Perseverance with Purpose

To say that the University of Dallas has weathered some storms this past year hardly does justice to their rapidity or ferocity: COVID, a restructuring and a presidential transition, to name a few. On the other end of this year, we can now see that we are a greater, a better, a more excellent University of Dallas, not in spite of the challenges we have faced together but through our collective response to them. We have persevered with purpose. Fittingly, Commencement weekend was in turns poignant and celebratory in new ways. The baccalaureate Mass, movingly celebrated by our chancellor, Bishop edward Burns, was followed by a beautiful evening of conviviality on the mall. Archbishop Bashar matti Warda of Erbil, Iraq, who has emerged as a global leader in the quest for religious liberty, gave witness to the irrepressible power of hope and joy in the midst of suffering. One hallmark of his response to religious persecution in his native land has been the founding of schools and a university, the Catholic University of Erbil, with which we are now partnering in several ways. Offering a genuine Catholic education is always a profound witness to hope.

Courageous perseverance is guided by hope. But in what do we hope? What are the goods we hope to achieve? In my Commencement remarks, I reminded our graduates that our purpose as a Catholic liberal arts university is to cultivate truth, wisdom and virtue, and to do so with a thoroughgoing commitment to excellence. That is why we exist. We pursue these goods in the spirit of friendship — friendship with the truth, friendship with each other and, ultimately, friendship with God. In doing so, we dedicate ourselves to the great culturerenewing work of living lives of deep meaning and purpose, striving to do great things for the glory of God and love of our neighbors.

This is no small purpose but one that calls on each of us to live magnanimously. It is just such an effort that gives purpose to our perseverance.

Jonathan J. Sanford, Ph.D. President, Professor of Philosophy