Removal of John Galten As Director
USF totally revamped the SII in 2001, when the new university president, Jesuit Fr. Stephen A. Privett, summarily fired Director John Galten and Associate Director John Hamlon, allegedly to trim costs and because the two were not believed to be qualified to head an academic program, despite the fact that they had been doing so for many years. Most of the SII's faculty resigned in protest. The affair received national media coverage. Conservative leaders expressed support for Galten; they included former U.S. Secretary of Education, William J. Bennett, and Michael Novak of the American Enterprise Institute, in a full-page ad published in the San Francisco Chronicle and elsewhere. In a memo published nationally, Privett responded to criticism of his decision, stating that the replacement of the SII's leadership would promote "synergies between St. Ignatius Institute and other university programs" and create "efficiencies by consolidating resources." He held a conference with students to assure them that the SII would continue as a Great Books curriculum with qualified instructors.
Within the Catholic Church, the controversy went all the way to the Holy See. A letter of support for the SII went to Pope John Paul II signed by Fessio's former PhD thesis advisor Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, then-prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (now Pope Benedict XVI), and by Cardinal Christoph Schonborn, archbishop of Vienna, Austria, and editor of the official Catechism of the Catholic Church. Reportedly the letter was personally approved by the pope.
Nevertheless, at the pope's behest, an official letter from the Vatican Congregation for Catholic Education supported the authority of the then-Archbishop William Levada to resolve tensions between the SII and USF. The archbishop chose not to reverse the firings.
SII is now headed by Assistant Professor Sean Michaelson, S.J. and includes many faculty from the university that share little of the SII's original vision of Catholic education.
Read more about this topic: St. Ignatius Institute
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