The golf team at Barry University, a prestigious institution in Florida that was founded by the Dominican order of Catholic nuns, has been told that they cannot practice at the nearby Trump Doral golf course in Miami because campus administrators disagree with Donald Trump’s campaign rhetoric. Late in 2015, university President Sister Linda Bevilacqua and a committee decided that the Republican frontrunner’s political statements are at odds with the institution’s mission goals. In a statement, the institution declared:  "Barry University does not engage in business relationships where... the company's guiding principles are, antithetical to the university’s core commitments of Inclusive Community and/or Social Justice."

 

A spokesperson for the university denied that the decision was politically motivated. The decision does not apply to students or employees in their private capacities. Trump and other political candidates would be welcome to hold debates there, too.

 

Barry’s golf team – which triumphed in national championships in 2007, 2013, and 2014—had previously been allowed to practice, free of charge, at Trump Doral several times each year. They must now go to courses charging daily use fees. 

 

Barry University has shown itself to be liberal-leaning in the past. For example, Sister Bevilacqua and staff have advocated for tolerating a club that offered material support to the Islamic State terrorist regime, as well as advocating for higher education at public institutions free of charge to illegal immigrants. In 2013, Bevilacqua, for instance, wrote a letter to Florida’s state legislature pleading for looser immigration laws on college campuses. She wrote, “Many of our future bright students came to this country as children and have been unable to take advantage of an American education and contribute to our economy because of their status.” Bevilacqua also argued in favor of amnesty for all illegal aliens living in Florida.

 

Last year, an investigator working with Project Veritas convinced Barry officials to allow her to start a “pro-ISIS club” on campus. The club, the student explained, would raise funds to send to members of the Islamic State. “They are terrorists, but we’re trying to help them. We’re trying to educate them and give them funding so that they don’t have to be impoverished and get involved in acts of violence,” she said. The student investigator was later suspended, following claims of defamation. Bevilacqua the student’s actions as “reprehensible,” but said nothing of her staffers’ support of ISIS.

 

Also, in 2014, a Muslim prayer leader imam led students with chants of “Allah Akbar” during an interfaith service to commemorate 911 victims.

 

Bevilacqua sent a letter last year to all Republican presidential candidates urging them to address climate change and consider the evils of capitalism.

 

Catholic teaching and Catholic institutions

 

“Social justice” is a term that has not been doctrinally defined by the Catholic Church, even while popes and bishops have issued reams of documents concerning economic, social and moral themes, which are sometime critical of aspects of capitalism.

 

In 1967, Rev. Theodore Hesburgh -- who was then the president of Notre Dame University -- organized a historic conference at Land O'Lakes, Wisconsin, that was later characterized by historian Philip Gleason as a "declaration of independence from the hierarchy." A resulting statement from the conference was signed by Hesburgh and other Catholic educators which redefined the relationship between Catholic institutions of higher education in the United States with the broader Catholic Church. The so-called "The Idea of the Catholic University" that came out of the conference has been heralded by some as a long overdue statement of Catholic educators' agreement with the tenets of American academia, such as academic freedom, and their willingness to contribute fully to the nation's intellectual life. However, critics cite it as the beginning of the unraveling of the Catholic identity of institutions founded on the Catholic faith. These critics assert that the Land O'Lakes manifesto dangerously divorced the Catholic university from the life of faith and set in motion a deplorable decline. Many Catholic universities and colleges today have a much lower profile of Catholicism on campus.