OnWord

American media have long stood accused of partisan partnering to tilt their coverage of national politics. Now, the broadcast of the 2024 Olympics has reminded us of another arena in the world of competitive storytelling. Our society’s participation in reality, sometimes outsourced to movers and shakers, could use a more level playing field.

Much of our  news content, especially as it surfs along the spectrum to opinion and entertainment, emerges from multipart enterprises which package pieces of truth into products for people to consume.

The July 26 NBC broadcast from the opening day in Paris showed us the risk when we say “super-size it.” The network and its associates served up a hefty portion of highly processed food, containing a few by-products and fillers which thoughtful consumers found harmful, or at least tasteless. Their sincere concerns over certain avant-garde videos—which some “creatives” probably had deemed de rigueur—were well reported elsewhere.

The programming didn’t need those narrative-additives in order to impress the audience. Viewers enjoyed the parade of eighty-five boats with their athlete-passengers, plus a range of musical virtuosity. We were dazzled as high-tech wizards played with water and smoke, spotlights and lasers, camera angles, recordings, and more.

When it stayed grounded in reality, the TV script provided authentic parts to play, from French President Macron opening the games, to the youth of 206 countries waving enthusiastically, to a plethora of folks everywhere reflecting our planet’s best efforts at diversité, équité (fairness, in French), and inclusion.

We witnessed the three official Olympic values—excellence, respect, and friendship—inspiring a celebration of unity. We admired the scenes of thousands across the city who were able to position themselves, free of charge, to take in the drama from one or another site.

Of course, only viewers of the exclusive broadcast received the full smorgasbord. Narrators guided our tour as we darted between locations, performers, and genres of content with precise timing and artistry.

The four-hour showcase that evening required months of preparation by teams from many fields. NBC said its production cadre alone numbered about 3,000.

Behind-the-scenes work engaged experts in high technology, leaders in business and advertising, performers, and orchestrators of sports/entertainment, as well as countless governmental and non-governmental organizations, local and global.

This expansive, expensive approach to reality almost demanded  project leadership from communications-sector elites who could properly display the panorama of various talents—just as campaign consultants say U.S. presidents can’t survive on their governance skills unless they’re also masterful communicators. Appearance means a lot.

When observers of national and international alliances cite the usual membership rolls from politics, media, academia, corporations, techies, show-biz wunderkinds, charities, and advocates, we can affirm their powerful outreach.

Such formal and informal networks exist. There’s no need to conjure up “conspiracy theories” or suspicions of wrong-doing when saying this. These folks simply play well together, and their presence is far better than anarchy.

They contribute much more than Olympian spectaculars, often functioning as filters of reality. And yes, many probably pivot to chats about public policy and shared power, strategizing to grow their market clout.

The structures give us hope for global prosperity and solidarity, along with abundant offerings to amuse and distract us in these secular times. Their strategies must evolve, too, because the world is frantic and fragile. No doubt, decision-makers are tempted more than ever to play hardball.

The bulk of the world’s population has no direct connection to most of these dynamics. But lovers of Venn diagrams—you know who you are—will spot many intersections between elites and the masses.

For example, the ethos of public administration and civic life is shaped powerfully by our educational institutions, especially when family, community, and religion surrender their roles in forming hearts and minds.

Profit motives in high technology and other image-sensitive industries prompt executives to hire those who share their values or signal their virtues.

Too many innovators in arts and entertainment want to grow their audiences by diverting popular tastes toward enhanced realities, alternative excellence, artificial intelligence, and escapist addictions.

Unfortunately, artists forget Pope John Paul II’s classic 1999 message about “epiphanies of beauty.” He spoke of a God who calls them “to share in His creative power,” not to claim it for themselves by substituting new truths, or no truth.

We’re told human creativity should be “edgy” and constantly evoke a “wow,” but we become bored with the splendor of God’s creation as our source of wonderment.

Influencers may think the market for their brilliance will be boosted by widespread relativism, isolation, ego, self-identification, emotions, and zeal for the path of transhumanism. They don’t realize these are dead ends, deterring persons from investing in future fulfillment of their innermost longings.

