We, the undersigned members of the Georgetown University community, state with fervent opposition the replacement — currently under consideration — of Fr. Edmund A. Walsh, S.J. as the namesake of the School of Foreign Service (SFS). On June 8, 2023, a petition was circulated to the Georgetown University community that revealed the intention to rename the SFS after Madeleine Albright. This decision will erase the only Jesuit namesake of an academic school at Georgetown University.

Fr. Edmund A. Walsh, S.J. was born in Boston, Massachusetts on October 10, 1885, and was ordained into the priesthood in 1916, receiving three academic degrees from Georgetown University. Following the armistice of World War I in 1918, Fr. Walsh was tapped as the first Regent of the School of Foreign Service. While this institution was designed to prepare Americans for all forms of international representation, Fr. Walsh envisioned a global school instilled in the Jesuit value of service. As the leader of the SFS, Fr. Walsh’s Catholic stewardship manifested in his global advocacy. From 1922-1923, Fr. Walsh served in the Soviet Union, securing the Relics of St. Andrew Bobola and negotiating with Soviet leaders to protect Russian Catholics from discrimination. In the 1930s, Fr. Walsh worked as a diplomat to resolve the repression of the Catholic Church of Mexico and to form Jesuit institutions in the Middle East. 

Much of Fr. Walsh’s work aimed to resist the forces of totalitarianism and religious repression. In 1923, Fr. Walsh reported on the show trials of Russia’s Roman Catholic hierarchy which saw the mass arrests and murders of thousands of priests and laity. His descriptions of the dehumanization of Catholic dissidents likely caused the refusal of the United States to grant diplomatic recognition of the Soviet Union. In the aftermath of World War II, Fr. Walsh served as a Consultant to the U.S. Chief of Council Robert Jackson during the Nuremberg Trials. His roles included uncovering evidence of repression of religious minorities under the Nazi regime and interrogating Nazi General Karl Haushofer, in spite of direction from his Vatican overseers. In Fr. Walsh’s reflections, he characterized the “single-party” states of Germany and the Soviet Union as rooted in faithlessness and evil. The dehumanization and Catholic hatred he witnessed informed his anti-communist ideology.

The criticism of Fr. Walsh as complicit in the machinations of McCarthyism was also unsubstantiated. In popular media, Walsh is attributed as providing Joseph McCarthy the impetus to go after presumed communists in the American government. As described in a Hoya article by Irmak Badelmi in April 2003, McCarthy received a “list” of communists and began making speeches regarding subversion in the government months prior to his meeting with Walsh. Since Catholic teachings preach against the dangers of communism, Walsh’s involvement seemed likely. Badelmi states, “People only believed the story because… the notion of a priest giving McCarthy the idea of an anti-Soviet agenda seemed to make sense.” In his capacity, Fr. Walsh was powerless to prevent the excesses of McCarthyism. As such, unfounded claims of Walsh’s complicity in McCarthyism only further the anti-Catholic bias that he spent his life addressing. 

We recognize the mentorship and guidance that Madeleine Albright provided during her tenure at Georgetown. Her legacy should be honored in a different capacity, ideally among the various classrooms and gathering spaces in the Fr. Edward B. Bunn, S.J. Intercultural Center. As a Jesuit institution, emphasis on education, ministry, and outreach to the marginalized are core to our mission, tenets that Fr. Walsh greatly emulated. Removing Fr. Walsh as the namesake of the SFS will erase not only his legacy but the Catholic ethos which encouraged the school’s founding.