Worldwide Issues in Higher Education to Concern Chaplain's Conference
Diocesan Press Service. January 8, 1968 [61-12]
Major issues confronting American higher education are not limited to this country. They are also found in European universities. In order to study this situation firsthand a group of American chaplains will travel to Europe Jan. 14 - 29.
These issues are sharply focused in the Free University at West Berlin and the Cite Universitaire at Paris. A significant number of students at the Free University are in open conflict with the university administration over the quality of higher education as well as the right of students to be involved in politics. The increasing interplay between university faculties and students the world over brings to the fore the necessity of understanding peoples of other cultures. As the Church faces these problems and the secularization of our present society, it is challenged to do some hard thinking about its ministry in higher education.
It is for this reason, the Rev. William Tibbett, executive secretary for the Episcopal Committee on Higher Education in New York and New Jersey stated, that the Province II College Work Conference will take participants to West Berlin, East Berlin and Paris, Jan. 14 - 29.
Such a conference will, he added, "be an opportunity for intercultural experience in which students, faculty and pastors there can tell us how things are for them. We shall also see firsthand the tragedy of living in a divided world, and how the Church is coping with its own sense of community in worlds widely separated ideologically, religiously and politically. We shall see the vital role students play in the total life of major academic institutions, particularly in Berlin, and their involvement in pressing issues of higher education and in political life. In France the group will have the opportunity to speak with a number of outstanding theologians who are involved in working out a Christian response to the secularization of French society. "
Those involved in the two-week conference, 32 chaplains, will also have the opportunity to break out of the isolation of their particular situation and to discover common problems with their European counterparts. They will also have the opportunity of seeing a number of varied responses to these problems.
From Jan. 14 - 22 the group will be in Berlin where they will meet with student activists, campus clergy and faculty, Particular emphasis will be placed on the role of the E. S. G. 's (Evangelical Student Organization) role in higher education and in the political life of the German Federal Republic.
Two afternoons and evenings in East Berlin will give time to see the operation of a lay theological academy and to talk with Christians who live under a different form of government.
After arrival in Paris, on Jan. 22, the group will have the opportunity of meeting with a number of Roman Catholic clergy involved in university ministry and to explore contemporary Roman Catholic theology, the secularization of French society and the response of Christianity to such secularization.