
ways that we approach
something like the name Crusader is going
to draw us into it with
some kind of commitment
and I think it's good if
you can step back from that
and question your own values
and to listen to other people,
to really engage in dialog.
From what I've been
reading, from the little
that I was able to watch
of Kevin Madigan's talk,
what I just read in the Crusader, now,
and some other things,
I realize there's a lot
of passion around this
and people have lots of commitments
and I think it'd be great
just to put those on the table, first,
in as calm and rational a way as one can.
It's, I think, a great
way of approaching this.
Can I say something about my historical?
- Sure.
- Because I am also
a historian of the Liturgy
and I was thinking,
the Crusades have a very
different meaning for me,
in terms of my being a Liturgist.
Most of my work in the
historical realm has been
on three cities: Rome,
Jerusalem and Constantinople.
One of the reasons for the
Crusades in the first place was
the destruction of the
Holy Sepulchre in 1009
by the Caliph Hakim.
That was one of,
and I don't think Kevin
Madigan mentioned that,
but that was one of the,
that was part of the impetus
for the anger in Europe,
over this, because the holiest places
of Christianity had been destroyed.
What's there now, the
so-called Crusader Church,
is very different from
what was there before.
The second is the Fourth Crusade,
that we rarely talk about,
the Fourth Crusade was,
never got to Asia Minor
or to the Middle East.
It stopped in Constantinople
where the Venetians and
their allies, the French,
completely destroyed Constantinople,
took it over for about 60 or
70 years, and forever destroyed
our relationship with
Eastern Christianity,
or at least, up until now,
has destroyed our relationship
with Eastern Christianity.
So, those are just two factors
that enter into a discourse
among many possible factors.
- Vickie?
- Yeah.
Tom initially asked us, or
at least what I understood
our remit to be was
initially to think about
how we came to think about
the question of the Crusades
from our disciplinary
perspective and in that vein,
I both attended the Student Fishbowl
which I thought was
really, really well done.
I want to commend everybody
who was part of that.
It was clear that things did
get quite tense at some points
and very different senses of identity
were brought to the table,
but it was a model of
really good conversation.
And then, I've watched
Professor Madigan's talk,
so I've kind of been a
part of both of those
or witnessed both of those.
So, I speak as a political scientist,
thinking about what seemed
odd or just questioning,
what raised questions in my
mind to me about both of those
and also as a non-Catholic,
to situate myself,
because some of that was
being a non-Catholic, as well,
and so what I was surprised by
or didn't really understand.
So, to speak about the symbols,
as a political scientist,
for one, for several semesters,
I taught a course on nationalism
and, as you might imagine,
nationalism is a lot about
national symbols, right,
flags and things like this
and I used to do an
exercise with my students
the first day of class
where I would give them
texts of national anthems
without telling them where they were
and we would try to see
different symbols, right.
So, some countries' national
anthems focus almost entirely
on the physical beauty of the place.
They'll talk about the
rolling plains and the rivers
and the mountains and things like this.
Others are much more about
a set of political ideals,
about freedom and dignity,
not just the United States,
but other countries have those.
So, there are a lot of different ways,
even in the national anthem,
of bringing up the symbols.
And, in the Student Fishbowl,
one thing that really struck
me was among the students
who strongly defended
the use of the Crusader,
it seemed to me and I could
have misinterpreted this,
but it seemed to me that it wasn't so much
that they were necessarily
making an affirmative defense
of the Crusades as something
that we would be proud of today
and I'll circle back around to
that as political scientist,
how I think of that, but more a real sense
that Catholic identity at the
college, in general, was not
where it should be and
needed to be increased
and they kind of saw
those two as connected,
which, again, as a
non-Catholic, it was something
that was interesting and
important for me to hear
because that's not the way
I experience Holy Cross.
I don't experience it as having
a lack of Catholic identity,
but I certainly understand
why Catholic students might.
And so, there began to be
an interesting discussion
on what might be alternative names
and one student suggested The Purple
and I was very impressed
when one of the students
who had been arguing in favor
of keeping the Crusader said,
"No, that's terrible.
"Purple is royalty and
that's exactly the opposite
"of what we want to be."
So, there's a really
serious and nice thinking
about alternative symbols, but I,
coming back around to why
I brought up the example
of the different national
anthems, was, as a non-Catholic,
I didn't see why the two
couldn't be disconnected.
If one were to come around to the idea,
and I'm not saying one has to,
that the Crusades in their entirety,
because I do think it's a mistake
to focus only on the First Crusade,
and I'll talk about that in a minute,
which is mostly what
Professor Madigan did,
that as a historical event
that we look back at, now,
all five Crusades,
that it's not something we
want to be identified with,
I don't know why
that has to be locked into
Catholic identity, meaning that
there's no other Catholic
symbol one could find
and not being Catholic,
I don't know what it is,
but I don't doubt that
one could easily find it.
So, I didn't quite get that
and maybe people could
clarify that for me.
As a political scientist, the
thing that I was struck by,
both in the Fishbowl
but particularly Professor
Madigan's talk, was
that we're talking about a series of wars
and military engagments
over several decades.
Again, it's important not to
just look at the motivations
for that First Crusade, I think,
okay, and I'll explain why in a minute.
And, typically as political scientists,
it's always important to understand
the motivations of the soldiers,
which Professor Madigan
spoke to at great length,
the religious fervor, the love,
the devotion to Jerusalem,
all of that of the Crusaders
in the First Crusade,
but that's not typically
how we assess wars.
We assess them on their outcome
and there are plenty of wars
in world history in which,
without doubt, the soldiers'
motivations were very noble
and we now look back at those
was as having been disastrous
and the most recent of them
is the invasion of Iraq.
Right, I teach on the invasion of Iraq
and the outcome of the invasion of Iraq
and it's commonly the case
that when you see interviews
with American soldiers who went,
remember, this is two years after 9/11,
and they will often
say, "I joined the Army
"because I wanted to defend my country
"against what I saw was a
clear and present danger
"and I was told there was a
possibility Saddam Hussein had
"weapons of mass destruction."
I don't doubt that for a minute.
I think those were very,
very noble intentions.
Iraq did not have weapons
of mass destruction.
Iraq was not connected to 9/11.
The outcome for Iraqis
has been catastrophic.
I would argue it's made
the United States less safe
because the anarchy in
Iraq very clearly led
to the creation if ISIS.
So, what to we do with the fact
that the motivations of the
soldiers were very noble;
very few people can defend the outcome,
even in the terms of just
defending American lives,
much less what happened to Iraqis.
And, in that sense, I was very struck
in the question and answer
with Professor Madigan
when Professor Schaeffer brought up,
which has been alluded to
here, or discussed directly,
the role of even the First
but particularly the later Crusades
in the rise of anti-Semitism
and I was struck because I was watching
that I could actually write
down what Professor Madigan said
and what he said was, "Lots
of Jewish scholars point
"to the First, Second and
Third Crusades as the point
"where Jewish-Christian
relations begin to deteriorate."
He has said the 500 years before that was
a period of historic comity
or good relations between
Christians and Jews.
"I think those Jewish scholars,"
Professor Madigan says,
"are basically right."
In the full discussion
of whether the college
should retain the name,
absolutely the massacre of
innocent Jews in the Crusades
should be brought up.
