Recent Blog Posts

Racist Tropes and Hard American Truths

President's Blog: Racist Tropes and Hard American Truths

The contemptible racism of the president of this nation must be called out for what it is. How can we celebrate 250 years of America without confronting the constant undermining of our values in equal justice and freedom for all?

The current president of the United States chose to launch Black History Month by publishing a despicable racist trope on his paradoxically-named  “Truth Social” account.  Predictably, his utterly amoral band of obsequious staffers immediately started spinning ridiculous lies to cover-up the obvious ugly racial attack on former President and First Lady Barack and Michelle Obama.  The images are all over the news and I will not amplify them here.  Suffice to say that the images recall and echo some of the worst eras of American history, times when public imaging about Black persons as inhuman, animals, distorted caricatures prevailed in media and discourse among too many segments of American life.

The president is notoriously agnostic about history.  The hard truth about American history is that this nation’s founding was crafted in large part in reliance on an economy where the enslavement of Black persons made the wealth of landowners possible. Founders including Thomas Jefferson, George Washington, James Madison and others could not bring themselves to imagine freeing their own slaves, even though they acknowledged the moral depravity of slavery.  Most of the first ten presidents of the United States owned slaves.  The notorious “3/5 compromise” in the original Constitution approved in 1789 counted slaves as 3/5 of a person for the purpose of calculating populations in states for representation in Congress — with southern states wanting all slaves counted at 100% while northern states, mindful of the large number of slaves in the south, did not want the southern states to be able to count all of their slaves fully.  The fact that this nation was created on a principle that accepted Black bodies as fungible for political apportionment tells us all we need to know about the deep and lasting racism of the founding moment.

It took a bloody Civil War nearly a century after the founding of the United States to liberate the slaves, but the Emancipation Proclamation and end of the Civil War did not end American racism.  In fact, in the subsequent century, the racial hatred that lies deep in parts of this country flourished, and white supremacy fueled the idea of the “lost cause” seeking to reclaim a time when privileged white men ruled supreme.  The Civil Rights Era of the mid-20th Century had some landmark moments that we all thought were permanent markers on the road to change in racial justice — Brown v. Board of Education in 1954 declaring an end to racial segregation in schools; the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and Voting Right Act of 1965, both reinforcing the rights of Black persons to participate fully in American life.

Now comes a president and a regime whose slogan — “Make America Great Again” — is clearly a clarion call to roll back the clock to a time before the Civil Rights progress of the last century, possibly a time even before the Civil War.  The shameful, demented racist tropes that the president published on Thursday night this week were only the latest in a long series of hostile actions against long-settled racial equity and justice gains in this country.  The current president’s hostility to Black persons has been well-known throughout his professional life.

The president has directed numerous racially offensive official actions.  He has issued direct orders to obliterate public displays of American history about slavery and the official and cultural injustices suffered by African Americans.  Just weeks ago, in late January, in response to a presidential executive order, the National Park Service removed an exhibit about slavery from the Independence Mall in Philadelphia.  This statement by the Organization of American Historians says it all:

“The now-removed exhibit explored the central paradox between slavery and freedom in America’s founding—between the articulation of inherent principles of liberty in the Declaration of Independence and the reality of a deeply entrenched system of human bondage. …

“The Organization of American Historians condemns the removal of the Freedom and Slavery exhibit, and as we have stated before firmly reject “federal actions and the systemic efforts to distort the historical record and impose through executive orders and actions a narrow vision of the American past.” The removal of the Freedom and Slavery exhibit undermines historical integrity, public trust, and the long-standing interpretative mission of the National Park Service at one of its most important and visited historical sites. Removing information about slavery from Independence National Historical Park is a fundamental misrepresentation of the social, economic, and political realities within which the Founders—and the nation at the time of its formation—debated independence and self-government.

“The exhibit removal must be understood in the context of a broader and deeply troubling and dangerous pattern. Throughout the past year, the Trump administration has pursued an agenda of interference in the public presentation of American history including through federal websites, cultural institutions like the Smithsonian, and throughout the National Park Service. It has routinely politicized and taken steps to distort or erase entirely from public view evidence-based historical information. At stake is the core democratic principle that the public has a right to an honest, accurate account of its nation’s own history, free from political censorship or manipulation. Historical knowledge is a shared civic resource and a bedrock of accountability. Government suppression of the facts of history for political and ideological ends is a practice of authoritarianism.”