Again, these worst-case interpretations of secular reality—in the Olympics, politics, or any other endeavors—have more to do with myopia than malevolence. They see a shallow humanity, one disconnected from a love for God’s created order. This love moderates our self-centeredness and energizes our relay race toward wisdom and peace we can share.

Ironically, concepts of purposefulness, personal dignity, and pride in homelands and common roots are exactly those seen as godly in a Judeo-Christian sense—and as honorable reflections of Olympic tradition. But some opening night videos opted for less uplifting history, such as a salute to Dionysus, the Greek god of partying.

Another distraction from the highest ideals occurred during the TV blockbuster that evening. As we floated along with the currents of “reality” on our screens, we were treated to a musical performance sung from a craft on the Seine. Hauntingly, the singer was accompanied by a piano that had been set ablaze.

John Lennon’s lyrics from Imagine echoed his critique of such concepts as religion and country. The song provided a deconstructed glimpse of “living for today,” not an orderly integration able to anchor society’s aspirations.

As NBC reported, Lennon’s anthem of pretend-optimism oddly has been customary at Olympics ceremonies since 1996. Can such an anthem proclaim “let the games begin”?

Our duty to occasionally anchor our boats and douse fires of chaos is both an individual and team event. It relies on acknowledging and scrutinizing the realities around us, including those sizeable, audacious forays of imagination and hubris where talents may go rogue and souls may go awry.

We must judge reality wisely in order to serve the truth, which communicates to us in all its joys and sorrows, in its moments of clarity and bouts of mystery.

Greater awareness of higher, unifying truths will help us discourage games of hardball that can do damage in either the public square or the volleyball arena.

Here’s a thought about discerning between those media-aided collaborations we can live with and those which can deaden us:

The Olympics opening ceremony, as a product of our legacy television infrastructure, offered us what seemed like a big, beautiful reality—a piece de resistance to elevate our hearts.

But let’s realize that, in a sense, it was a small reality. One of those multi-talented teams produced and customized the puffed-up experience for our private, individual consumption—albeit consumption reproduced a billion times on screens around the world.

Events were packaged. We were packaged as receptive spectators, digesting a whole product while passively spoon-fed from amalgamated viewpoints and values.

A better alternative to this economy-sized packaging comes from old-school journalism. Writers and readers preferred savoring reality in small pieces, not as a single download of truth. Reporters were told to diligently dig up accurate facts for each day’s story, trusting that those would accumulate into overviews and the “whole story” step by step, with the drama of All the President’s Men.

Of course, we all hope the grandeur of the Olympics will “wow” us right from the start, for many years to come.

However, the best, most complete messages about reality come over time, through community, relationships, and digging where we’re planted. Such insights can be customized gracefully—by the “creative” who really knows His customers.

We couch potatoes should emulate the connectedness experienced by those throngs in Paris cheering as the athletes sailed by, or those attending one of the sporting events—or, better yet, those on the field, striving for a medal.

We don’t want to be mere spectators, letting small but dazzling impressions become our dominant, instant reality. That could overwhelm the rewards of personal growth and agency in our lives.

This general rule applies during election cycles as well as Olympiads. In dealing with political news, our society needs to take time for critical thinking about actual issues. Much of our intake may come from the “media-industrial complex,” but we should diversify our sources and see other people beyond our screens.

We can step up our game as participants in right-sized reality, using plenty of curiosity and a soupçon of healthy skepticism. We might find our own grass-roots collaborators who are less constrained by elite preoccupations, helping us to intersect reason and faith.

The sharing of our own heartfelt stories and beliefs can actually influence movers and shakers. Without instituting a cancel culture, free speech can raise everyone’s consciousness. At the Olympics, amid an ongoing dialogue of different statements and interpretations, the video of Dionysus and drag queens was highlighted on some platforms and removed from others, as of this weekend.

Eventually, we can bring more views of reality to our screens—and more wisdom to our polity—as small but strong communicators of excellence, respect, and friendship. Think of all this as passing the torch.

Image from Clipsafari.com, a collection of Creative Commons designs.

The current tumult on college campuses, a sad erosion of their status as centers of wonder, excellence, and shared learning, invites us to go back a half-century and recall how one university community experienced a previous era of unrest.

Let’s visit the University of Notre Dame in South Bend, Indiana, when Father Theodore Hesburgh was at roughly the midpoint of his remarkable presidential tenure (1952–1987).