In 2004, speaking to
the Eastern Christians
on the Fourth Crusade, Pope John Paul II,
not typically thought of
as a highly liberal Pope,
apologized to Bartholomew I,
then head of the world's
Orthodox Christians,
for the Fourth Crusade's
sacking of Constantinople
which had nothing to do
with the Holy Sepulchre,
nothing to do with any of the motivations
that we heard about, right,
and the very time limited
issue of the First Crusade
and the Holy Sepulchre
and religious freedom
and pilgrimage rights,
but came at the expense of
Eastern Christians, right,
so I was just a little bit,
I think it's always very valuable
to understand motivations
and to not just be presentist,
but this is also an
outward-facing discussion, right?
I mean, of course, first and foremost,
this is a symbol for us,
but especially as it reflects a team,
people outside understand what
the Crusades are, too, right,
so I don't, I think it's kind of a dodge
to just say, "Well, we can
reimagine it differently."
Maybe we can, but we
should at least be aware
that that's not the mainstream
understanding of the term
and the historical event called
the entirety of the Crusades
in the rest of the world
outside this campus.
Now, we can come back
and say we don't care
or we're going to make it for
ourselves and that's okay,
but I can say as a person who
teaches on the Middle East
and has lived in the Middle
East a lot, you know,
people have a very different
understanding of it there
and you also have to be
willing to take that on
and to accept the negatives of that
if you really want to hold on to the name.
- Sahar?
- Can I just be a little provocative
and say something?
- Go ahead.
- So, I always say this
to my students, I say,
"Well, imagine if we had a
football team or a soccer team
"in Baghdad called the Baghdad Jihadis."
Well, a jihadi is basically a crusader.
It's someone who fights in
the name of religion, right,
and they all, they
always sort of look at me
and they go, "Hmm, well,
we don't really like that."
I said, "Well, precisely," right.
This is, simply for
perspective's sake, you know,
but, I don't know,
an interesting thought
experiment, I think.
- Mark, you've been quiet and patient,
but what's at stake most for you here,
or how do you balance?
- There are lots of things at stake
and, as you know, one of the
things that I did yesterday was
just try to take stock of all
the different conversations
that have happened, the
Madigan talk and so forth,
and sketch out the kind
of landscape of issues
and I came up with lots of them
and I'm going to spare you that
list because it's significant.
I think what I'd rather do
instead is actually offer
a little bit of commentary
on a few of the items
that have been identified so far,
so the question of naming,
the question of history
and the question of symbol.
In terms of whether
naming involves othering,
I think there's been,
and by othering, we're
referring to the idea
of relegating to the status of other
some group besides one's own, right.
On some level it's intrinsic
to the very idea of naming,
- Yep.
- right?
I mean, we are this; we are not that.
And so, naming is intimately bound up
with issues of distinction, of identity
and, not least, difference
and the idea of othering is,
finds its way into
athletic teams and monikers
and mascots and all the
rest and so it seems to me
that when we're talking
about the naming issue,
the question is whether
the naming becomes,
in a sense, problematically or
dangerously othering, right?
Whether it has something to say
about specific groups of others,
that can be very, very
injurious and problematic.
Whether or not the
Crusader name does that,
we can all decide at some point.
- Would it be, how would you
answer that, for that name,
or how do you begin to answer it?
- I'm going to dodge that a little bit
by moving into the second issue,
(Tom laughing)
the issue of history,
- Okay.
- right?
I mean, we've identified
at least four different
dimensions of history, here,
and what the name Crusader
means is going to be a function
of which of those different dimensions
we attach ourselves to.
There's the issue of
so-called historical reality,
that is, what were the
Crusades, quote, "actually like"
and that's what Professor
Madigan tried to do
and from his perspective,
there was solid consensus about that.
I'm not so sure about that,
precisely because of the
interpretive dimension
that you were talking about,
but that's certainly one way
of thinking about Crusader.
What were the Crusades actually like?
Were they as violent as
people say they were?
Were they offensive or defensive?
I mean, there's a whole
literature about that.
Then, there is the question of
the consequences of history,
that is, we can't just
think about the meaning
of a particular constellation of events,
but we have to understand the
significance those events have
for subsequent realities,
what they contribute to
in terms of the future.
Then, there's also the
history of reception,
that is, what are the changing ways
in which this particular
constellation of events is being
rewritten, reimagined, reseen?
And then, there is the history
of connotations, right,
and so, one of the debates that's gone on
has to do with whether or not
we ought to look to the historical reality
in order to settle this thing
and some people have said, "No,
it has contemporary meaning.
"We need to look at the resonance
"and people might be offended by it
"irrespective of what happened when."
I mean, it seems to me
that the bottom line is,
is that all of those different
dimensions have to be
brought to bear as we try to come to terms
with what the significance
of the term Crusader is.
So, that would be the second issue.
On the issue, in terms
of the issue of symbol,
I must say and I've
mentioned this to you, Tom,
I find myself asking a question
which I actually had to impose
on Father Harman, yesterday,
and the question really
had to do, actually,
with the symbol not just of the Crusader,
but the symbol of the sword
and that's more tied to the mascot
and we don't have to think
of the sword and so on,
but it seems, to me, a prominent symbol,
understanding Crusader
from a certain angle.
Where it creates some tension,
for me, at least, has to do
with the idea of Ignatius
having laid down his sword.
And so, one of the questions
I asked of Father Harman is,
"Is there a tension there
that we need to think about?"
Is there some sense in
which the Jesuit order,
and maybe this is something
that John might address,
in which the Jesuit order
moves in a different direction,
in a sense, moves beyond a
certain image of the Crusader
and begins to adopt a
different kind of value.
Now, what Father Harman said
in response to that question
was it's not clear whether
Ignatius laid down his sword
for, quote, "personal reasons,
"or whether that itself
was taken to be a symbol
"of the emergence of the Jesuit order,"
so I'd be interested to hear
what people's thoughts are about that.
But, I guess if you wanted to ask me
what's ultimately at
stake, it's the question
of whether the symbol,
the image of the Crusader
resonates sufficiently
with, is in keeping with
our deepest values, beliefs and ideals
and whether or not there could
conceivably be other ones
that might do better to
articulate and make manifest
what seems to be most
significant to this community.
- We'll stay with the
issue of the sward, maybe,
I know you had something.
What, John, how do you think of it?
I mean, certainly, the era
when the Society used it
to talk about itself was an
era when it conceived itself
in much more militant and military terms
than it does subsequently.
- Well, I'm very happy to be corrected
by any of the other Jesuits who are here,
but I don't, I never thought
of the sword as a major feature
of what happened with Ignatius.
I've always take it as a
sign that or an indication
that he was leaving behind
a life of the soldier
for a completely new life
and just letting himself go,
- Right.
- letting all of that go for a new life,
but, I mean, as you were saying
that, you know, I realized
he was very much a person of his own time.
Subsequently, he goes to the Holy Land
and he runs into a Muslim and
he's about to kill the Muslim
for saying bad things
about the Virgin Mary
and, luckily, the horse
goes in the other direction
and, thank God, he
doesn't kill the Muslim,
- Wow.
- so he's a man
of his own time,
so I think you just have to let
him be a man of his own time
and I've never thought
the sword loomed large
- Okay.
- for Jesuits.
- So, but say, even now, as a Catholic,
in terms of images of Catholicism,
tying the sword
theologically to the Church,
where does that leave you?
