About Gerard J. Campbell
Gerard John Campbell (August 26, 1919 – August 9, 2012) was an American Catholic priest, Jesuit, and historian who became the president of Georgetown University. Born in Pennsylvania, he entered the Society of Jesus at the age of 20 and studied at West Baden College and Fordham University, before earning his doctorate at Princeton University. A promising historian, he then taught at Loyola University Maryland, before becoming the executive vice president of Georgetown University in 1963, where he effectively worked as acting president. The following year, Campbell was appointed the president of Georgetown University. He continued the work of his predecessor to modernize the institution. Extensively reorganizing the university's governance, he amended its congressional charter, legally separated Georgetown from the Society of Jesus, and transformed the composition of its board of directors from senior Jesuit administrators to laypeople and Jesuits unaffiliated with the university. He also recruited prominent faculty in the humanities and social sciences, and gave faculty a direct role in administration by creating a faculty senate. At the end of his term, ground was broken on Lauinger Library, which greatly expanded the university's library capacity. Campbell's tenure as president was brief, as he preferred scholarship over academic administration. Combined with a mounting budgetary deficit, he resigned the office in 1968. Campbell then worked for the Jesuits' Maryland Province before becoming rector of the Jesuit novitiate in Wernersville, Pennsylvania. He returned to Georgetown as the director of the Woodstock Theological Center in 1979, and then founded the Center for Jesuit Spirituality at Holy Trinity Church. Bunn, and the provincial superior of the Jesuits' Maryland province had decided that Campbell would fill the newly created position to allow Bunn to travel extensively to raise money for the university.
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