The nation’s oldest Catholic university has initiated a wide range of sweeping reforms in an effort to address racial inequities both on and off campus.
Dr. John J. DeGioia, president of Georgetown University, has called for the creation of an African American studies department and major as well as three new bold initiatives that will include a center for researching racial injustice, a recruitment effort to hire more faculty of color, and the recruitment of a new senior officer to oversee these ambitious initiatives.
“This is the moment to find within each of ourselves, and within our community, the sources of our moral imaginations to determine how we can contribute to responding to this urgent moment in our nation,” DeGioia told dozens of students, faculty and staff who gathered on campus late last week for a planned speech.
Like many predominantly White colleges and universities across the country, Georgetown has long been criticized for its lack of diversity, particularly among its faculty.
And though the university now has a handful of prominent African-American faculty like Dr. Michael Eric Dyson, it wasn’t until the early 1980s that the university’s main campus tenured its first Black faculty member.
DeGioia, who is a seasoned administrator and alumnus of the Jesuit university founded in 1789, has made diversity a central part of his presidential legacy over the last few years. The first lay person to lead the historic institution, he has sanctioned a number of dramatic changes aimed at making the university located in the tony Washington, D.C. neighborhood of Georgetown much more inclusive for students of color.
Last month, DeGioia accepted the recommendation of a campus-established committee called the Working Group on Slavery, Memory, and Reconciliation and agreed to strip the names of two past presidents—Fr. Thomas Mulledy and Fr. William McSherry—from university halls. Both Mulledy and McSherry were responsible for the sale of about 272 slaves during the 1800s. The buildings were renamed Freedom Hall and Remembrance Hall.