So, the image of the
sword, sort of carrying
with the Crusader?
- Horrified,
- Okay, well, I--
- because, yes,
I mean, my immediate
reaction would be horrified.
Whenever I've run liturgies
when the Knights of Columbus
want to draw their swords at the end,
at the institution narrative,
I always say, "Absolutely not.
"Keep those in your scabbards.
"There's no place for them in church."
But, no, I mean, I'd,
I mean, the sword is a
symbol of violence, so...
I mean, the symbol behind
the Crusader is the cross,
which we haven't even mentioned, yet.
- Right, right.
- That's where they got
their names from, right,
as Kevin Madigan said,
the cross that they wore on their bodies,
so, and I assume that's
the most important reason
that the college adopted this
in 19, whatever it was, '28 or something.
- So, was it an image, is it
a question of the visuals?
I mean, one of the visuals we have is
a guy with a giant sword
and he does have a cross on his shield,
so a revised version of a
swordless guy with a cross on him?
- I think the shield would
be plenty (laughs) myself.
- Mat, any thoughts, as a Catholic,
on the theology behind that
and the representation?
- Well, I think that, you
know, it's really problematic
and the shield is good enough for me
and you have to remember, obviously,
that this is the last
image or something like it
that, you know, a lot of
people saw before they died.
So, I think, though a
theological rethinking
of the symbol or the symbols
that we embrace as a community is
really, really, important
and I really like the way
Mark laid out the nuances
in such a discussion.
I happen to be an Amherst College graduate
and my Dad taught at Amherst College
and I think Amherst College has provided
the perfect quintessential model
for how this process should not be done.
(audience laughing)
I voted, I, there was
basically a poll of alumni
and I voted against the
Lord Jeffery Amherst image
with some reluctance, but I
was finally comfortable with it
because of what Lord Jeffery Amherst
planned to do and did do--
- What, which was?
- Infest blankets with smallpox and--
- So as to kill off Native Americans?
- Right, you know, and I,
so I was okay with voting against that
and then we were presented
with a slate of new mascots
that we could vote for.
So, there was the Purple and White, okay,
so, you know, there
were the Fighting Poets,
which did have a very vocal and combative
minority group of support,
- Accordingly.
- yeah, (laughing) and the Mammoths
and the Mammoths won, okay,
and so it was just done by vote, you know,
and it's important for alumni
and members of the community
to have some sort of direct input,
but there was no kind
of broader discussion
about what was going on with this,
whether this was just a
public relations issue,
whether it had to do with political trends
in the United States,
whether it had to do with the
history of Amherst College,
that discussion was totally absent.
So, I think the sessions
that we've been having are
good lead ups and I'm very confident
that Holy Cross, whatever
we decide as a community
and how we understand the input
will not do what Amherst
College did which was to
essentially reduce this notion
of symbology and so forth
to a very, very crass and crude process
that had no relation to
a liberal arts education.
- Uh oh.
Mark?
- Just a quick footnote to that, I mean,
another point of difference it seems to me
in terms of the Amherst
situation versus Holy Cross is
that Amherst is not a
religiously affiliated college
in the same way that we
are and so, you know,
there are colleges and
universities that name their teams
the Squirrels or the Chipmunks
or the Lions or whatever.
It's virtually immaterial what
it is that they're called.
They're looking for something
snazzy and engaging,
but one of the things that
people have brought up, rightly,
is the fear that if, in fact,
we abandon the Crusader,
we'll somehow be de-Christianizing
or de-Catholicizing the college.
And so, it seems to me
the stakes are higher here
because we're talking
about the religious identity of the school
and I guess one thing that I
would want to put on the table
is that if, in fact, it does change,
whatever the change should be,
it's going to still
have to bear the weight
in some meaningful way
of the college's Catholic
and Jesuit tradition.
Now, whether there are other
monikers and other symbols
that could do that equally
well or even better
seems to be an important issue,
but I think we would abandon
the clear Catholic and Jesuit nature
of the imagery and symbolism at our peril.
- See, and that's--
- I would also say
that there's a way that we're,
some of us, as Catholics, are
as uncomfortable with the choice, I guess,
as where it is going.
It's not simply, sort of, something we do
because other people
perceive it in a wrong way.
Kendy?
- Well, see,
I think that's part of
what's most exciting
about this opportunity,
and it's come up a couple times
in some of the discussions,
is that our mascot or our moniker,
I've never used the word moniker
so many times in my life.
- Little peers, too.
- I know.
What does this actually mean?
Anyway, but the choice of a symbol that's,
that represents an institution
or just simply revisiting
the question of the symbol
that already represents
your institution is
an incredible opportunity
to start articulating
what the institution
means, what its values are,
what matters about this institution,
what's distinctive about this institution.
Absolutely, the Catholic identity
is going to be central to that, right,
but there are, but what else,
right, what are the values?
Have they changed over time?
Have we become a different
institution than we were,
80 whatever, 90 years ago,
the last time we did this?
Who are we now and what matters to us?
And, having a discussion about that,
where we come up with, this is who we are,
this is how we understand ourselves,
this is how we want to represent
ourselves to the world,
do that; I mean, that's a
valuable discussion to have
no matter what happens,
but come up with something like that
and then talk to the
artists, talk to the poets,
talk to the creative people
and say, "Make me a symbol for this."
What would it look like to
symbolize who we think we are,
rather than just starting out
with something that we have
and seeing if we can sort of
shoe horn ourselves into it?
And, maybe we'll come
up with a new crusader.
You know, again, that's not to say
that we don't end up there.
That's not a decision in
one direction or another.
It's simply opening the possibilities
with the values and starting there
instead of starting with the history
and feeling trapped by it.
- I had just one, one more question there,
is when you say,
- Sure.
- you know, it'll need to
embody Catholicism, I mean,
and I'm thinking of Mat's
course on Catholicisms.
I mean, one issue that's
immediately going to come up,
of course, is whose Catholicism
and whether or not there is, in fact,
enough of a common ground, a tradition,
that we can come up with something
that is truly shared, communal and so on?
I mean, I think it's a worthy challenge
and I actually think
it's going to be a very,
very difficult one.
- So, how do we think about
our deepest values, there,
like what they are?
How do you begin to articulate those?
Somebody said to me,
"I can't jibe that image with
the men and women for others,"
and some of those notions
- Right.
- that we've got as
our deepest values, no,
and I don't know if,
you know, people said,
"Dorothy Day is a crusader for justice,"
I don't think we can be
the Dorothy Days up there,
side of our bus or
something, but how do we?
- Contemplatives in Action?
- Hmm?
- [Mark And Kendy]
Contemplatives in Action.
(audience laughing)
- It might be a little
rough on the athletes.
- Yeah, aggrieved nation.
- But, can I bring up just one point?
- Sure.
- And, again, I hate to sort
of emphasize the context.
I understand the argument
about the symbol, you know,
extracted from context.
It has it's own meaning,
but we do live in a context,
post-9/11 context in which
there is Islamophobia, right?
I mean, that is the
reality that we live in,
so I don't know if we can
be absolutely context-free.
I mean, I'm thinking,
- Right.
- you know, in this
conversation, it makes me think
about the debates around
the Confederate flag, right?
I mean, for many people in the South,
that's a symbol, right?
