History
Loyola’s Commitment to Justice committee was founded in the year 2000, charged with helping implement Jesuit justice ideals. To help make the Jesuit justice mission even more vital at Loyola, among other initiatives, we:
- Sponsored a series of campus-wide discussions and talks, focusing on the Reverend Peter-Hans Kolvenbach’s “Service of Faith and Promotion of Justice in U.S. Jesuit Higher Education.” For the discussions, we invited people to identify ways they could con- tribute to justice in their daily work. For the talks, we invited speakers from across campus to share ways they were already “doing justice” at Loyola.
- Conducted two campus-wide self-studies of justice initiatives
- Founded the Kolvenbach Summer Research Grants
- Founded the Kolvenbach Research Fellows program
- Published three editions of the book Commitment to Justice in Jesuit Higher Education, including the present one focused on how we, as individuals and as a community, can strengthen justice in all of our activities.
- Founded Loyola’s signature justice speaker series. We work to integrate this high-profile talk into a year- long series of events, partnering with offices and pro- grams such as Messina, Common Text, the Martin Luther King Convocation, the Diversity Reading Groups, the Environmental Studies program, to provide breadth and depth of discussion, understanding, and action.
All of these activities and initiatives are dedicated to helping deepen understanding of justice, inviting all to participate in the conversation and in self-transformation that arises from this deeper understanding. This approach presents justice as intrinsic to academic excellence and to Loyola’s Jesuit tradition and identity.