Rev. Theodore Martin Hesburgh, CSC (May 25, 1917 – February 26, 2015) was an American Catholic priest and academic who was a member of the Congregation of Holy Cross. He is best known for his service as the president of the University of Notre Dame for thirty-five years (1952–1987). In addition to his career as an educator and author, Hesburgh was a public servant and social activist involved in numerous American civic and governmental initiatives, commissions, international humanitarian projects, and papal assignments. Hesburgh received numerous honors and awards for his service, most notably the United States's Presidential Medal of Freedom (1964) and Congressional Gold Medal (2000). As of 2013, he also held the world's record for the individual with most honorary degrees with more than 150.

Hesburgh is credited with bringing Notre Dame, long known for its football program, to the forefront of American Catholic universities and its transition to a nationally respected institution of higher education. He supervised the university's dramatic growth, as well as the successful transfer of its ownership from Holy Cross priests to the Notre Dame board of trustees in 1967. During his tenure as president, the university also became a coeducational institution. 
In addition to his service to Notre Dame, Hesburgh held leadership positions in numerous groups involved in civil rights, peaceful uses of atomic energy, immigration reform, and Third World development. Hesburgh was also active on the boards of numerous businesses, nonprofits, civic organizations, and Vatican missions.

Early life and education
Theodore Martin Hesburgh was born on May 25, 1917, in Syracuse, New York, to Theodore Bernard Hesburgh, a Pittsburgh Plate Glass warehouse manager, and Anne Murphy Hesburgh. His father was of Luxembourgish ancestry; his mother's family was of Irish descent. Young Theodore was the second child and oldest son in a family of five children that included two boys and three girls. He attended Most Holy Rosary, a parochial school in Syracuse, and also served as an altar boy. Hesburgh claimed that he had wished to become a priest since the age of six. Thomas Duffy, a missionary priest from the Congregation of Holy Cross, which owned the University of Notre Dame, encouraged Hesburgh's interest in joining the priesthood.

Hesburgh graduated from Most Holy Rosary High School in Syracuse in 1934 and enrolled in the Holy Cross Seminary at Notre Dame in the fall. In 1937, his teachers decided to send the promising young seminarian to study in Rome, Italy, where he graduated from the Pontifical Gregorian University with a bachelor of philosophy degree in 1940. When the American consul in Rome ordered all U.S. citizens to leave Italy in 1940, due to the outbreak of World War II, Hesburgh returned to the United States to continue his studies. He spent three years (1940–43) studying theology at the College of the Holy Cross and two years (1943–45) at The Catholic University of America, where he earned a doctorate in sacred theology in 1945.

On June 24, 1943, Hesburgh was ordained a priest for the Congregation of Holy Cross at Notre Dame's Sacred Heart Church (later renamed the Basilica of the Sacred Heart). Inspired by an inscription carved in stone above the church's door, Hesburgh dedicated his life to "God, Country, and Notre Dame." Afterwards, Father Ted, as he preferred to be called, returned to Washington, D.C., to complete his studies and assist at area parishes. In addition, Hesburgh served as a chaplain at the National Training School for Boys (a juvenile detention facility) and at a military installation. He also ran a large United Service Organization (USO) club in a Knights of Columbus hall in Washington, D.C. Although Hesburgh expressed an interest in serving as a chaplain in the U.S. Navy during World War II, he returned to Notre Dame, Indiana, in 1945, after completion of his studies in Washington, D.C., to begin a teaching career at the university.

Career

Early years
Hesburgh joined the Notre Dame faculty as an instructor in the university's Department of Religion in 1945. In 1948 Hesburgh was named head of the Department of Theology, and in 1949 Notre Dame's president, John J. Cavanaugh, C.S.C., appointed Hesburgh executive vice president. Three years later, 
at the age of thirty-five, Hesburgh succeeded Cavanaugh as president.

President of Notre Dame

Hesburgh served as Notre Dame's president for thirty-five years, from 1952 until his retirement in 1987. At that time his was "the longest presidency in American higher education." Hesburgh immediately began efforts to transform the school, primarily known for its football program, "into a nationally respected institution of higher learning." In 1953 the university created the Distinguished Professors Program to attract top scholars to Notre Dame. By the time of Hesburgh's retirement in 1987, the school had established more than a hundred distinguished professorships.