It's not a symbol of
slavery or anything else,
but for many people, I mean, that is,
that just resonates too strongly about,
you know, the history,
which if we judge it on its own terms,
I mean, sure those people
were probably nice people
and it was okay for them
to have slaves then,
according to their own terms.
But, according to our
current understanding,
this is highly problematic.
So, I'm just, I hear everything
- Right.
- that you're saying
and I just, I don't know if
looking at the way the debates
around the Confederate flag
have unfolded, no pun intended,
whether or not that's useful, at all.
- It's a helpful metaphor.
How much does it rise
to that level for you?
How comparable are they?
- With the Crusader?
- So, the Confederate flag,
here, and Crusader, here or how?
- I mean,
no, it's not the same.
It doesn't rise to the same level, but I--
- But, it's still a
good metaphor, so yeah.
- But, I think it's, you know,
it says something very
strongly to certain people
and to many people.
- Sure, when I look at it, I say,
I can't really separate out
the slavery from the notion
this is Old Rebel and my
granddad fought for this
or whatever so--
- Right, exactly.
So, no, I don't see it
as exactly the same,
but I think it's just useful
as a heuristic device,
you know, to think about.
- Were you going to, Vickie?
- Yeah, I was just going to say something,
that Tim Joseph who is the
Head of the Classics Department
who was supposed to be here today
but wasn't able to be here,
had shared with some professors
who had expressed interest in
this debate about the Crusades
a really interesting article
from The Economist in
January which is called
The Far Right's New Fascination
with the Middle Ages
and he might have brought that up
had he been here today, I don't know,
but I just wanted to read
two sentences from it.
"Since the September 11th
attacks, the American far-right
"has developed a fascination
with the Middle Ages,
"in particular with the idea of the West
"as a united civilization
that was fending off
"a challenge from the East.
"The embrace of the medieval extends
"from the alt-right online forum culture
"to stodgier old-schooled racists.
"Helmeted crusaders cry out, Deus vult!"
which, of course,
is what Professor Madigan
talked to us about
as the thing the first Crusaders said
when they went to war.
"From memes circulated
on Reddit and 4chan,"
which many of you will know
are kind of very right-wing,
homophobic, often
misogynistic online sites,
"images of Donald Trump clad in mail
"with a cross embroidered
on his chest abound.
"Anti-Islam journals and
websites name themselves
"after the Frankish king Charles Martel
"who fought Muslim armies
in the 8th century."
Now, again, I think one
thing that was discussed
at the student forum,
but not brought up in
Professor Madigan's talk
for fairly obvious reasons was the issue
that the editors of the
newspaper brought up
in response to the letter
to which I was a signatory
of many folks, many faculty at the college
calling for a discussion on this, the fact
that the KKK's main newspaper
is also called The Crusader
and I think all of us, I wasn't part of,
I listened to that discussion,
I wasn't part of it
because it was a Student Fishbowl,
but I think people rightly agreed that
that in and of itself is not
a reason to change the name,
but it is a reason to kind of, it is,
it's not inseparable
from the kinds of issues
that many of us have been raising, right?
So, I would absolutely
agree that that alone
would not be a reason to change the name,
but there is a reason why
these, there's like an affinity
or a clustering of things going on--
- So, you're saying what it is
about the Crusades
- Yeah.
- That is attractive to these people
- Yeah, absolutely.
- Who, it's something
that we have to come to grips with?
- Absolutely, and I was coming off
of what Sahar had just said
about the 9.11 context, right,
about this idea, what
these people are taking
from the Middle Ages and
including in that the Crusades
is an us versus them, a West
which they argue is white
and the article goes on to talk about
how historians have pushed back and shown
that, well, the West was not all white
and all kinds of different ways
to try to push back
against that, but an image
which certainly is not
completely historically correct
by any means, but has been
appropriated by these folks
because they think it very much,
very clearly is an othering.
I mean, they're quite explicit about that,
except they see that as valuable, right.
They very much want to other
up some historic white West
which they imagine as having been great
because it was othering all kinds
of other people, right,
- Okay.
- which is certainly
not the view that we're,
any of us, would be taking
at Holy Cross, obviously.
- And then, of course,
I think it's, I mean,
just to sort of put it out there,
if you look at groups
like Al-Qaeda or ISIS,
they run with this
metaphor as well, right,
so, you know, on one hand we
have the alt-right talking
about or appropriating this history
and and we also have other
radicals from the other side
who are also appropriating
the same kind of discourse
and that, I mean, that
suggests something to me
about how,
how generative that symbology is,
really, about that, I
mean, generative maybe--
- Plastic.
- Neo-plastic, maybe,
flexible, maybe not generative.
- At least thinking as a
sociologist, I think about sort of
what it's taken to build
an alumni loyalty group,
the sense of people being Crusaders,
that that's not something to
be just sort of dismissed,
that people hold themselves real together.
They may not have all that intentionality.
They may not think about
what the Crusades mean,
but they, you know,
- Sure.
- they'll say that, "I'm a Crusader,"
or they'll say, "Well, I
don't mean the bad part;
"I only mean the good part," so, I mean,
how do we think about or take into account
what's at stake there, John?
- Well, something you
said earlier stuck with me
and just let me think
out loud for a second.
When you said, "We're not
going to put Dorothy Day
"on the side of a bus as
a crusader for justice,"
but as a matter of fact,
it may not be the name;
it may be the image, huh,
when you look at the knight
on the cover of the paper, here,
because crusader does, it
can be redeemed, right?
It can have a very redeeming, right?
Harvey Milk was a
crusader for LGBT rights.
Dorothy Day was a crusader
for social justice.
There was a group, I don't
know if they still exist,
the Campus Crusade for Christ
or Billy Graham's revivals
were called crusades,
so there's a lot, a range of meaning
and maybe the name could
be redeemed with an image.
I don't know, I'm just
totally thinking out loud.
- But, I think it is important to remember
how much this symbol
means to a lot of people.
It's very easy to get all
ramped up, all the history,
"Whoa, I had no idea it was so bad,"
and, "Oh, you know, the current climate,
"this is really offensive
to a lot of people.
"I can see why it would be offensive
"or threatening to people,"
and so it's very easy
to get caught up in that
and lose track of the individual
meaning that this carries
for so many of our alumni
and I think that's important.
Contemporary theories of politics
and ethics and other things
are kind of blind in principle
to what it takes to build a community
and to maintain a community
and I'm not going to get into
that, but because of the ways
that these discourses have developed,
especially over the last 40 years,
we tend to devalue the
things that unify us
outside of sort of rational
principled commitments.
And, I think we're starting to see it,
not necessarily us at Holy
Cross, although here, too.
But, more generally, what
happens when communities aren't,
aren't very well unified?
They start to crumble
and I would be leery of
being too quick to jettison
something that's a little problematic
and then find out later
that it really was an important part
of how people understood themselves
to be a part of something.
And, my own tendency is
to not place, I think,
enough value on those things
because I grew up in
these specific traditions,
and so I make a conscious
effort to try to be more careful
of these sort of community
centering, community building,
community naming things
than my tendencies include
and so that's just kind of a caution
for other people who,
like me, grew up here.
- I mean, I'm also
conscious when you do that,
it's easiest if you have
an enemy represented.
If you have an other,
the stronger the other is
and the more you're against
it, the more cohesive
the group's going to be.
- That's a good way
to point that out.
- So, that part is problematic.
