The following comes from an April 14 LMU Newsroom article:

President Bill Clinton will deliver the keynote address at Loyola Marymount University’s undergraduate commencement ceremony on May 7, LMU President Timothy Law Snyder, Ph.D., announced today.

“President Clinton is one of the great statesmen of our time, and he will address our students as they embark on the next stage of their lives,” Snyder said. “His commitment to improving the lives of other people, during and beyond his career in U.S. politics, embodies the ethos of becoming women and men with and for others. President Clinton will inspire our graduates as they seek to lead lives of meaning, purpose, and global impact.”

Ask LMU to disinvite President Clinton as 2016 commencement speaker

The following comes from an April 15 RenewLMU post:

Dear President Snyder,

We alumni, donors, parents, faculty, and concerned friends object to your decision to honor President Bill Clinton as LMU’s 2016 commencement speaker. If you as President of LMU treated a 21 year old intern in your office as he did, you would be fired as president and never honored in any way at LMU. Why should the standards be lower for a President of the United States? If LMU cares about sexual harassment, it should not honor someone repeatedly and credibly accused of such activity.  Moreover, it is inappropriate in an election year to honor the spouse of a leading candidate thereby politicizing an event that should be unifying.  Finally, President Clinton’s steadfast support of abortion on demand, including even partial birth abortion, is incompatible with LMU’s Jesuit emphasis on social justice for all human beings.

We urge you to withdraw your invitation to President Clinton.

To support this effort please sign the petition.

Professor James Hanink retires 

The following comes from an April 12 RenewLMU post:

Professor James Hanink served since the 1970s at LMU, excelling especially in the classroom. He assigned numerous essays for students to write and returned them promptly with oceans of red ink as suggested improvements for the next round.  His students reported that they were both challenged and edified by his teaching which stretched them to think more concretely about questions both metaphysical and practical.  His stories and jokes lightened the philosophical load.

Jim’s scholarly productivity was steady and focused on questions interesting to philosophers in the analytic tradition (such as Elizabeth Anscombe) and the continental tradition (such as Edith Stein).  With his colleagues, he generously read and commented on drafts of papers as well as seminar presentations.

Jim was well known, on campus and off, for his concern for the Catholic identity of LMU, especially as it related to issues of justice for human beings waiting to be born.  This concern for the most weak and vulnerable in the human family also manifested itself in terms of Jim’s personal involvement with the Mother Teresa’s sisters, the Missionaries of Charity, and Dorothy Day’s Catholic Worker Movement.