A photo of MU’s statue of St. John Baptist de La Salle, the patron saint of teachers.
MANHATTAN.EDU / COURTESY
Maddie Rosado, Managing / News Editor
Nearly 350 years after a French priest set out to educate the children of the poor, Manhattan University’s (MU) Lasallian roots still shape what it means to be a Jasper in the Bronx, from its first-generation students to its ties with the Riverdale community around it.
For Bridget Chalk, associate provost and professor of English, that identity starts with who the university serves.
“We proudly serve a good number of first-generation college students here, and it’s almost a third [of the population],” Chalk said. “In the middle of the 20th century, first-generation Catholic college students were overwhelmingly Irish and Italian, especially in the Bronx. Since then, this demographic has largely expanded.”
Chalk traced the mission back to the founder of the Christian Brothers, John Baptist de La Salle, a 17th century French priest and theologian.
“[De La Salle] gave his entire life to educating those who did not previously have access to education,” Chalk said. “Going all the way back to the late 17th century, that has been our mission. And to me, that’s really powerful.”
Brother Augustine Nicoletti, FSC, MU’s vice president of mission, told The Quadrangle that the Lasallian tradition began with De La Salle, who never set out to find an order. What he started grew into an educational movement that has outlasted him by centuries.
“[De La Salle became] the founder of a religious order, the De La Salle Christian Brothers and an educational movement that almost 350 years later still exists,” Nicoletti said. “The mission has never changed. The schools were established for the working class, the poor, the marginalized.”
Nicoletti further expanded upon the lasting influence of De La Salle’s methods in the classroom. He pointed to the pedagogy that earned the founder his title as the church’s patron of teachers, and to how the work of the Brothers has been carried out ever since.
“De La Salle is considered the patron of teachers by the church because he created a pedagogy,” Nicoletti said. “In the early 1700s, De La Salle created the conduct of schools, and that’s what we still use.”
Nicoletti emphasized that the Brothers’ mission has always centered on building relationships, a core value that continues to shape the university’s identity today.
“The goal is to touch hearts and to transform lives,” Nicoletti said. “What we’re trying to do is become a ministry of presence to one another. That’s the important part of the mission. We are a community, and mission is what drives an institution.”
The mission reached the Bronx in stages. The Brothers opened a school on Canal Street in Lower Manhattan, then moved north to Manhattanville in 1853, where they saw a need for higher education.
The university settled in the Riverdale section of the Bronx in 1923, according to the history page of the university’s Holocaust, Genocide, and Interfaith Education Center, placing it among neighbors with their own long-standing traditions.
Pamela Chasek, Ph.D., professor of political science, described how the campus fits into that neighborhood. Riverdale has long been home to a large Jewish community, she mentioned, and the university and its neighbors live alongside one another with limited contact.
“We have two social circles that don’t necessarily experience much overlap,” Chasek said. “These circles occasionally overlap when there’s an event or something going on. But we don’t cause many rifts.”
Chasek noted that this disconnect is evident among students, many of whom are unfamiliar with the neighborhood surrounding MU’s campus.
“A lot of students don’t know what’s west of campus,” Chasek said.
There was a time when the two sides were closer. According to the center’s history page, the Archdiocese of New York and the Anti-Defamation League began working to improve Catholic-Jewish relations in the 1960s, following the Vatican II document “Nostra Aetate.” The archbishop asked the college to prepare a 60-page summary of Judaism, and the assignment went to Frederick M. Schweitzer, then a young history professor.
The page states that the project grew into a 300-page book and shaped the rest of Schweitzer’s career, leading to four books, numerous articles and lectures, and the founding of the Manhattan College Holocaust Resource Center in 1996.
As the center’s first director, Schweitzer “engaged in outreach to the Jewish community,” according to the page, and also scheduled lectures by Holocaust scholars and held workshops for area teachers.
That commitment to the world beyond campus is not new, Nicoletti told The Quadrangle, and it is not a departure from the Lasallian mission. He explained that serving the wider community has always been part of the Brothers’ work, and that the university’s diversity reflects it.
“From the beginning to the present time, it remains the same,” Nicoletti said. “Every ethnic, every religious tradition [is] present. That’s the connection to the mission, with the culture.”
For Chalk, she described Jasper pride as the most lasting part of the university’s culture.
“The Jasper identity is something that’s so lasting,” Chalk said. “Our alums are so devoted to this university, and they will do anything for our students. We’re a small school, but the Jasper pride is really part of New York culture.”