Mark and then, well try
- Just a quick thing,
- and take it to them.
- when you mentioned alumni, before,
and that, of course, is a very real issue,
it just brings up the broader issue
of the many constituencies
that need to be thought of
as we go about this process.
What are the various constituencies?
And, they range from alumni
to people who are offended
here and now by the image,
by the symbol, whatever, so,
who are the constituencies?
How should we think about them?
And, probably the most difficult question
or one of the most difficult questions,
does any of them have priority, right?
Is there any way to think
about which constituency
or constituencies somehow
deserve to be brought to the top?
I mean, and probably
the immediate answer is,
"Oh no, we wouldn't want to do that,"
but in the end,
- Although, we say--
- it's probably going to
happen in some way, that is,
how are we going to establish
an appropriate ordering of constituencies
based on our deepest values and so on
and that, I think, is going to be
another very hard conversation to have.
- I mean, I think it, despite what I said,
I think a part of what we're seeing,
we are being for others
- Right.
- and there are very different ways
- That's right.
- we might perceive Crusader
and others perceive it.
- Actually.
- And, again, when we come
back to those core values, we say
we want to be for others.
- Right.
- Are there people in the...
Geez, the Jesuits are
jumping right in there, so,
so, just say who you are,
please, and use the mic and all.
- I'm Jim Hayes, I'm one of
the Chaplains, Class of 1972.
I like to say John was a
Senior when I was Freshman.
So, you know, on he seal itself,
our motto is, (speaking foreign language)
which refers to Constantine's
taking the sign of the cross
at the Battle of the Milvian bridge
and, you know, not only does
Ignatius lay down his sword,
but he lays down his shield,
so the shield is pretty important
and they, I understand that La Storta
where Ignatius saw Jesus
carrying the cross,
that spot is very near the
Battle of the Milvian Bridge,
so, again, this idea of
the cross is so important.
So, maybe this is crazy,
but why don't we just change the name
from Crusader, to put an X instead of an S
and then we focus more on
the symbol of the cross
than the Crusades.
- [Kendy] Interesting.
- Mike Rogers, Class of
2002, Jesuit Chaplain,
and in context of the question
that I'm going to ask,
I'm the newly named Athletic Chaplain
and I think one of the
things that's interesting
as I listen to this conversation is
that we're talking about
the different constituencies
that are represented, but the
one thing that didn't come up
was actually the place where
this is most commonly used,
which is to say, up in
the Luth Athletic Complex
and I wonder if one of our values,
say, we're going to get
rid of the Crusader,
if one of our values is finding something
that doesn't actively other people,
that's actually what a sports mascot does.
I mean, that's practically what it does.
It says, you know, who are we, with,
- Right.
- to quote the cheerleaders,
"Who are we?
"We are Crusaders,"
and at Boston College, you say,
"Let's go Eagles, beat whoever,"
and so, I guess I just wonder
about the practicality of the
conversation in that context,
given the way in which
these symbols are used.
- [Tom] I guess what I'd ask you,
you use BC versus, no,
one of 'em Crusaders.
There's an us and there's a them.
But, no, Eagles, yes it's a mascot.
There's not a kind of, I don't know,
if there were mice or something,
would you be endangered
or exactly what, but
how we think about that
because I think ours in particular,
someone mentioned Spartans, before, is
another us versus them.
- Oh, now, and I'd agree,
but I think if we're talking
about setting a mascot,
a new one, and saying,
one of our values is we're
not going to other people,
I'd say, well that, maybe,
isn't a practical consideration
in this context.
- [Tom] So, you think Eagles others people
in the same, in a comparable way?
- No, but what I'm saying is
we're always going to be othering people.
- We'll get all the
Jesuits out of the way.
(audience laughing)
- [Kendy] So to speak.
- I'm Father Earl Markey.
I've been here at Holy Cross 40 years.
As a graduate of Holy Cross--
- Earl, hold it closer to your mouth.
(blowing)
- Okay, I just wanted
to make an observation
on St. Ignatius and the sword.
I'll start from the back.
The sword, his placing at the
feet of the Blessed Mother
at the monastery at Montserrat was a turn
from militarism in his life
to the Cross, the Holy Cross,
and that's what it became,
so the Cross is the ultimate symbol.
Now, Ignatius, as you
know, was a military man,
in the Battle of Pamplona, was wounded,
went back to his home and recuperated
and while he was recuperating,
he asked for something to read.
There's not much to read
except the lives of the saints
and now he has a conversion,
so that sword represents the past.
The conversion is now
his whole life searching
for his true desire to serve God.
Now, he was injured in battle.
Now, we know from the wounds of battle,
when I was a student here,
we had many veterans here
and as you might, well, you
wouldn't recall, but I do,
seminaries, monasteries
were filled with people
who had the conversion
from the military life
and all that terrible devastation,
loss of life and everything,
they were converted
and became religiously
oriented, at least that.
So, I just wanted to make
sure we all understood
that Ignatius' sword became
something that's now,
I think, on display in Barcelona,
at the Jesuit residence, but it really was
a turning to the Holy Cross.
- Right.
- Oh, Virginia Raguin of Visual Arts,
so I break the cycle here.
There are two things I
just wanted to kind of ask
that we think about a little bit more.
One of them is exactly
as Father Markey said,
this issue of struggle and I
go back to the issue of jihad.
From the Muslims I know, the
concept is inner struggle.
The core issue of struggle is
to struggle with oneself to betterment
and consistently, through this is,
we have problems with symbols, right?
Throughout Christian tradition,
the idea of the struggle with
self in the Christian warrior,
the Miles Christi is not
one of getting the other,
but one of conflict with
the self, in some way,
a sort of, contradict
our natural instincts
to think only about ourselves
and so, therefore, that
struggle is to suppress that
less men and women for others.
So, that is something that
in the issue of the Crusader,
or, shall we say, someone who fights
and I'm thinking about, well,
the fact, most of us now,
we have to really look
at this very seriously.
We are an elite.
Men, young men, at this
age, are not expecting
that they're going to go to war.
This is very unusual.
Throughout our history,
there have been generation
after generation and, in general,
someone has always had to go to war.
So, the fact that that,
we don't have that now,
the idea of, who could possibly go to war?
Going to war and fighting,
oh, that's not very good,
so that there's a split between, somehow,
what our obligations are and where we go.
And, the other is to
think very, very carefully
about the present.
We have consistently in the
last, well, 10, 15 years,
been very eager to erase
what we think is wrong about the past
because, of course, we have
it right now, don't we?
And, I'm thinking of efforts
to cut off offensive engravings
in the middle of Santa Fe's Plaza,
I have one more, okay, you
have the perfidious Indians,
but that was just cut off.
But, now, no way to look
back and sort of say,
what was that conflict that was
and do we continually
have these conflicts?
So, this is basically, I think, just
I was very appreciative
for all of the perspectives
that you all brought.
It was quite wonderful and I'm
sorry I missed the Fishbowl
and thank you for taping everything
but this is to thank you
and I hope these thoughts
become part of the discussion.
- [Sahar] Can I respond to that?
- Please.
- Or, say something to that?
I was going to say in my comments
that I don't think this is
the end of this conversation.
This conversation will
happen again in another 50
or a hundred years.
It's not that we have the truth.
It's not that we know it.
