Mary K. Daly is a 2010 graduate of the University of Notre Dame and editor-in-chief of The Irish Rover, a bi-weekly student-run independent Catholic newspaper at Notre Dame. She is associate vice president of Notre Dame Right to Life; mdaly4@nd.edu.
Campus culture at Notre Dame inevitably is bound up with the university’s Catholic affiliation. If the University of Notre Dame were to be stripped of her name, and thus stripped of her Catholic identity, would she retain her prestige? No. Notre Dame by another name would be nothing special. Her prestige rests not on being the preeminent Catholic university, but on being the preeminent Catholic university.
In recent and not-so-recent years, asserting claims like “academic freedom” and “the spirit of dialogue,” the university has allowed its Catholic character to take a back seat to the pursuit of academic prestige.
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