Irving, TX (Nov. 15, 2021) — President Jonathan J. Sanford, inaugurated last month as the 10th president of the University of Dallas, announced a new series of engagements over the next year centered around the theme of cultural renewal through the pursuit of educational excellence.

“The occasion of Dr. Sanford’s inauguration officially marks a new springtime in the life of the University of Dallas,” said Vice President for Advancement Kris Munoz Vetter. “Through these events, our goal is to engage alumni and new friends throughout the country who care deeply about the need to renew our culture, and who see institutions like UD as pivotal to that work in the intellectual and moral formation of the next generation.”

Sanford, who holds a doctorate in philosophy and previously served as provost and dean at the university, is a noted scholar in virtue ethics. He is a champion of the belief that the best and highest form of education is one that embraces arete — the Greek word for excellence and virtue — in all it pursues, an ideal that has been lost in too many institutions of higher learning today.

The Arete series will include in-person lectures and panel discussions at UD’s Irving campus, throughout the Dallas/Fort Worth metroplex, and in key cities such as Houston, Austin and Washington, D.C. Featured guests of the series will include leaders in academia, business, public policy and the arts.

“Each of these engagements will be an opportunity to reflect on the ways in which our culture can draw from and be guided by those rich goods which are the fruits of the liberal arts: goods that are rooted in both the Western and Catholic intellectual tradition, goods to which we are firmly committed in the formation of our students,” Sanford said.

Munoz Vetter added that the Arete series is a way to highlight the university not only as a premier liberal arts institution, but as distinctly committed to its Catholic identity: “Pope St. John Paul II stated that we must have the courage to commit ourselves humbly and patiently to improving ourselves and society, making the world more human and more fraternal. Arete events are designed to remind us that at the heart of UD’s educational mission is the call to form future leaders who are prepared to faithfully and courageously serve their communities, our country and the Church.”

Featured speakers of the Arete series include national leaders such as O. Carter Snead, professor of law at the University of Notre Dame; Kevin Roberts, president of The Heritage Foundation and former president of the Texas Public Policy Foundation; Ethics and Public Policy Center fellow George Weigel; and Dallas/Fort Worth figures in academia and business, with future events to be announced through fall 2022.

Sponsors of the Arete Inaugural Event Series include University of Dallas benefactors and trustees Kelly and Joe Armes, Nancy Cain Marcus and Sanford Robinson, and Elizabeth and Richard Husseini.

More information can be found at UDallas.edu/Inaugural-Series.