Times That Try Men’s Souls

This priest in the Congregation of Holy Cross saw what he called “the student revolution”—especially events in 1969 and 1970—as the most burdensome period of his presidency,  according to Robert Schmuhl, who was among the “Fighting Irish” during those years and later an ND professor of journalism.

Schmuhl’s 2016 book, Fifty Years with Father Hesburgh—On and Off the Record, will serve as one of the guides for our brief tour through those times. Our intent is not to apply Notre Dame’s tribulations either as prescriptions or proscriptions for 2024, but the actions of “Father Ted” highlight some context to consider.

As the university entered 1969, the Vietnam War was in its fifth year, and youthful opposition had led to demonstrations around the country—only a modicum at Notre Dame.

Then, in February, a number of students convened for a “conference on pornography and censorship.” Local police raided it to confiscate one of the movies being shown. Some attendees who resisted were bloodied, and police used mace. The violence “seemed to chart a different course for campus disturbances,” Schmuhl comments.

Father Ted responded in about a week—to the big picture, not the porn. He issued an eight-page letter to the university community to pre-empt disruptions on the private school’s grounds. The letter won nationwide news coverage, much of it favorable, reporting what became known as his “fifteen-minute rule.”

He said “anyone or any group that substitutes force for rational persuasion, be it violent or non-violent, will be given fifteen minutes of meditation to cease and desist.”

Schmuhl notes Hesburgh’s warning: “If ‘force’ rather than ‘rational persuasion’ continued beyond a quarter hour, suspension or explusion would follow.” This was “the first unequivocal statement by a university president in the United States about dealing with unrest that disrupted the activities of others in a detrimental manner.”

The letter stands out from recent newsworthy comments by university presidents regarding turbulence in 2024 for two reasons we might deem contradictory or anachronistic—its disciplinarian toughness and its combined academic and priestly appeal to people’s faith, reason, and reasonableness.

Even more quotable was the section of Father Ted’s letter describing his motivation: Needing police action on any campus, he said, is “a last and dismal alternative to anarchy and mob tyranny…. We can have a thousand resolutions as to what kind of a society we want, but when lawlessness is afoot and all authority is flouted … then we invoke the normal societal forces of law, or we allow the university to die beneath our hapless and hopeless gaze.”

Hesburgh continued (cited by Schmuhl): “I have no intention of presiding over such a spectacle. Too many people have given too much of themselves and their lives to this university to let this happen here.”

The fifteen-minute rule seemed to have support from the majority at the school, although it prompted outside opposition, including Time magazine’s call for Hesburgh’s resignation. Students tested the rule only once in 1969, and it led to ten suspensions but no expulsions.

Battling for Balance

A bigger potential problem was the support for the rule expressed by President Nixon. Father Ted was highly visible, serving as chair of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, an independent, bipartisan unit of the federal government.

According to historian Father Wilson Miscamble’s 2019 book, American Priest: The Ambitious Life and Conflicted Legacy of Notre Dame’s Father Ted Hesburgh, the Nixon administration considered pushing severe legislation to fight anti-war “lawlessness”—an approach Hesburgh’s letter “had been composed to avoid.” He said he did not want to become “a folk hero among the hawks.”

It was time to clarify his position in a variety of ways. “Hesburgh deftly tacked back toward a stance more sympathetic to student concerns,” Miscamble writes. He established a popular program to teach the subject of nonviolence. He loosened up on lifestyle restrictions, granting more “visitation” rights for women in all-male dorms.

Notre Dame enjoyed a semblance of peace, compared to ongoing demonstrations around the country, through the early months of 1970.

Then, in late April, Nixon directed the invasion of Cambodia, and demonstrations resumed in South Bend. Activists disrupted a meeting of the university trustees, and further plans for violence were rumored, Miscamble reports.

Once again, Father Ted stepped forward promptly, but with a different tone. He had already called for the U.S. to withdraw from Vietnam, and on May 4 he spoke to a large student-sponsored rally. He offered another lengthy statement of broad vision.

This successor to the “fifteen minute rule” addressed the whole community and the nation, including its leaders. The name given to this proactive policy statement was the “Hesburgh Declaration.”

