UNM-church collaboration a step in the right direction

Editor,

It is unfortunate to see the negative attitudes of some community members in response to the new endowed chairperson for Roman Catholic Studies at UNM. The recent letters to the editor by Bhavana Upadhyaya and Jay Nelson do not present any valid reasons why there should not be such a faculty position at UNM. Their combative rhetoric is a sad example of the continued presence of anti-Catholicism in our society. In my opinion, the endowed chairperson represents a unique opportunity for the Roman Catholic Church to engage the broader community in an academic setting. Such engagement provides a forum for both proponents and opponents to openly share their views on this religious tradition.

With time, hopefully people such as Nelson will realize that the foundations of Western thinking and the modern higher education system have their roots in medieval universities created by the Roman Catholic Church. In fact, some of the bastions of knowledge during the Middle Ages were the monasteries located throughout Europe. For countless centuries, monks labored to preserve the classical works in philosophy, science and history that served as a catalyst for the Renaissance. Why then should Roman Catholicism be excluded from a public university? The answer is there is no valid academic reason to exclude it, and that is why the University signed the agreement with the Archdiocese of Santa Fe. I am confident that had other religions or religious leaders requested an endowed chairperson, President David Schmidly would have welcomed their presence on our campus as well. So, I ask all members of the UNM community to celebrate this position as another step in enhancing the academic landscape of our

University.

Matt Gallegos

Graduate student