Abstract

This article is based on a keynote address delivered at the annual meetings of the North American Society for Social Philosophy. It chronicles the story of my hire as the Dean of Arts and Sciences at Marquette University, and the subsequent revocation of that deanship in reaction to pressure from conservative Catholic sources. This is a story about religion, leadership, sexuality, and politics. In these comments, I describe the case, offer an analysis of the event based on the logic of a cultural politics of belonging and exclusion within a religious framework, and suggest a critique of forms of institutional power whereby diversity is intentionally cultivated in accordance with the Jesuit educational mission and then betrayed when it becomes controversial.