President: 1976-1989
Fr. Timothy Healy, S.J., served as Georgetown's 46th president from 1976-1989. Fr. Healy's tenure as president was defined by substantial change for the University, including various controversies and significant financial growth.
Early Academic Career
Timothy Healy received his bachelor’s degree in English in 1946 and his master’s in Philosophy the following year from Woodstock College. During his studies at the Faculté St. Albert in Belgium, Fr. Healy was ordained in 1953. He then left for Fordham where he completed his master’s in English before earning his doctorate in Philosophy from Oxford in 1965. Fr. Healy returned to Fordham where he taught English before being appointed director of alumni relations and then executive vice president. In 1969, Fr. Healy was appointed vice chancellor for academic affairs of the City University of New York. 1A priest serving as vice chancellor of a public university was highly unusual, and Fr. Healy turned over his salary to the Jesuits who provided him with a housing stipend.2
Appointment as President
On April 14, 1976 Fr. Healy was appointed Georgetown’s forty-sixth president, succeeding Fr. Henle. Upon his appointment Fr. Healy was quick to acknowledge his predecessor who shared his surname, “We (he and Fr. Patrick Healy, S.J. 29th GU President) are not related, at least as far as I know. Although I give you fair warning, I am going to go around claiming he is my grandfather, since it is probably the only immediate and totally satisfactory answer I can think to give to the question.”3
Gaddafi Donation
Throughout his presidency, Fr. Healy’s actions were met with criticism and controversy. Mere months into his presidential tenure, Fr. Healy approved a $750,000 donation from Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi to endow a professorship in Georgetown’s Center for Contemporary Arab Affairs. The American Jewish community immediately issued a statement publicly condemning the University, and even Fr. Healy’s subsequent goodwill trip to Israel, awarding of an honorary degree for the Israeli ambassador to the United States, and wearing of a yarmulke at a Jewish service on campus did little to appease their anger.
Fr. Healy also grew increasingly worried about the moral implication of accepting money from Gaddafi and associating Georgetown with Gaddafi’s use of violence and international terrorism. Five years after accepting the donation, Fr. Healy walked into the Libyan embassy and returned the money. He announced his decision writing, “Georgetown can ill afford the loss of this large amount of money. . .University finance must take second place to keeping a Catholic moral understanding.”4
Navigating Georgetown's Catholic Identity
Fr. Healy struggled with balancing the University’s identity as a Catholic institution and its respectability among secular academies. Both Fr. Healy’s directive ordering ecumenical prayers at commencement and other public functions in order to respect the non-Catholic members of the University community and his decision to award an honorary degree to British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, who refused to withdraw British troops from Northern Ireland, garnered blowback from the Catholic community.5
In 1979, the University’s administration denied the Gay People of Georgetown University (GPGU) official recognition, overturning the decisions of the Student Senate and the Student Activities Commission to award recognition. In the statement announcing its decision, the University argued that recognition would be inconsistent with Catholic doctrine. 6A seven year lawsuit followed, with the District of Columbia Court of Appeals ruling in 1987 that the University must grant GPGU the same “tangible benefits” awarded to other student groups but did not have to grant the group formal University recognition. Fr. Healy refused to appeal the decision to the United States Supreme Court hoping to unify the University community.7
WGTB Controversy
In 1979, Fr. Healy, announced the transfer of the University’s educational FM radio license to the University of the District of Columbia. More than 400 students protested the loss of the University’s radio station, WGTB, with signs reading “Fr. Healy in Top 40 Hell” and “God Loves WGTB,” but Fr. Healy stood by his decision citing WGTB’s $42,000 budget.8
Legacy and Accomplishments
Despite these controversies, Fr. Healy’s legacy remains the University’s tremendous growth under his leadership. During his first ten years in office, the University’s operating budget tripled from $113 million to $363 million. The University's assets rose from $189 million to $536 million during the same ten years.9 From 1976 to 1989, the University's endowment rose from $38 million to $225 million. The number of students applying to the University doubled as well, rising from 6,300 to 11,900 during his tenure.10
Fr. Healy spearheaded a building campaign that added an additional twelve buildings to the University’s physical campus. These buildings included Yates Field House, the Williams Law Library, Villages A, B, and C, and the Leavey Center. 11The opening of Yates Field House coincided with a rise in the University’s athletic programs, most notably, a decade of dominance by John Thompson’s basketball team. Before 1976, the Georgetown men’s basketball team had qualified for the NCAA tournament twice. Between 1976 and 1986, the team appeared in the national championship game three times, winning its first national title in 1984. The University funneled the basketball team’s revenue back into athletics, adding lights on top of Yates, resurfacing Harbin Field, and expanding the training facilities in McDonough.12
The graduate schools also experienced significant change under Fr. Healy’s leadership. The medical school expanded with the addition of the Vincent T. Lombardi Cancer Research Center and the Bles Building. The law center rose to become one of the most prestigious law schools in the country. Unfortunately, this growth and development was not universal. Responding to a decline in applicant quality and quantity, Fr. Healy chose to close the Dental School in 1987, with the final Dental School class graduating in 1990.13
Resignation and Later Years
In February of 1989, Fr. Healy resigned the presidency in order to accept a new position as head of the New York Public Library. In the letter formally announcing his resignation, Fr. Healy wrote:
“Leaving Georgetown after so many years will be a wrench, and at the moment I feel rather like a senior about to graduate—without the endless energy of youth . . . I made my decision fully aware of the deal of unfinished business that faces the enterprise we share. For a University as strong and as busy as Georgetown, however, there can never be a year or a day, when the pile of things to be done shrinks very much. Long ago I learned that no one, certainly not me, is irreplaceable.”14
Fr. Healy was succeeded by Fr. Leo J. O’Donovan, but he continued to teach courses at Georgetown. After his death in 1993, Fr. Healy was laid to rest in Georgetown’s Jesuit Community Cemetery.
- 1“A Modern Renaissance Man.” The Georgetown Voice. July 1976, p.12.
- 2Maeroff, Gene. “Educator on Move, Timothy Stafford Healy.” The New York Times. 16 April 1976, p.35.
- 3Raley, Nancy. “A Second Healy in Second Healy.” The Georgetown Voice. July 1976, p.10.
- 4Van Dyne, Larry. “Timothy Healy: Moral Man in a Pragmatic City.” The Washingtonian Magazine. 1981.
- 5Id.
- 6Quinn, Gloria. “Senate’s Chartering of Gay’s Overturned.” The Hoya. 9 Feb. 1979.
- 7Steinfels, Peter. “Priest Picked For Library Post Responds to Critics.” The Hoya. 9 Feb. 1989.
- 8Fogg, Alan. “Plug Pulled on GTB; Hundreds Protest Closing.” The Hoya. 2 Feb. 1979, p.1.
- 9Landler, Mark. “Healy at the Helm.” The Hoya. May 1986, p.7.
- 10Goldblatt, Craig and Martz, Stephanie. “Georgetown’s Healy Years.” The Georgetown Voice. 27 April 1989, p.10.
- 11Francis X. Ballman. “Building Outlines Campus Buildings, 1789 – 1995, Father Lawrence Hurley Memorial Edition, Francis X. Ballmann and the Division of Facilities, 1995, p. vi.
- 12Roche, Dennis. “A Decade of Improvement: Athletics Grows Under Healy’s Guidance.” The Hoya. May 1986, p.11.
- 13Georgetown University (Washington, DC), Ye Domesday Booke, 1989, p. 131.
- 14Prial, Frank. “Timothy S. Healy, 69, Dies; President of Public Library.” The New York Times. 1 Jan. 1993, p. 21.
