Washington — Some of this city’s biggest names are paying tribute tonight to the Rev. Theodore M. Hesburgh, the former University of Notre Dame president and a prominent voice for decades on civil rights, nuclear technology, immigration, and a host of other hot-button issues. The event, at the National Portrait Gallery, will celebrate Father Hesburgh’s 90th birthday and the accession of a photograph of him into the gallery’s permanent collection. The secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, a Notre Dame alumna, was scheduled to speak, while two former presidents — George Bush and Jimmy Carter — taped speeches for the event.
Father Hesburgh is sure to be praised as an outspoken leader. The featured photo shows him linking hands with the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. at a civil-rights rally in Chicago in 1964. He served on 16 national commissions at the behest of U.S. presidents, including the civil-rights commission, which he led. “That was a bully pulpit if ever there was one,” he said when The Chronicle caught up with him before the event.
Taking a strong stance wasn’t always easy. Richard Nixon dismissed Father Hesburgh in 1972 as chairman of the civil-rights commission because he had criticized the Nixon administration’s civil-rights record. Despite the controversy he faced during his time at Notre Dame, Father Hesburgh said college presidents should contribute to national debates.
“I think many of them would have something to say,” he said, echoing a 2001 op-ed he wrote for The Chronicle Review. “But today I have a feeling you rarely hear from them. In my day you heard from them quite a bit.”
Father Hesburgh said he followed the furor surrounding Lee C. Bollinger, Columbia University’s president, over the recent speech at the university by Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Iran’s president. When asked about it, he said college presidents should be willing to flirt with controversy.
“Unless you’re going to crawl in a hole and be dead, you’re not going to get through life without taking some risks,” he said. “Pick them well and then do something that is world-changing rather than something that is unimportant or trivial.” —Paul Fain