He bemoaned Nixon’s decision “to take yet another step into the quicksand.” While recognizing the president’s “sincerity and courage” as guided by his own lights, Father Ted rebutted, “Let me tell you why I do not agree.”

The speech went on to propose reasoning for the angry youths to embrace, just as he had explained his own motivations in the 1969 letter on discipline. In the “Hesburgh Declaration” text available through Notre Dame’s university archives, he urged a rejection of violence in the homeland, again sounding like an academic and a priest.

“I must tell you that, if the world is to be better than it presently is, you must prepare yourselves—intellectually, morally and spiritually, to help make it better,” he told the throng. “Striking classes, as some universities are doing, in the sense of cutting off your own education, is the worst thing you could do at this time, since your education and your growth in competence are what the world needs most, if the leadership of the future is going to be better than the leadership of the past and present.”

Summoning the Best in Students

He urged a heightened commitment to “whatever creative initiative that peace requires of us right now,” and he went on to posit common cause: “If you want to put this conviction into words, may I suggest the following statement that I would be proud to sign with you and transmit to the President.”

His six-point blueprint included: designating a definite date for U.S. withdrawal from the war; repatriation of all American prisoners of war; rebuilding a “new and hopeful society” in all of Indochina; allowing those nations self-determination in their paths forward; redirecting U.S. priorities away from war and toward national unity, with justice and “equality of opportunity”; and pledging “our persons, our talents, our honor, and our futures to help work for a better America and better world….”

Response to his speech was soon interrupted by tragic news.  The Ohio National Guard had shot and killed four students at Kent State University. On May 6, more than 5,000 Fighting Irish marched into town to protest those slayings and the war, as Miscamble’s book reports.

On May 7, Father Ted celebrated Mass for the Catholic feast day of the Ascension with a packed assembly in the university’s chapel. He eulogized the Kent State victims and pleaded that “ballots replace bullets” for American youth. (The voting age was 21 until the 26^th Amendment to the Constitution in 1971.)

Miscamble said of the crucial week in May, “Hesburgh’s action helped keep these days of protest from taking a violent turn.” Through the series of events and a return to regular classes the following week, the mood trended toward peaceful, purposeful effort.

There was still much healing to be done, but students took numerous copies of the Hesburgh Declaration and distributed them as petitions, ultimately garnering 23,000 signatures from the South Bend area, according to the book by Schmuhl. Hesburgh sent them to Nixon.

Idealists saw a path of action, as well as a responsibility to make it noble and constructive. The turmoil remained, but there was a chance to find common ground with many Americans, including Father Ted, who later told Schmuhl of his pride in the campus’s “instinctive moral approach.”

This concludes our browse through Notre Dame’s Vietnam-era experience. Does it offer some helpful context for understanding the mess in our present moment?

Seeing the Good, Bad, and Ugly

The New York Times reported on April 28 that more than 800 people had been arrested around the country.

“Amid a dizzying array of standoffs involving pro-Palestinian demonstrations and encampments at colleges, schools that cracked down on protesters over the weekend [April 27-28] have given varying justifications for their actions, while others sent mixed signals with their inaction,” wrote Patricia Mazzei.

She said colleges that took action have cited “property damage, outside provocateurs, antisemitic expressions or just failures to heed warnings,” she said.

The reasons did not seem to include Hesburghian appeals to the respect for learning, peaceful persuasion, and long-term aspirations.

In fairness to the university administrations, they were facing situations different from Notre Dame circa 1969—activities based on proclamations of outright hatred, actual fear among classmates, and “oppressor vs. oppressed” perspectives tied to global politics and cultural polarization. Any opportunity for a pre-emptive “fifteen-minute rule” urging “meditation” on personal principles had long since disappeared, if it existed at all.

But the Times, also on April 28, published a commentary by columnist David French, Colleges Have Gone Off the Deep End. There Is a Way Out,” which did contain echoes of Father Ted.

In a previous legal career that included defending many college demonstrators, French wrote, “I’ve learned that the issue of campus protest is remarkably complex and that campus culture is at least as important as law and policy in setting the boundaries of debate.”

He pointed to “profound confusion” at today’s colleges about distinctions between free speech, civil disobedience, and lawlessness, and also about schools’ “fundamental academic mission.”