Hesburgh supervised dramatic growth at the university and expansion of its endowment, as well as its transition to a coeducational institution which occurred in 1972. During his presidency (1952–87), the annual operating budget increased from $9.7 million to $176.6 million and the university's endowment increased from $9 million to $350 million. Research funding increased from $735,000 to $15 million. Student enrollment nearly doubled from 4,979 to 9,676, and its faculty more than doubled from 389 to 951. The average faculty salary rose from $5,400 to $50,800. The number of degrees conferred annually doubled from 1,212 to 2,663. While Hesburgh was president, the university also initiated forty new building projects, including the $8 million library with the famous "Word of Life" mural, better known as "Touchdown Jesus," on its façade.

Hesburgh played a key role in developing the Land O'Lakes Statement that North American representatives of the International Federation of Catholic Universities issued in 1967. The document  outlined a commitment to academic freedom with independent governance and insisted that "a Catholic university properly developed can even more fully achieve the ideal of a true university." The statement created some controversy because it declared that Catholic universities should be autonomous, free from all authority, including the Catholic Church. Despite the conflicts that the statement initiated, Hesburg's commitment to excellence "transformed Notre Dame into one of the most recognizable and prestigious Catholic universities in the United States". In 1967, Hesburgh ended the university's exclusive, century-long leadership by the Congregation of Holy Cross clergy. Hesburgh and Howard Kenna worked together to establish a plan for transferring ownership of the university from the Congregation of Holy Cross priests to the University of Notre Dame Board of Trustees. The new governing board included laypersons and Holy Cross priests as trustees and fellows.

During the 1960s, when student demonstrations were held at colleges and universities across the United States, Hesburgh and many other collegiate presidents came under attack. For Notre Dame the climax of student unrest occurred in 1968–69. On February 17, 1969, Hesburgh took a controversial position in dealing with anti-Vietnam War student activism on campus when he issued an eight-page letter to the student body outlining the university's stance on protests. Hesburgh's letter stated that student protesters who violated the rights of others or disrupted the school's operations would be given fifteen minutes to cease and desist before facing suspension, or expulsion if they refused to disperse. Hesburgh's action provoked controversy and made national headlines. The letter was reprinted in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, and the Washington Post. Although Hesburgh received harsh criticism from Notre Dame's students, including requests for his resignation, responses to editorials in 250 newspapers about his "fifteen-minute rule" were nearly all favorable. In addition, President Richard Nixon sent Hesburgh a telegram praising his "tough stance" on the campus's student protests.

At President Nixon's request, Hesburgh offered advice to Vice President Spiro Agnew in a letter written on February 27, 1969, that included suggestions for potential actions that could be taken to control the violence on college campuses. Hesburgh, who generally disagreed with the Nixon administration's policy in Vietnam and favored an accelerated withdrawal of the troops, advised against repressive legislation to control campus protests. Hesburgh argued that university and college administrations should be allowed to continue to decide the appropriate action to take on their respective campuses. The National Governors Conference agreed with his view; the majority of state governors opposed the proposed legislation. In October 1969, Hesburgh publicly expressed his opposition to the war by signing a letter with other college presidents calling for withdrawal of U.S. forces from Vietnam and was present at an on-campus peace Mass with 2,500 Notre Dame students the following day.

Hesburgh, a member and later chair of the U.S. Civil Rights Commission, was publicly vocal in his support for equal rights, but he did not immediately recognize or take significant action to eliminate institutional racism at Notre Dame, where the number of black students and employees "remained at token levels until the late 1960s." In 1969, after some of Notre Dame's African American student activists criticized the low level of blacks enrolled at the university, Hesburgh appointed a student-faculty committee to assess the issue. The committee's findings caused him to take immediate measures to increase minority employment and aggressively recruit minority students. Hesburgh also persuaded the university's trustees to lift their forty-year ban on participation in postseason football games and used revenue generated from Notre Dame's bowl game appearances