Here at the Keough School of Global Affairs we grieve the difficulties and challenges of this year, yet we gratefully acknowledge the unexpected opportunities for rededication of purpose and a more fruitful engagement with one another and the world.
At the Keough School we are committed to seizing such opportunities. Doing so with wisdom will require us to embrace the fundamental things that still apply: faith, hope and charity. We celebrate the holiday season as a time to anticipate and welcome the light—and the new ideas and renewed resolve it brings.
“With this faith, we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope. With this faith, we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood.”
Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr.
“I am asked why I do the kind of work I do with the Afghan Institute of Learning. Each time the question is posed, I am reminded of the children in Peshawar when they first come to school. In their eyes I see fear, sadness and hopelessness. But in just a few weeks, the same children are standing taller, laughing and playing with smiles across their faces. And I answer the question with this: When you make education available to the Afghan children, it is like giving them new life and hope for the future.”
Sakena Yacoobi
It is true that there is a thing crudely called charity,
which means charity to the deserving poor; but charity to the deserving is not charity at all, but justice. It is the undeserving who require it, and the ideal either does not exist at all, or exists wholly for them.”
G.K. Chesterton
The faculty and staff of the Keough School of Global Affairs wish you a happy holiday season.
Please note that the University of Notre Dame is closed for the holiday season from Monday, December 21, 2020 through Tuesday, January 5, 2021. The University will reopen for the new year on January 6, 2021.
Top photo: Notre Dame students participate in a campus candlelight procession on Martin Luther King Day in January 2020.