President Obama appoints Jesuit to key post

Fr Michael Suarez SJ

President Obama has announced more key administration posts which include Campion Hall Visiting Fellow, Reverend Michael Suarez SJ, as a Member of the National Council on the Humanities. Fr Michael recently gave the outstanding Lyell Lectures in the Weston Library in Oxford.

The National Council on the Humanities comprises a board of twenty six distinguished private citizens appointed by the president and confirmed by the Senate. Members serve staggered six year terms during which they advise the National Endowment for the Humanities, an independent funding agency created in 1965, on grants which typically go to cultural institutions, such as museums, archives, libraries, colleges, universities, public television, and radio stations, and to individual scholars.

Michael F. Suarez SJ is Director of Rare Book School, University Professor, Professor of English, and Honorary Curator of Special Collections at the University of Virginia, positions he has held since 2009.

Fr Michael held the JA Kavanaugh Chair in English at Fordham University from 1999 to 2009, and was a Fellow and Tutor as a member of the Oxford University Faculty of English from 1995 to 2009.

He was a Junior Research Fellow at St. John's College, Oxford from 1995 to 1999, and was an Instructor at LeMoyne College from 1988 to 1990.

He has been Editor-in-Chief of Oxford Scholarly Editions Online for Oxford University Press since 2010.

He is a member of the Board of Trustees of The Library Company of Philadelphia, the Advisory Board of the Library of Congress Literacy Awards Program, the Council of The Bibliographical Society of America, and the Board of Managers of the Lewis Walpole Library at Yale University.

Fr Suarez has received numerous awards and honours, including a Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study Fellowship from 2005 to 2006, a Research Fellowship from the American Council of Learned Societies from 2003 to 2004, a National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Fellowship in 1990, and a Marshall Scholarship at Oxford University from 1984 to 1987.

He was ordained as a Jesuit priest in 1994 after entering the Society of Jesus in 1982 and received a BA from Bucknell University, an MTh and MDiv from the Weston Jesuit School of Theology and an MA/BA, MSt and DPhil from Oxford University.

President Obama said: "I am confident that these experience and hardworking individuals will help us tackle the important challenges facing America, and I am grateful for their service. I look forward to working with them."

Source: Jesuits in Britain