The egregious political attacks on racial justice do not stop there.  The political regime has gone after the Smithsonian Institution repeatedly, demanding that exhibits be taken down or changed to remove the truth about America’s racial history.

Even more, the administration has pursued a protracted and extraordinarily damaging campaign against DEI — diversity, equity and inclusion — practices that have long sought to achieve a measure of leveling the playing field for persons of color in education and employment.  Disparaging and demanding an end to DEI practices has had a profoundly damaging effect on equal opportunity for Black and Brown persons in America, and sends a clear message that such persons cannot rely on their schools or employers to support them as they break barriers of access and participation in each new generation.  The loss for our nation is incalculable in rising racial animus and opportunities diminished for millions of Americans.

The administration has mis-appropriated and misused Civil Rights laws to twist them against opportunities for persons of color and even perpetrating real harm against institutions devoted to equal justice.  While misusing claims of anti-semitism to attack and debilitate major universities, the administration has thwarted higher education’s initiatives to achieve racial justice by demanding an end to DEI practices in higher education (a recent judicial ruling slows down the anti-DEI orders) and ending an important program of grant support for Minority Serving Institutions with a completely wrong reading of the Supreme Court’s ruling in the Harvard admissions case.  (As a Predominantly Black Institution, Trinity received funding through the MSI program that supported our laboratories, faculty development, academic advising and other work that had a distinctively positive effect on student outcomes. That funding has been eliminated entirely.)

The administration’s war against immigrants also has a distinctively racial tone, focusing largely on Latinos for deportation while also according refugee status to White South Africans.  The appalling use of federal ICE agents in Minneapolis started with the president’s contemptible attacks on the Somalian community there, calling them “garbage” and denouncing their contributions while alleging widespread fraud in public programs.  The majority of Somalis in Minneapolis are American citizens.  The subsequent violence including the deaths of two American citizens who were protesting the ICE actions is a consequence of the virulent racism that fuels the anti-immigration movement.

Beyond public policy actions, the current president also has a track record of dismissing Black executives from leadership positions in government, calling Black and Brown persons disparaging names and fostering an environment where racial animosity can flourish.

Not surprisingly, the current president takes no responsibility for his words and actions.  Regarding the contemptible racist trope about the Obamas yesterday, he dismissed it as the work of a “staffer” and said he would not apologize.  His moral failures are well known.  These are the words and works of someone whose lack of mature emotional control is evident every day, someone who knows nothing about the responsibilities of leadership for a great nation.

We face a grave test of our commitment to the true value of social justice, the fundamental faith teaching about the dignity and worth of all human life.  Racism is a direct attack on human dignity and a rejection of social justice.

How can this nation dare to plan its 250th birthday with this shameful stain on our current life in these United States?  Are we really going to ignore the terrible reality of presidentially-encouraged toxic racism today while sitting back to watch an Indy car race around the monuments and a UFC fight on the White House lawn and call that a celebration of 250 years of this experiment in Democracy while the hard won gains of two and a half centuries fall apart?

We, the People, must deal with the core problem of this time in American history — the obvious and protracted assault on our values, justice and freedom for all — sooner than later.  A hard American truth is that too many of us are looking the other way, not wanting to deal with this crisis.

Wake up, America!!  Our values, our very basis as a nation devoted to “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” for all is at stake.  We must insist that Congress and the Courts find their spine, remember their responsibilities to us, and act accordingly to restore dignity, sanity and a clear respect for law and justice in the nation’s highest office.

The Value of a College Degree: Dean Christine Carrino Gorowara Commencement Remarks

President's Blog: The Value of a College Degree: Dean Christine Carrino Gorowara Commencement Remarks

Dean Gorowara challenges graduates to think about the long-term value of their degrees.

Remarks for January 2026 Commencement
Dean Christine Carrino Gorowara
School of Education

Welcome and congratulations, graduates!  And welcome families and loved ones who are here to support them!

