page_title: Theodore Hesburgh
section_title: Civic and U.S. government activist
hierarchical_section_title: Theodore Hesburgh / Career / Civic and U.S. government activist
caption_attribution_description: English: Father Theodore Hesburgh at the Civil Rights Committee Biographical information; received Medal of Freedom from LBJ; LBJ's use of Civil Rights Commission; JFK and civil rights; CRC's first meeting with LBJ; Commission hearings; John Gleason; LBJ's accomplishments in human opportunity/civil rights; White House Conference on Civil Rights; Cliff Alexander; National Science Foundation Board; Jim Webb's acceptance of Administrator of NASA; campus unrest; Vietnam; Perkins Commission; Walt Rostow's Policy Planning Commission; Wise Men; role as Vatican representative on International Atomic Energy Agency; 1956 charter meeting at UN; Frank Folsom.
context_page_description: Rev. Theodore Martin Hesburgh, CSC was a native of Syracuse, New York, who became an ordained priest of the Congregation of Holy Cross and is best known for his service as the president of the University of Notre Dame for thirty-five years. In addition to his career as an educator and author, Hesburgh was a public servant and social activist involved in numerous American civic and governmental initiatives, commissions, international humanitarian projects, and papal assignments. Hesburgh received numerous honors and awards for his service, most notably the United States's Presidential Medal of Freedom and Congressional Gold Medal. As of 2013, he also held the world's record for the individual with most honorary degrees with more than 150.
  Hesburgh is credited with bringing Notre Dame, long known for its football program, to the forefront of American Catholic universities and its transition to a nationally respected institution of higher education. He supervised the university's dramatic growth, as well as the successful transfer of its ownership from Holy Cross priests to the Notre Dame Board of Trustees in 1967.
context_section_description: Hesburgh's career included many civic activities, as well as American and international initiatives beyond his work at Notre Dame. Hesburgh estimated he spent about 40 percent of his time off-campus and believed that his civic involvement "enriched" his priesthood. 
  Beginning in 1955, Hesburgh served in a number of posts on government commissions that included National Science Board and the U.S. Civil Rights Commission, and also served on the boards of non-profit organizations, such as the Rockefeller Foundation, and Vatican missions. His career included at least sixteen presidential appointments involving some of the major social issues of his era: civil rights, campus unrest, Third World development, peaceful uses of atomic energy, and immigration reform, "including the American policy of amnesty for immigrants in the mid-1980s." 
  
  Hesburgh's first presidential appointment occurred in 1954, when President Dwight Eisenhower appointed him to the National Science Board. Although Hesburgh had no previous experience as an activist supporting civil rights issues, President Eisenhower made him a member of the U.S. Civil Rights Commission in 1957, beginning fifteen years of service on the commission. Hesburgh emerged as a civil rights advocate and spokesperson for the commission. In an appendix to the commission's annual report in 1959, Hesburgh outlined his position on civil rights and equality: 
  I believe that civil rights were not created, but only recognized and formulated, by our Federal and State constitutions and charters. Civil rights are important corollaries of the great proposition … that every human person is a res sacra, a sacred reality, and as such is entitled to the opportunity of fulfilling those great human potentials with which God has endowed every man.
   
  In 1961 Hesburgh persuaded the Indiana Conference of Higher Education to support a Notre Dame-based pilot project for President John F. Kennedy's new Peace Corps initiative that trained new volunteers for service in Chile, but he felt that the Kennedy administration had a poor record on civil rights issues. In contrast to his assessment of the Kennedy administration's civil rights efforts, Hesburgh praised Lyndon B. Johnson's work to secure passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 in the U.S. Congress and his courage for supporting the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Hesburgh also made public appearances to show his support for the civil rights movement. On July 21, 1964, Hesburgh delivered an impromptu speech during Martin Luther King Jr.'s civil rights rally in Chicago, Illinois. At the conclusion of the event, he joined hands with King and other civil rights supporters as the group sang "We Shall Overcome."  
  Hesburgh served as chairman of the U.S. Civil Rights Commission from 1969, when President Nixon appointed him to the leadership position, until 1972, when White House aides asked for Hesburgh's resignation. His dismissal from the commission in 1972 followed a series of disagreements between Hesburgh, the commission, and the Nixon administration about civil rights policies. Hesburgh objected to the president's slowdown policy on school desegregation, opposed Nixon's anti-busing policy, and advocated for the renewal of the Voting Rights Act, which the Nixon administration wanted to amend. Hesburgh publicly explained that he believed the primary reason for his dismissal was due to the commission's report on minority employment in government. 
  According to Rick Perlstein in Nixonland (2008), when Thomas Eagleton dropped out of the race as George McGovern's vice presidential running mate in the 1972 presidential election, Hesburgh was considered as a replacement candidate for Eagleton, but he declined the offer.
  President Jimmy Carter appointed Hesburgh to a blue-ribbon immigration reform commission in 1979; the commission's finding that any national immigration reform proposals can succeed only if the American national border is properly secured beforehand was cited by various opponents of illegal immigration to the United States.
caption: Fr. Hesburgh chairs the Civil Rights Committee
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