It's that history, again, I'm going from,
as the perspective of a historian,
history always, even
when we try to read it
on it's own terms, always,
is related to our present
and our present is going to change
and, hence, and our present
has changed from the moment
when the Crusader became the
mascot or the moniker, right,
and it will change again.
Well, maybe it will, maybe it won't,
but I think this conversation
will happen again,
somewhere down the line.
- Is it inevitable that
if you take a mascot
or a symbol like, and
we're talking about it
in all sorts of multi-inflected
ways as a symbol,
but basically we reduce
it to something pretty,
you know, it's a cartoon character
a guy in a, or a girl
in a cartoon character
doing something with a sword.
I mean, can we take the Crusader image
or any other image we use
and make it anything other
than a sort of simple
black and white, here's
what I project on it
or are we overthinking what
can be done with a mascot?
- I was tying to think
of the various mascots for Jesuit schools,
and not many of them have much religious,
many religious ramifications,
the Ram for Fordham,
the Eagle for Boston College.
- [Spectator] The Bulldogs.
- The Bulldogs, the
Broncos of Santa Clara,
the Billikens of St. Louis,
I don't think we'd ever want
to adopt them.
- The Hoyas.
- The Hoya.
- Hoya, Hoyas.
- The Hoyas, the Stag of Fairfield does,
actually, the Stag has,
with your school, has a,
is carrying the banner
of the Resurrection,
which is the banner of the Cross.
That's an interesting
one, but, by and large,
they don't have any
religious resonance to them.
- So, we can't, we can't
go into that direction.
- No way.
(laughing)
- I think it really could--
- So, I think, hi, I'm
Emily, I'm a senior here.
I think a lot of this
conversation has been, like,
really appropriately about how do we enter
into this conversation
and what is at stake in the conversation
which was something that
was, perhaps, kind of missing
from the Student Fishbowl
where we just have a tendency
to like dive right in, but I'm wondering,
eventually we're approaching
a kind of binary question
of "Do we keep a Crusader
mascot or do we change it?"
unless we have, like, a
Brooks Crusader or something
(laughing)
and I'm wondering if there's a way
for us to
- Associating the culture
of the administration.
- approach this conversation
without, or a way for us
- Think fast, talk.
- to eventually make a decision, like,
to form this conversation in a way
where huge portion of the student body
and alums don't feel completely
dismissed and disappointed,
so I didn't know if there
were any opinions about that.
- Do students feel that way, now,
dismissed, at this point, no?
- I don't think so,
- Okay, all right.
- [Emily] but I guess,
you know, it is possible.
- Mathew?
- Yeah.
I would just say I do know some students
who really do feel
dismissed, so it is an issue.
- [Tom] On both sides of the issue?
- Yeah, on both sides
of the issue, exactly,
in that, you know, in
conversations I've had,
you know, about this issue in my office,
it's not obviously a sample,
but, you know, it's always like,
they're going to as our opinion, too.
Aren't we going to be
involved in some way?
And so, I think it is and
the commitment to the symbol
or the interest in it, in discussing it,
you know, comes from a variety
of different commitments,
but it's really there and as Mark says,
there are a number constituencies
and one of the more
painful processes will be
who gets privilege, you get
all these constituencies
and you get input in some sort of way,
but then, you know, a
decision has to be made
and you could do it just
sort of democratically
with no substantive
discussion, like Amherst did,
or you could have a lot of discussion
and then everyone gets
really, really invested
and then people are even more upset
when, you know, things don't go in a way
that they expected or wanted.
- Can I put you on the spot for a second?
What, and in light of Emily's question,
well, not just you but
anybody, Tom, anybody,
what kind of process might
the community engage in
that wouldn't be a mere matter
of putting ideas out there
and voting, you know,
committing the same errors
that happened at Amherst?
Have we begun to imagine a process
that is sort of organic
enough to really lead
to the kind of substantive
discussion and decision-making
that presumably is going to
need to happen at some point?
- I mean, I haven't presumed
- What would that look like?
- to think about what
the process would be.
I don't assume I'll be involved in it,
but I think finding a couple
of ways to begin to bring
parts of that conversation out there,
that people can watch
it online, I would hope
that the people who think
about it and vote about it,
would do that after watching,
at least, some of these
and whatever things come along,
but at least hope to
demonstrate that it's been
a thoughtful process
that is going to have,
that is about comparative losses and gains
and dilemmas and others, John?
- If Tim Joseph were here, he
could speak to the alum factor
as well as I, but it seems to me
the alums should certainly
have something to say.
I think people want to be heard, right?
- I presume they will.
- I think that's
a very important value, that
people are honestly heard.
I think, my suspicion is
that you'd get a huge variety
of reactions from alumni, a huge variety.
People I've spoken to already,
I get the whole spectrum
of opinions or attitudes toward this,
but I think people really do want,
I think the worst thing would be
if people weren't really
heard, not included.
I don't know what that says
to the process, exactly.
- [Frank] Hi, it's Frank Vellaccio.
I'm the Senior Vice President.
I guess one of the
things that I worry about
when I've been thinking
about this issue is
that sometimes you open a door
and you immediately
find yourself in a room
where there's another
door you have to open
and I think if we start talking
about the appropriateness of the Crusader,
it's hard to have an argument around that
that isn't going to bring up the notion
of the symbol of the Cross
and the connotations that
has to people and its meaning
and whether, in fact, the
arguments one's going to use
with regards to Crusader are not arguments
that aren't, are then going to be relevant
to the question of our name,
the College of the Holy Cross
and whether that, whether I
really want to enter a door
that then brings me to
that door facing me,
because I can't imagine
that conversation being one
that we can easily engage in.
- [Spectator] I think it's right away.
- [Tom] You think, you say
that we could easily engage in.
I, why do we have to go
to one given the other?
- [Frank] I just think it's, I see as hard
to raise arguments
around the name Crusader
that aren't relevant to
the symbol of the Cross
and the name Holy Cross.
I just think, it seems to me,
- That would be (drowned out).
- that they're, the arguments,
- I don't see that.
- [Frank] I mean, sure, there'd be
some subtleties between them,
but, I think that
- Right.
- Yeah.
- they're there.
- [Tom] I guess, I mean,
at least what I'm hearing
mostly has to do with the
origins of the Crusades,
of the the violence being committed.
The Crucifixion was a violent act,
but it was against Jesus.
- But it's all done
for the symbol of the Cross,
it was all done for the
symbol of the cross.
I mean, I don't know,
- Yes, I was on the board
during that time.
- people disagree with me,
but, he's laughing.
- [Tom] Anyone?
A lot of heads shaking no, but I thought,
any responses, no?
- Well, I would just say that, I mean,
I hear what you're
saying, you know, the idea
that this is,
a domino effect will
occur as a result of this,
but I think if we start
thinking in those terms,
then, I mean, we'll, we
won't have any conversations
about anything and I think
that, you know, you get,
you know, you cross that
bridge when you get to it,
so, I mean, that's just a
strategy thing, I think,
that I disagree with.
I think one shouldn't be
afraid of the domino effect
and therefore not have the conversations.
- But, I think it's a fair concern.
I can understand the concern,
even if I don't think
that it would be a justified move,
to use the same arguments
around the symbol of the Cross
as around the Crusaders.
I can certainly expect that people would.
I mean, people make bad
arguments all the time.
It's part of why I have a job
(audience and panel laughing)
and I think that one of the things
we could do is prepare responses.