Today we celebrate our graduates, because you have done something special and important – you have earned a college degree.  This is something only about one in three Americans have done.  Some of you have actually earned a second college degree, something fewer than one in six Americans have done.

Now it seems like we have been hearing more questioning in recent years about whether a college degree is worth it.  And mostly when people ask that, they mean is it financially worth it – will the time and effort and money you invested in getting a college degree pay off in the form of greater earnings in the future.

By the way, the answer to that question is still, in most cases, yes, a college degree is worth it financially.

But we might think about whether a college degree is worth it by other measures.  Here’s what I would ask:  how did earning this degree change your life?

I saw this interesting thread on Reddit that asked people to describe their life in five words.

Some people chose five things they were or things they did, like:

1. Wife
2. Mother
3. Teacher
4. Swimmer
5. Reader

Some people chose five adjectives, like:

1. Adventurous
2. Love-filled
3. Authentic
4. Messy
5. Hopeful

Some made a five-word phrase, like:

1. Work
2. Eat
3. Sleep
4. Rinse
5. Repeat

Or:

1. Bad
2. Jokes
3. And
4. Awkward
5. Moments

Some were kind of meta, like:

1. I
2. Never
3. Finish
4. Anything

So how is the five-word description of your life different because you have earned a college degree?

Maybe as of today, your five words would be the qualities you discovered in yourself as you were studying for your degree while balancing school with work and family responsibilities:

1. Resilient
2. Persistent
3. Intelligent
4. Disciplined
5. Resourceful

Maybe they describe how you now see your future:

1. Doing
2. A
3. Job
4. I
5. Love

Or:

1. Life
2. Is
3. Full
4. Of
5. Possibility

Maybe they reflect ways you have come to see yourself:

1. Learner
2. Analyzer
3. Professional
4. Leader
5. Expert

Think about your five words, and how they are different today from what they would have been before you came to Trinity.  Whatever they are, know that from this day forward, they will be linked in some way to these five words:

1. I
2. Earned
3. A
4. College
5. Degree

Lean Into Compassion: Dean Brigid Noonan Commencement Remarks

President's Blog: Lean Into Compassion: Dean Brigid Noonan Commencement Remarks

Dean Noonan offers wisdom for life to graduates of Nursing and Health Professions: Compassion, Empathy and Lifelong Learning.

Remarks for January 2026 Commencement
Dean Brigid Noonan
School of Nursing and Health Professions

To the Class of 2025 – Congratulations!

To your families, your friends and your faculty … thank you for supporting these individuals!

Today we gather to celebrate you. This moment represents years of late nights, early mornings, challenging exams, difficult conversations, missed time with family and friends, and countless hours spent learning how to care for others. Whether you are graduating from nursing, occupational therapy, public health, or counseling—at the undergraduate or graduate level—you share something powerful in common: you have chosen a profession rooted in service, humanity, and at a time that we need it badly … HOPE!

You are entering fields that do not exist at a distance from people’s lives. You will be invited into moments of vulnerability, uncertainty, transition, and healing. You will meet individuals, families, and communities at their best—and at their most fragile. That responsibility is an honor, a privilege and a calling.

As you step forward into your professional lives, I want to offer three commitments to carry with you: lean into compassion, continue to develop empathy, and always remain a lifelong learner—especially when you think you don’t need to be.

First, lean into compassion.

Compassion is not passive. It is not simply feeling for someone—it is choosing to act with care, dignity, and respect even when it is difficult and incredibly challenging. Compassion shows up when systems are strained, when resources are limited, when time is short, and when answers are unclear. It shows up when burnout whispers that it would be easier to disengage.

Leaning into compassion means seeing the person behind the chart, the diagnosis, the referral, or the statistic. It means recognizing that every individual you encounter carries a story shaped by culture, experience, trauma, resilience, and hope. Your technical skills will, of course, matter deeply—but your compassion will often matter more.

Second, continue to develop empathy.

Empathy is not a skill you master once; it is a practice you return to again and again. It requires humility and grace—the willingness to listen more than you speak, to suspend judgment, and to acknowledge what you do not know.

As professionals, you will gain expertise. You will earn titles and credentials. And yet, empathy asks you to remain open—to recognize that an individual’s lived experience is a form of knowledge no textbook can fully capture. Developing empathy means staying curious about perspectives different from your own and honoring the voices of those you serve as partners in their own care, healing, and well-being.

