When I travel outside of New Orleans and Louisiana, people often ask me how the recovery is going. And sooner or later they ask, “Why is it taking so long?” I respond to the second question by quoting Norman Francis, president of Xavier University, chairman of the Recovery Authority and an alum of Loyola, who says, “Compared to what?”
Americans want instant results. But this isn’t an instant recovery. Most Americans don’t understand the extent of the damage from hurricanes Katrina and Rita or the challenges of recovery. It will not be an instant recovery. But I believe it is an opportunity for us not simply to recover, but to build a better city.
I also argue it is a recovery worth doing, not just for New Orleans and the Gulf Coast, but also for the nation. When the United States purchased Louisiana, America not only bought the Louisiana territory, but it also bought its diversity. From the very beginning New Orleans was a city of diversity -French, Spanish, Creole, slaves and free blacks. Nothing like it existed in the United States. And like the rest of the United States, New Orleans has struggled with the tensions of diversity. But the challenges we face as a city are present throughout the United States.
Hurricane Katrina and our geography brought these tensions to the surface in a way that many cities can avoid. But they are present in other cities. Indeed, one of the challenges of this recovery is the challenge of how to maintain and preserve the diversity – racial, cultural and economic – in the renewal.
But, I argue, New Orleans is distinctively equipped to address these challenges. When people think of New Orleans, they often call to mind the sights and sounds of Bourbon Street, Mardi Gras, world-class restaurants, jazz, the port and shipping or the energy industry. They don’t think of New Orleans as a college town – aside from college students who come to visit and party. But New Orleans is also home to fourteen colleges and universities. These institutions represent the full spectrum of higher education in the United States. There are major research universities like Tulane University, public universities like the University of New Orleans and Southern University, small undergraduate colleges like Our Lady of Holy Cross, historically black universities like Dillard and Xavier and Jesuit universities like Loyola, as well as well-known health care research institutions like Lousiana State University, Tulane and Ochsner Health System.
These universities have always played an important role in this city. They have educated people and helped to form the core of the civil society in New Orleans. Every great city has at least three key elements to it. There is the business community, the political community and the civic, non-profit community. The civic community is comprised of schools, churches and a variety of volunteer association. Universities have been important in educating the leadership of all three communities in New Orleans. Universities are formative of the leadership in the political, business and civic communities that make a city.
Universities have also been important to New Orleans, and the United States, in another way. By their nature universities are places that promote civic virtues. They are places where people hold different ideas, question one another, argue and disagree -peacefully. By their nature, universities are contentious places that promote toleration.
Colleges and universities have been ladders of economic and social opportunity. They are also engines of innovation and ideas. They create intellectual capital. And they are the repositories of history, culture and values, the social capital any society requires.
In its life post-Katrina, the city’s universities will have a renewed role in its new life. New Orleans found its economic strength for so long in agriculture, shipping and energy. Those areas have changed. But so has the global economy. As we move further into an economy based on ideas and intellectual capital, there are few cities better positioned for this new day.
The Rev. Kevin Wildes, S.J., is Loyola University New Orleans’ president.