You know, for people who are
disturbed or uncomfortable
or whatever about the
symbol of the Crusader
who love the College of the Holy Cross
and have no interest
and don't have a problem
with the College of the Holy Cross,
I think one of the things we
could do is start preparing
an explanation for why
those are not the same thing
and why the argument doesn't carry over
and people who try to
make that move are wrong
or whatever your position would be,
but I'm not sure that it counts
against having this discussion.
- [Callie] Hi, I'm
Callie and I'm a freshman
and I, like, love hearing
all these perspectives
and I think that they're the
most important in my opinion,
but I know that there is, like,
a monetary component to it
and how do you think
that we should really approach this topic
and should we considering that
or is it ultimately, like,
all about the symbolism
and the ethics and I don't know?
- It would, say more to me
- Yeah.
- [Tom] about those problems.
- [Callie] Just, like, I
know that it's very costly
to the College to change it
and like the shirts and it's
just, and all the buildings
and, like, wherever you see
the word Crusader, basically,
which is almost everywhere
and maybe that would result
in a lack of donations from
alumni who are upset by this,
yeah, and how should we consider that
and should we really be considering it
or I wonder what your opinion is?
- I think Joanne wanted to
say something, Joanne Pierce.
- [Tom] To that point,
or did anyone want to?
- I was just going to
say, well, we have time.
Thanks, oh, I'm Joanne Pierce,
Department of Religious Studies.
There are, it's a complicated issue
and the question about taking the Cross
as opposed to the Crusader, I think it,
we probably could take a look at that
in two different lights.
For example, the Papal speech by Urban II
at the Council of Clermont
stresses not so much the Cross,
but the idea that one can
win forgiveness of one's sins
by going on this religious
journey and stresses
that it's actually akin to
a penitential pilgrimage.
The other thing that's also stressed
that I haven't really heard
expressed here at all is
that it's a very masculine symbol.
As a matter of fact, even
though there were exceptions
in later Crusades,
- Oh, really?
- [Joanne] Urban's speech
specifically forbids
women and children to
engage on the Crusade,
so I, first of all, I
think it is possible,
one can certainly expand
the Crusader image
or expand the meaning of what
it means to be a Crusader,
although I don't think the,
you know, Pummeling Penitents
is going to do very much
for the football team
or the Fighting, the Fighting Pilgrims,
but on the other hand,
- You could say it's where
- The, well, I don't know,
- losing our position effort.
Maybe we can convince the end.
- the Bouncing Black Robes,
I don't know, I suppose
we could take that too.
Well, the Dominicans, don't
that have the Fighting Friars?
There are a lot of things
that can be stressed in this,
but one of the things that
does disturb me personally
about the Crusaders is that it is
more than many of the other symbols,
at least that Jesuit
colleges have, it really is
a very crystallized and a very
specifically oriented symbol,
as opposed to Eagles or Rams
or, what is it, Billikens
or we don't know what a Hoya is
and I went to Georgetown,
- Right, exactly (laughs).
- [Joanne] so, okay, thank you.
- Of course, I wear my thing...
- [James] Hi, I'm James
Neville, Class of 2020.
My question is pulling from pro sports,
two teams with names and symbols
that relate to a religion,
the New Jersey Devils and
the New Orleans Saints,
both have taken a different approach
in that the New Jersey Devils largely,
especially in their mascot,
have taken a very comical approach,
if you look look at the mascot,
versus the New Orleans Saints have taken
a much more dignified and regal approach.
Which one is better, I don't know,
but I'd be interested in
hearing all of your opinions
on whether Holy Cross could,
in a way, keep the name Crusader
but kind of choose one of those two paths
for a new mascot or a new logo as a way
to both appease tension
but, at the same time,
not anger any of those
who hold the name Crusader
dear to their hearts.
- John?
- Well, I mean,
I said this before, I
think that is something
that could be thought about.
I don't know if it's the solution,
but I think it might be a
way to go, I don't know.
I'd be at pains to figure
out how to image it,
but there are a lot of
smart people around here.
- [John M.] Hi, I'm John
Milligan, I'm a Senior.
I participated in the Student Fishbowl
that some people were in attendance at
and I think one of the
big things that came out,
if I could comment on
like the domino effect,
is that there is definitely
a feeling by students
on the campus that the Crusader is
by no means the first domino and, in fact,
the domino effect is happening
and we're watching things
that are symbols or monikers,
I guess we can say, of our
Catholic identity slip away
and that the Crusader,
changing that would be
just a furtherance of this
effect that's already happening
and I'd ask, I think,
one thing that additionally
came out in that Fishbowl is
that our understanding of
the Crusades, what they were,
how they happened was pretty poor,
the education around the Crusades,
so my question would be, how do you think,
given Kevin Madigan's
talk and other events,
that we can educate more
than just the people
that come to these talks,
but a campus-wide education
on the issue of the Crusades?
And, is there a fair and
balanced way to do that
because obviously, as a History major,
I know there's multiple
ways to interpret things,
so is there a fair and balanced
way that we can educate
the majority of students on
campus about the Crusades,
so that we can all be using
that base of knowledge
when we have these discussions?
- [Kendy] Chris Moore's coronary.
- [Tom] Anyone?
- You know, we might be able to do more
to educate people on the Crusades
and, you know, have people
have sufficient information
about the historical
dimension to be able to arrive
at a more considered judgment,
but there's still the question
of how relevant that is
and I'm certainly not
saying that it's irrelevant,
but there's a whole slew
of other considerations
that have to be brought to
bear in the ultimate decision
besides what the Crusades actually were.
The other thing I, you know,
I guess I would ask is, again,
the notion that by somehow
moving away from the Crusader,
we're somehow moving away from
Catholic and Jesuit tradition
may or may not be the case
and so, I understand why it is
that it could be construed as that,
but the question still
remains about whether or not
there could be other symbols,
other mascots, other monikers
that would do as much work, so to speak,
as the current ones do and
maybe even do it better.
I don't think that's out of
the realm of possibility.
- Yeah.
- Can't tell you
what those are, though.
- Okay, we'll do
three short questions and
I'll give each of you a chance
if you have a closing comment.
- [Emily] Hi, I'm Emily, I'm a Freshman
and to piggyback off
of what you were saying
about constituents, I think
one of the constituencies
we need to think about is
definitely the current
alumni that we have,
but also the future alumni that we have,
because most of, students at Holy Cross,
most of their time in
relation to Holy Cross
will be as alumni
and I think that whether we
change the Crusader or not
will have a big impact on what
the makeup of that alumni is.
You know, we sort of, I
think, I have perceived
that we have an intention
of making our alumni
and making our students more
diverse, more intersectional
and I think that sometimes
the Crusader image fights
against that purpose.
And, that also gets
to, how Catholic are we
and how Catholic do we want to be?
So, I think we also need to think
about what will changing the image mean
to students who are applying
and who wants to be here
with us at Holy Cross.
- Did it affect any of you
when you were applying?
Didn't think about it?
- I love the fact that
there are all these concerns
to think of before certain
students (drowned out),
you know?
- They're not very good teeth, really.
- Yeah, that's the thing.
- Thank you, Dr. Landy, I'm Brian Senier.
I'm a Sophomore at the college.
