The Institute for Advanced Catholic Studies at the University of Southern California: A Personal History

by James L. Heft; Cardinal Robert W. McElroy

Publisher:

Wipf and Stock

, 2025

Overview

I asked a distinguished international group of Catholic scholars what would most help Catholic universities stay Catholic and break new intellectual ground. Their reply was unanimous: found an independent research institute, locate it in the United States at a major secular research university, and form a lay board of trustees capable of funding, guiding, and defending it. This book explains why the Institute’s leadership chose as its home the University of Southern California rather than Yale and Princeton, and why two Cardinals of the Catholic Church tried but failed to close it down. It tells this story in vivid detail, documents challenges, victories, and mistakes, and describes the richness and critical importance of the Catholic intellectual tradition as one of the most fundamental intellectual and religious resources for true distinctiveness that Catholic universities offer to a polarized and insecure world. The Institute for Advanced Catholic Studies is unique; there is nothing like it in the world.

Praise for The Institute for Advanced Catholic Studies at the University of Southern California

Fr. James Heft has created a much needed and important scholarly research center with the IACS. Anyone interested in higher education, and not only Catholic higher education in particular, but higher education more broadly, is urged to read this book. It provides some brilliant insights into the state of the field and makes the case why the work of the IACS is so very necessary, not only for academia, but for the world which we all share.

——Amir Hussain, past president, American Academy of Religion, and professor of theological studies, Loyola Marymount University

Intellectual and institutional histories benefit from both broad overviews and detailed studies. Jim Heft’s engaging narrative of his struggles and successes in developing the Institute for Advanced Catholic Studies offers readers the kind of local history that adds texture to our broader understanding of the intellectual sweep of American Catholicism and the complex diversity of American higher education.

——Mark W. Roche, Rev. Edmund P. Joyce, CSC, Professor of German Language and Literature and Concurrent Professor of Philosophy, University of Notre Dame

Beyond the history of a Catholic research institute, Heft offers a lively personal take on trends in the Catholic intellectual world from the 1930s to the 2020s—including bishops, universities, scholars, funders, the Catholic ‘culture wars,’ and the impact of Pope Francis. . . . This book recreates a vivid journey back to twentieth-century political dynamics around Catholic theology, especially worries about its genuine ‘Catholicity.’ Heft writes with the authority and investment of a survivor!

——Lisa Sowle Cahill, J. Donald Monan, SJ, Professor of Theology, Boston College

The world’s ideas matter greatly, and an institute that attempts to consider the world’s most pressing questions in the context of our highest ideals and beliefs is a true gift. Heft and his early collaborators have done exactly that in creating the Institute for Advanced Catholic Studies at USC. The IACS was the result of sheer will, resistance to those who pushed back, and the success that comes from bringing some of the world’s finest minds to bear on questions that matter.

——Dennis Holtschneider, CM, president emeritus, Association of Catholic Colleges and Universities, and Joseph Cardinal Bernardin Fellow of Church Leadership, Catholic Theological Union, Chicago  

I know Father Dr. Professor James L. Heft, SM, as Jim, and he knows me as Reuven. I have had the enormous pleasure of learning from him, co-teaching with him, sharing podia with him, and sitting alongside him in classrooms, boardrooms, and lecture halls. As I look back at my own spiritual and academic career as a practicing Jew, a rabbi, and an academic, I don’t think I ever had more stimulating growth experiences than I was afforded as Jim’s colleague and fellow traveler in the quest for combining academic and spiritual excellence through the IACS. Jim’s energy, kindness, honesty, and humility are matched only by his intellectual integrity and willingness to honestly consider virtually any question from virtually any angle.

——Reuven Firestone, Regenstein Professor in Medieval Judaism and Islam, Hebrew Union College, and affiliate professor, University of Southern California 

This ‘personal history’ of the Institute for Advanced Catholic Studies at the University of Southern California is an absorbing, frank account of an important—and ongoing—contribution to US Catholic intellectual life. More than a memoir or a chronicle, it is a compelling vision of the gifts that scholars bring to the church and the world, and the challenges involved in providing time and space for those gifts to flourish. Current workers in this particular vineyard, as well as future historians, will find information and inspiration here.

——Una Cadegan, professor of history, University of Dayton

Product Details

• Title: The Institute for Advanced Catholic Studies at the University of Southern California: A Personal History
• Authors: James L. Heft, Cardinal Robert W. McElroy
• Publisher: Wipf and Stock
• Print Publication Date: 2025
• Logos Release Date: 2025
• Pages: 148
• Language: English
• Resources: 1
• Format: Digital › Ebook
• ISBNs: 9798385232482, 9798385232475, 9798385232468
• Resource ID: LLS:9798385232482
• Resource Type: Monograph
• Metadata Last Updated: 2025-04-23T00:27:04Z

About the Authors

James L. Heft, SM, a Marianist, served for thirty years in various capacities at the University of Dayton, including Provost and Chancellor. In 2006, he moved to the University of Southern California, where he became the Alton Brooks Professor of Religion and the founder of the Institute for Advanced Catholic Studies. In 2023 he returned to Dayton where he now serves as a scholar in residence.