University of Notre Dame

Wednesday

James Donald Forbes McCann

A Midwest road trip

The Midwest Notre Dame is not an Ivy League university and, in what I assume is some sort of intentional point, its buildings tend to be ivy-free. Perhaps it is the absence of ivy, perhaps I am just flat after a long day’s drive across Ohio and Indiana, perhaps it’s just winter, but the campus seems more sterile than I had expected. It’s Good Friday, and my friend Margot is studying classical architecture here. She’s showing me around the grounds. I don’t really know what I’d hoped to see. Amy Coney Barrett? Multiracial friendship groups, skipping across the green? As soon as I see the stadium, though, I am transfixed. Margot is visibly disappointed when I say that I adore the stadium above all the other buildings.

james donald forbes mccann

Wednesday

Cockburn

Notre Dame’s professor of Sesame Street sues student journalists for ‘defamation’

Never trust a scholar of Sesame Street to know her legal terminology. Tamara Kay, a sociology professor at Notre Dame who studies the TV show's cultural transfusion around the world, is suing conservative student publication the Rover for its coverage of her abortion activism. Kay claims that two of its articles contained “defamatory and false statements.” The only trouble is that the Rover seems to be able to prove that what it published about Kay is true — and the paper has the receipts. Alas, another case of the decline of the American intellectual? The feud between the two began in 2022 when the Rover published an article on Kay’s comments at an abortion panel.

sesame street notre dame university

Monday

Melanie McDonagh

Who’s afraid of Amy Coney Barrett?

Oooff! If you’re to go by Twitter — not always a good idea — there’s one thing not to like about Amy Coney Barrett, Donald Trump’s potential nominee to replace Ruth Bader Ginsburg and that’s her religion: Catholicism. The Washington Post’s Ron Charles quoted her saying that ‘a legal career is but a means to an end...and that end is building the kingdom of God’. Cue for others to pile in to the effect that there’s meant to be a separation of church and state in the US, and others witheringly observing that it’s not far to go from here to overturning Roe v. Wade. You can expect the quote to be widely circulated in the next few days.

amy coney barrett

Monday

Roger Kimball

Will history survive?

The news that the University of Notre Dame, responding to complaints by some students, would ‘shroud’ its 12 134-year-old murals depicting Christopher Columbus was disappointing. It was not surprising, however, to anyone who has been paying attention to the widespread attack on America’s past wherever social justice warriors congregate. Notre Dame may not be particularly friendly to its Catholic heritage, but its president, the Rev. John Jenkins, turned jesuitical when queried about the censorship. He said, apparently without irony, that his decision to cover the murals was not intended to conceal anything, but rather to tell ‘the full story’ of Columbus’s activities.

history