A Republican Senator who
I'm fond of often says,
"the meta-battle in life
and in politics lies
"in framing the narrative,"
and I think as we frame our narrative,
one obstacle, to harken
back to John's apt point
that I have found and
encountered as a student
in engaging in these discussions is
that proponents of changing
the name will often conflate
the issue of the Crusader
with the issue today,
given our President
and issues of Islamophobia
that are very real
and that we face in the United
States and around the world
while on the other hand,
opponents of the name change worry
that Holy Cross' Catholic identity
and heritage is slipping away.
The most salient point, I
think, to that regard is
in our admissions materials
no longer containing
the seal that Father Hayes mentioned with,
"In this time, you shall
conquer," but rather including
"Ask more," with sort of the Jesuit sun.
So, I think, going forward,
I anticipate that we will face issues
if we don't address those
two disparate constituencies
and make sure they feel as though
their needs are being heard properly.
- Yeah.
- You're going to be short?
- Yep, very articulate.
- Yeah.
- Rob Bellin in Biology,
I don't want to make this
a long comment because
Tom told me I can't,
(audience and panel laughing)
but it, but to give a
context that 16 years ago,
when I applied for a
position at this school
and then was offered the job,
the pro-con list, the biggest
con on the con list was
that the college called
itself the Crusaders
and it's for me, and that
was actually as a Catholic,
raised as a Catholic,
and went to a Benedictine
Catholic school in Minnesota.
I was very worried about what it meant
to go to a Catholic
institution that tied itself
to a part of the Catholic history
that I had a lot of worry about,
why the school was binding itself
to that part of the history,
plainly because I see Catholicism
being a very broad thing
with a lot of very meaningful parts.
And so, I worry a little bit when we say
that we're automatically
losing our Catholic identity
if we move away from a
symbol like the Crusader
because I think there
is a wealth of identity
that is Catholic and I can
just say that 16 years ago,
it made me worry about
the school's identity
as a Catholic institution
to be binding itself
to that type of image.
- [Barrett] Hi, I'm Barrett,
a current Sophomore here.
There's been a lot of talk,
from the Student Fishbowl discussion
to the present talk, now,
about the strength of
an identity of a school
and how that relates to the students
and it's really interesting
to see all the different viewpoints.
However, looking around this room,
I'd been to the Fishbowl, also.
There's many similar faces.
However, if you look outside
on the Hoval, right now,
you'll notice there's many more students
just playing Frisbee,
even though there's apparently
this huge debate going on
on our campus about what it means,
how important the identity is.
And, just to share a
quick case study, here,
I know it's a very small example,
I was walking down to the
discussion here, right.
I invited some friends from
my floor to accompany me
and they said, "No, I don't really care.
"It's Chicken Parm night
and I just want to get there
"before the line forms."
(audience laughing)
So, I was wondering if this
whole mascot discussion is just,
does it really represent
the center of the bell curve
of the entire student population,
or is it just two extremes
making mountains out of
mole hills, if you will?
- Chicken Parm.
- That's a good question.
- [Tom] A last word from any of you?
(audience laughing)
You can answer any of those questions.
You can come in with something we missed.
- I mean, to that point,
I would certainly agree
and this is sort of
where you started us off
that this is not the biggest
issue facing anybody on this,
hopefully, well, actually,
if your life is so settled
that you are so unaware
of the larger world
that this is the biggest
thing on your horizon,
then we should get together and hang out
because you are very zen.
(audience laughing)
I don't think that any of
us is trying to suggest
that this is the most important issue
that we'll face as a community,
but I think it does matter,
even if it's not the most important thing.
And, sort of to back to where I started,
I don't think it even matters so much
for how we end up resolving this,
because as Emily pointed out, we will.
There's a binary here;
it either will change or won't change,
so one way or another,
something's going to happen or not happen,
but I don't think that that's
the most important part.
I think the most important part
is the kinds of discussions
that we can have around that topic
and, to the extent there are people
who don't want to
participate, that's fine.
You know, they, hopefully are
participating in other issues
that they're more concerned about,
but for those people who are
interested in these kinds
of questions of identity
and value and community,
I think it's important
that we provide a forum
in which they can share those.
- Sahar?
- Can I just out myself
as a non-Catholic, here?
And, I just, I'm very curious,
it's interesting to me
and this is my ignorance
and I apologize for that,
but it's interesting to
me that the Crusades,
is it such a strong symbol for Catholics?
- I would not say so,
elsewhere, no.
- No.
- So, you know, part of it,
it's the weight of history
that we've got it here, but other places,
they're not having, you know,
Fairfield is not saying,
"We should get rid of the Stag
"and we should have the
Crusaders," or, you know,
those debates aren't going on,
that it's just the weight of history here
and a choice for that,
I would say, as a Catholic.
But, anyone else?
- Yeah, I would just
like to, you know, affirm
what has been said in a
variety of different contexts,
that Catholic identity
or Catholic identities
and the various ways
in which that identity
or those identities are
experienced or perceived is
an important ongoing discussion.
You know, it's not like,
sort of a final thing
where everyone decides,
"Well, okay, these are the
boundaries," and so forth
and in that discussion,
or on those discussions,
it's really important for the faculty
to listen to the students.
- Absolultely, mm-hmm.
- Yeah.
- John?
- As you say that, I, if
this is an opportunity
to enter into that conversation
about the Catholic identity
of the institution,
then it could be a real plus, you know.
It need not be the kind of dangerous thing
that Frank Vellaccio was talking about,
it need not go that way.
It could be a healthy way
of getting into that conversation.
What is a good way of
talking about this school
and its Catholic identity?
What's a good way to do it?
- Thank you.
Mark, any last?
- Just in terms of the mechanism,
I had my hand up a little while ago.
It was more of a question
of clarification.
Having attended the Fishbowl, they were,
this was obvious convened
by the editors of the paper
and the topic there was the
name of the paper, right,
and it was always so interesting to me
that these two had to be
the same thing, right.
I went to Berkeley,
which is the paper's called
The Daily Californian,
the school, you know,
the team is the Bears.
You know, obvious if one
were to decide on balance
that the mascot, sorry,
the Crusades themselves are
historically problematic enough
and othering enough, certainly,
intellectually, it doesn't
make a lot of sense to,
for example, change the
newspaper name because of that
and keep the mascot name.
Clearly, intellectually, they seem
like they should go together,
but there's no necessary
reason they have to go together
and the reason I was
thinking about, again,
was the mechanism and, anybody,
please correct me if I'm
wrong, but I would imagine
that the newspaper as
a student organization,
students and alums,
could make that decision,
whereas, clearly, the mascot
decision would involve
the trustees and many other people
and, you know, hopefully would be done
by much more than a ballot,
but even just the people
who would make the decision
would be different,
so I just want to throw that on the table
unless I'm mistaken and
somebody can correct me.
- Well, thank you to each of you.
I would say, you know, from here,
we'll see where the process goes.
That we've raised the issues
and, I think, just, you know,
that on a campus, if we're using
something like the Crusades
in an unexamined fashion
on a college campus,
that in and of itself is problematic,
so the opportunity to look
at that, to invest that.
Likewise, we can do the same
and I think we'd probably
do one, what the Cross is,
on what a lot of issues
in a, I think, are very favorable way,
we can investigate that.
But, I think I'm grateful to everyone here
for living up to that
obligation that we have
and looking forward to whatever
comes of that in the fall
as this conversation advances,
so thank you, everyone.
(audience applauding)