Administrators, he said, should enforce “content-neutral legal rules that enable a diverse community to share the same space and enjoy equal rights” while protecting “access to educational opportunities” for all.

French cited three pieces of wisdom from Hesburgh’s own times.

Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. said in 1965 those exercising civil disobedience must do it “lovingly” and “civilly” and “with a willingness to accept the penalty.”

Legal scholar Harry Kalven Jr. set forth the “Kalven Principles” for justice at the University of Chicago in 1967. A university is a “home” for critics, but is “not itself the critic.”

The U.S. Supreme Court said in a 1957 decision, “Teachers and students must always remain free to inquire, to study, and to evaluate, to gain new maturity and understanding; otherwise, our civilization will stagnate and die.”

French concluded by saying universities now should “declare unequivocally that they will protect free speech, respect peaceful civil disobedience, and uphold the rule of law by protecting the campus community from violence and chaos.”

Even if ideas can be hurtful, even if some administrators think their neutrality means complicity with injustice, French said colleges must protect everyone’s “ability to peacefully live and learn in a community of scholars.”

Our pursuit of clearer context amid the collegiate maelstrom can benefit from these points, regardless of any nostalgia for the simpler (?) times of the 20^th century or for the days when priests could run schools with a touch of the disciplinarian.

About People and Purpose

The shaping of our policies and mind frames in these relatively undisciplined times ideally will include a view of education centered on persons and shared purposes, not obscured by faculty advocacy, trustee politics, intellectual theories, and funders’ strategic donations.

In the spirit of Hesburgh, professors and administrators should play a role as “public intellectuals” who formulate and propose positive trajectories in philosophy, policy, and practice. They should be among those starting wide conversations with well-reasoned ideas. Their vocation is education.

And they have the privilege of educating young adults at perhaps the most idealistic times in their lives. Undergraduates are thirsting for justice even as their generation endures disenchantment and deconstruction.

They must have a sense of responsibility not only to their course work, but to the higher reasons for their studies. Colleges shouldn’t dismiss them into the hands of invasive species of coordinated, manipulative show-runners.

College communities offer growth in moral principles, plus the preparation to keep informing and exercising them throughout life—partly for students themselves, partly for their country and world, and partly for their God.

An immersion in history is vital. With that gift, participants in today’s turbulence might be thinking deeper and broader thoughts, dealing better with complexity, and asking smarter questions of more people.

Any undercurrents of animus, or performing “oppressor vs. oppressed” scripts against classmates and others, are suicidal for university communities.  Hesburgh didn’t have to deal with many truly hateful people. Having had visceral experiences of wars, all generations recognized hate’s consequences. Most shared a basic respect for law and order.

Again, in fairness to today’s college leaders, they are dealing with levels of malice and strategic lawlessness which Notre Dame did not see. Actions, demands, procedures, and counter-arguments among zealous or self-protective stakeholders, including intellectuals, funders, lawyers, PR and DEI staffs, political influencers, and others create serious constraints for presidents.

They can’t act quickly when needed, speak spontaneously with their communities whenever possible, or find time to prepare detailed, panoramic insights when broader conversations can begin.

That is a big takeaway from our visit with Hesburgh: He was a great communicator at a time when scholars (and priests) could inspire avid pilgrims of peace.

He had the time to “read the room” and the proactive inclination to cultivate constructive bonds of accountability. Unburdened by a big academic bureaucracy or a post-truth culture, he could trust his gut, even though he was suffering much heartburn.

Hesburgh told Robert Schmuhl in 1989 that his management of the student-revolution days was “a monumental case of improvisation.” Today, that is a luxury many of us neither have nor seek. It requires years of disciplined education and formation before we can truly liberate ourselves.

Right now, our overall impression of the unrest is one of spontaneous combustion. Thanks largely to universities, Americans have a lot we can draw upon to pursue what endures. Notre Dame’s “Fighting Irish” remind us to seek wisdom in governing our fights, causes, and instincts.

Image from Bing’s “Designer” program, using AI. Note that two links to Father Hesburgh’s biography above take you to the Hesburgh.nd.edu website, for which Bill Schmitt was on the initial content-design team while working at ND.