4. Alma Mater, Mater Exulum. Jesuit Education and Immigration in America

Abstract

This chapter explores both the history and commitment surrounding 225 years of Jesuit higher education in the United States to provide what we have called the moral framework of this study, and examines the connection between the institutions so many in the Association of Jesuit Colleges and Universities (AJCU) network call their “alma mater” and the “mother of exiles” (in Latin mater exulum) as described in Emma Lazarus’s famous poem. Have the Jesuit colleges and universities in the United States of America actually been places which “glow with world-wide welcome?” What elements in our collective history and in the contemporary interpretation of themes related to the distinctive spirituality taught on our campuses can put the intentions of the founder of the Jesuits, St. Ignatius of Loyola, into practice—which by objective standards have changed not only education patterns, but the history of the world—in touch with Lazarus’s own grand and sweeping vision? And why should such an intersection matter to us today? To begin, it is important to note that, to varying degrees, virtually all of the twenty-eight schools in the United States which constitute the AJCU umbrella organization had as one emphasis in their earliest years the education of firstor second-generation immigrant populations in the U.S.1 This fact then informed our research strategies and helped us orient the resultant findings presented here to highlight, rediscover, and apply anew a profound truth: that