Empathy is also essential for how you treat one another and yourselves. Extend it to colleagues navigating stress, to students who will one day look to you as mentors, and to yourself when the work feels heavy.

Finally, always be a lifelong learner—even when you think you don’t need to be.

The fields you are entering will change. Evidence will evolve. Best practices will shift. New challenges will emerge that demand creativity, critical thinking, and courage. Lifelong learning is not about collecting credentials—it is about staying responsive, reflective, and responsible.

Perhaps most importantly, learning keeps you grounded. It reminds you that expertise does not mean certainty, and leadership does not mean having all the answers. The moment we believe we have nothing left to learn is the moment we stop growing—and in professions like yours, growth is essential to ethical and effective practice.

Remember, the world you are entering needs you—not just your knowledge, but your values. It needs professionals who lead with compassion, practice empathy with intention, and commit to learning for a lifetime. It needs you to be courageous advocates, thoughtful collaborators, and steadfast servants of the public good.

As Wilfred Peterson said:  “The world needs less heat and more light.  It needs less of the heat of anger, revenge, retaliation, and more of the light of ideas, faith, courage, aspiration, joy, love and hope”.

So … the world needs your knowledge, your integrity, your courage, and your heart. As you leave Trinity, carry with you what you have learned—but also carry the humility to keep learning, the empathy to truly listen, and the compassion to act with purpose.

Congratulations, Class of 2025. The work ahead matters. And so do you.

The Relevance of Liberal Arts: Dean Sita Ramamurti Commencement Remarks

President's Blog: The Relevance of Liberal Arts: Dean Sita Ramamurti Commencement Remarks

The liberal arts prepare students to adapt to many lifelong changes.

Remarks for January 2026 Commencement
Dean Sita Ramamurti
College of Arts & Sciences

Good evening, and congratulations to our graduates!

Today we celebrate your accomplishments, your journey, and the moment you’ve reached.

During your time at Trinity, you have grown not just in knowledge, but in confidence, in character, and in the power to make a difference. Today, we celebrate all that you have become, and all that you are ready to be.

I also want to take a moment to acknowledge and thank your families, friends, mentors, and our faculty and staff, who have supported you and are here today to cheer you on. Thank you all for being here!

Now, graduates, if you hear people questioning whether a liberal arts education is practical, marketable, or even relevant in today’s world, I want you to pause and consider what this education has truly given you. In an era defined by technological disruption, shifting careers, and complex global challenges, the most valuable skill isn’t mastering a single job or tool. It’s the ability to adapt and keep learning.

One of the greatest strengths of a liberal arts education, and the gift you take with you today, is intellectual adaptability. We haven’t prepared you for one narrow role; we’ve helped you learn how to think, how to analyze information, communicate clearly, understand different perspectives, and ask meaningful questions. These skills don’t expire, even as industries and job titles change.

And to our nursing graduates especially—this matters. Nursing is often viewed as purely technical, but you know that’s not the whole story. Every day, you draw on empathy, communication, ethical judgment, and cultural understanding—skills deeply rooted in the liberal arts.

So, graduates, embrace adaptability fully. Let it guide how you face uncertainty. Let it guide how you seize opportunities. Let it guide the lives you build and the impact you leave behind.

You may remember the lesson often credited to Charles Darwin: survival belongs not to the strongest or the smartest, but to those who can adapt.

A liberal arts education is not the opposite of practical—it is practical at the deepest level.
I’ll leave you with this final thought:

Nurture your curiosity.
Nurture your openness.
Nurture your commitment to continual growth.

These qualities will carry you far beyond today.

Congratulations, graduates, we are so proud of you!

Moral Depravity in Minnesota

President's Blog: Moral Depravity in Minnesota

We the People must stand up and call out the moral catastrophe that is happening in Minnesota. Lives are at stake, and the future of the American Democracy is on the line.

Thousands gather downtown in sub-zero temperatures as hundreds of Minnesota businesses close in a statewide “ICE Out” protest and strike against federal immigration enforcement and the expanded ICE operations in Minneapolis, Minnesota, Jan. 23, 2026. Photographed by Erin Trieb for NPR.

