Seton Hall University: A History, 1856–2006
Year: 2025
Type: article
Abstract: A sesquicentennial is an important event; a celebration of an institution’s history and longevity. It is also a time to evaluate that institution’s impact, successes, and challenges. Dermot Quinn’s history of Seton Hall University’s first 150 years does all of these things. In the process, he also tells the story of Catholic higher education in America.Quinn describes the founding of Seton Hall by James Roosevelt Bayley, the first Bishop of Newark. Bayley’s desire to found a Catholic college came from several motives. He needed to find more and better priests for his diocese, he wanted to provide New Jersey Catholic boys with an appropriate education, and he recognized that “good parochial schools . . . would elevate our social condition” (10).Bayley opened his first college in Madison, New Jersey in 1856. Funding came from Newark diocesan subscribers and tuition from five students. By 1860 the growing college had moved to its present location in South Orange, New Jersey, and had fifty students taught by seventeen faculty. By 1861, the college had secured a charter from the New Jersey Legislature, and by 1867, seminarians were housed and taught on campus.The growth in both facilities and student body in these first years was not without its challenges. Disastrous fires nearly caused the Board of Trustees to close Seton Hall in both 1866 and 1886. Finances in these early years proved precarious. College president Michael Corrigan kept Seton Hall afloat by donating his own family’s money. Bayley even considered selling the South Orange property, using the proceeds to liquidate both college and diocesan debt. Seton Hall’s bid to become the Catholic University of America was unsuccessful when a new college was established in Washington, DC.Despite these obstacles, Seton Hall survived the nineteenth century and sometimes thrived. Enrollments grew, the curriculum modified, and a library was built. In the twentieth century, the college grew and changed direction in response to societal demands on higher education. During the 1920s, Seton Hall joined the Catholic Education Association in a quest to improve academic standards. In doing so, the university was responding to the economic crisis of the Great Depression and growing competition from government-funded public universities. It added off-campus professional programs, accommodated returning veterans after World War II, and admitted its first class of women to the South Orange campus in 1968.Like many colleges and universities, Seton Hall suffered during the 1970s from a volatile economy and changing demographics, which led to shrinking enrollments and, of course, revenues. Compounding this difficulty, was a concern about a lack of religiosity among American Catholics who were increasingly sending their children to non-Catholic colleges. These factors led to a dramatic fiscal and identity crisis in the late 1970s, compounded by a succession of less-than-effective presidents. The university was a “disaster” by 1980 (337).Seton Hall then climbed its way back to sustainability by a combination of dynamic leadership, successful capital campaigns, curricular reform, and a new emphasis on Catholicism. In the last four chapters Quinn gives an in-depth look at how the university changed its governance, business practices, curriculum, and philosophy to right itself. Some readers may find this information too detailed.Throughout this institutional history, Quinn also offers us insights into student life. In the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, despite strict discipline, students organized extracurricular activities and engaged in pranks. The 1960s student body, according to Quinn, was “indifferent to political engagement” (291). During the 1990s, however, Seton Hill had a Black Student Union, a gay student group that fought unsuccessfully for university recognition, and controversies over issues such as free speech and euthanasia. By the millennium, then, this “leafy college in a quiet town,” experienced the same political and cultural wars as the broader American society it inhabited (127).What’s missing from this book is a sense of how this American society, often firmly anti-Catholic, viewed this institution and others like it. Bishop Bayley himself, acknowledged the negative stereotypes and discrimination that plagued nineteenth-century American Catholics. What, for example, did the larger community of Newark think of this Catholic college in its midst? Surely, the local newspapers had something to say about this development. Quinn mentions that the student body supported John Kennedy’s campaign, but did this create conflict with the wider community or change Seton Hall’s conception of itself? Did the campus culture or relationship with Newark change as the children of Catholic immigrants assimilated? Attention to these questions would enhance an already insightful book.Quinn, himself a history professor at Seton Hall, might be forgiven if he downplayed scandal at his home institution. However, he accurately reports on two incidents that put Seton Hall in a bad light. In 1948, the Federal Works Agency investigated complaints that Seton Hall was fraudulently acquiring surplus war materials and embezzling monies from their resale. While the university was never formally prosecuted, the investigation revealed a set of slipshod and questionable business practices. Employees resigned and the college president was dismissed.The second incident concerns a 2000 dormitory fire in which three students lost their lives. Although the blaze was the result of arson, a faulty fire alarm system and poor construction compounded the problem. In both cases, Quinn honestly and unsparingly recounts the stories. In doing this, he shows his professionalism and scholarship.Speaking of scholarship, Quinn’s sources are plentiful and varied. His primary documents include university and diocesan correspondence and records, college artifacts, literature from Catholic periodicals, and articles from regional and national newspapers. Secondary sources range from biographies of Catholic notables to historical monographs on higher education and American Catholicism.Quinn’s impeccable research, lively writing, and in-depth, even-handed approach make this a useful book for historians of the Mid-Atlantic. Seton Hall University provides an excellent understanding of this long-lived institution as well as American Catholic higher education.
Source: Pennsylvania history
Author: Susan Rimby
Institution: Lock Haven University
Language: English
Subfield: History
Field: Arts and Humanities
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: diamond
OpenAlex ID: W4409574940
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