Australian Catholic University has received a huge legacy bequest – US$10 million for the establishment of a centre for theology and philosophy. When realised, it will be the largest bequest ever received by ACU.
The donor is an emeritus professor at Boston University, Ray L. Hart, who taught philosophy and religion there for more than 20 years. The centre will be called the Ray L. Hart Centre for Philosophy of Religion.
ACU Vice-Chancellor and President Professor Zlatko Skrbis said the bequest would help shape scholarship at ACU for generations to come. It will bring together leading researchers, expand opportunities for global impact and help form the next generation of scholars.
“This is a defining moment for the university and we are deeply honoured to steward Prof Hart’s legacy,” said Prof Skrbis.
Prof Hart is a distinguished American scholar. Over the course of a 60-year academic career he received countless honours and awards, led the founding of over a dozen religious studies departments across the United States, and served as president and journal editor at the American Academy of Religion.
“What impresses me about ACU is the strength and success of its commitment to theology and philosophy,” Professor Hart said.
“It is most important to me that students in future generations be able, as I was, to ask and address fundamental questions of their own existence and experience with the help of key texts from the unfinished histories of philosophy and theology.
“What I can no longer do as an individual I must entrust to ACU as an institution, and I have every confidence that it will continue to give students rich opportunities to learn and to think deeply in this way.”
The centre’s inaugural director will be Prof Garth Green, who joins ACU’s School of Philosophy as the Ray L. Hart Professor of Philosophy of Religion. He will be based at the Melbourne Campus.
Prof Green comes to ACU from McGill University in Montreal. He was previously based at Boston University, where he worked with Prof Hart.
He has written extensively about mediaeval and Renaissance theology, 19th century philosophy of religion, and 20th century phenomenology.
“The pledged bequest aligns closely with the Faculty of Theology and Philosophy’s mission to explore the rich intersections between theology and philosophy, and between faith and reason, which (in Fides et Ratio) Pope John Paul II famously described as ‘like two wings on which the human spirit rises to the contemplation of truth’,” Prof Richard Colledge, executive dean of ACU’s Faculty of Theology and Philosophy, told The Catholic Weekly. “The togetherness of these disciplines remains central to ACU’s academic identity.”