Perhaps it’s too early to tell whether the wanton murders of American citizens at the hands of ICE agents in Minnesota will be the political Waterloo for the cruel, inhumane and un-American regime of the current president.  But we do know that what has happened in Minneapolis is a true moral catastrophe, a depraved and lawless assault on human life, our Constitution and the entire notion of the rule of law.  The moral catastrophe is enmeshed in an official skein of lies and remarkable fabrications of truths we can see with our own eyes.  The official use of the phrase “domestic terrorists” to describe Renee Good and Alex Pretti shamefully mis-appropriates the language of recent American suffering at the hands of real terrorists to describe ordinary citizens exercising their rights to speak and protest official misconduct.

We have all witnessed real terrorism — the awful scenes from 9/11, planes flown into buildings by the acolytes of Osama bin Laden, with thousands dead and maimed; the horrific 1995 bombing of the federal center in Oklahoma by a real domestic terrorist Timothy McVeigh killing 168 and injuring hundreds.

SHAME on members of the current administration who have denigrated Renee Good and Alex Pretti by equating their actions with those of actual terrorists.  SHAME on an administration that seeks to excuse the brutality of its agents by claiming that the ICE shooters were “in fear for their lives” as if Renee Good, Alex Pretti and the immigrants they sought to warn and help were otherwise unconcerned for their own safety.  The videos show otherwise — Renee Good, a mother and poet, was trying to warn immigrants of impending danger; Alex Pretti, an ICU nurse, was trying to protect two women who were violently pushed to the ground by the ICE agents.

What is in danger of being lost in our anger and horror at the appalling murders of Good and Pretti is the alleged reason why thousands of ICE agents have descended on the otherwise-peaceful realm of Minneapolis, a cold northern city with a warm heart and welcoming soul.  ICE invaded Minneapolis at the behest of a president whose racism and nativism is immense, who has found willing collaborators in his cabinet officers and the thousands of people willingly deputized to wear the garb of official intimidation and brutality.  Outfitted with their camo and kevlar vests and helmets and pepper spray and guns, these agents of official violence are allegedly seeking out undocumented immigrants who have committed crimes.  In Minneapolis, the search was supposedly focused on Somalian immigrants.  But the real reason seems to be less about immigration and more about political retribution against the governor and mayor who are Democrats; some commentators have even suggested that Minneapolis is a test case for regime change nationally.  We will see.

If any good can come out of the scandalous deaths of Good and Pretti, it may be this: the People of this nation are awakening from a too-long slumber ignoring the rising authoritarianism of the president and his agents.  The anger and outrage over the deaths of American citizens exercising their right to protest crosses aisles; the utter disgust at the official lies is increasingly loud and forceful.

So what can We, the People do in a moment like this?  We must speak up!  Let’s remember the truth of the statement that says that, “The only thing necessary for evil to flourish is for good people to do nothing.”  Let’s not be those who do nothing in the face of official violence and lies.  Let’s call it out every single time it happens.  Let’s do more — let’s insist that our elected members of Congress take action to stop this ugly and unnecessary infliction of official harm against so many people.

More, let’s stand proudly with our brothers and sisters who are immigrants to this nation, who have come here in search of peace and security but, instead, in the current regime are finding only fear and threats and violence.  No human being is “illegal” and No human being has a right to denigrate or threaten or snuff out the life of another.  Pope Leo XIV has spoken out forcefully on behalf of immigrants, and so have the U.S. Catholic bishops.  Just yesterday, Cardinal Tobin of New Jersey went so far as to call for ending funding for ICE and he urged Catholics to speak out and be counted.

And this is no time for the studied “neutrality” that too many universities have adopted… higher education must speak out about the abuses of law and morality taking place in Minnesota.  We must show our students that we stand for their rights, their lives and freedoms.

In this 250th year of America, we have a choice: to renew our commitment to the founding purpose of our nation to raise up “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” for all — or to be co-opted into abject agreement with a regime that is the antithesis of American values.  Our choices this year will determine whether the American Democracy will be here to celebrate its next milestone birthday.

Pray for them and all those being killed, beaten, intimidated and hurt by lawless government actions:

More Recent Blog posts from President McGuire.