ABSTRACT
The fight over Saint Louis University (SLU) future provided many opportunities for the mission appeal. Critics charged the president with failing to live up to the institution’s professed ideals. The pre-condition of identification was implicit in SLU’s discourse of crisis, much of which centered around who was and was not a part of SLU’s community. Although the no-confidence movement was successful – insofar as the president left office earlier than he intended – it is uncertain that traditional persuasion played much of a role. Yet the most explicit appeals to the mission would continue to come from non-Jesuits. Yet many Jesuit faculty not in leadership persisted in articulating the mission differently. In The University in Ruins, Bill Readings observes a fundamental shift in nature and purpose of the modern university. Unfortunately, the idea of “competence” suggested in the description continues to imply that communication is a simply matter of clarity: communicate the mission clearly, and people will finally “get it.”.
