Even though Islam and Catholicism are two distinctively different faiths, the two share a common bond in their treatment by the public, according to Dean Chester Gillis.

Gillis—dean of the Georgetown College and the founding director of the program on the Church and Interreligious Dialogue at the Berkley Center for Religion, Peace, and World Affairs—told the Catholic News Service that he sees similarities between the way Muslims are perceived by the public and the way Catholics were treated during their arrival in America.

“The neophytes in society are always on the outside,” Gillis told CNS. “With Catholics, people feared they would have loyalty to a foreign power, the Holy See.” (Likewise, some critics fear that Muslims may have ties to terrorist organizations or Islamic countries opposed to the U.S.)

Gillis also mentioned that in response to the YMCA, which originally did not allow Catholics, the Catholic Youth Organization was created. The CYO served as a community center for Catholics, similar to what the planned Park51, or Cordoba House, is to be for Muslims.

Although it took over a century for Catholics to become a mainstream part of society, Gillis believes that it could take less time for Muslims to become a mainstream part of society if the public starts to “know Muslims as people.”

For this year’s March Madness, Vox has assembled the most eclectic group of tournament brackets Georgetown’s ever seen. Famous and “famous” Hoyas alike opted to fill out a bracket for our pool—and while characters like President John DeGioia, Provost Jim O’Donnell, and Professor Madeleine Albright declined to participate, don’t follow basketball very closely, and didn’t respond, respectively, we’re pumped to share the responses we did get.

Our pool pits alums like First Lady of South Carolina Jenny Sanford (MSB ’84), comedian Mike Birbiglia (COL ’00), and Washington City Paper’s Mike DeBonis (COL ’04), against professor Sen. Chuck Hagel, Dean of the College Chester Gillis, and Director of Student Programs Erika Cohen-Derr.

Students Nick Troiano (COL ’11) of GUSA, Corp CEO Brad Glasser (COL ’11), and ANC Commissioner Aaron Golds (COL ’11) are playing, as are CAG President Jennifer Altemus (COL ’88), Casual Hoya, and nodak89 (Chris Tiongson (COL ’89)), of musical fame.

There’s no prize for winning—just bragging rights. The entries are below, and you can click each image to make it bigger.

Jenny Sanford

Sanford has Kentucky winning it all. In her bracket, Georgetown loses to Ohio State in the Sweet Sixteen.

Chuck Hagel

Hagel has Kansas beating Georgetown in the Elite Eight. But there’s no shame in being beaten by the best, right?

Mike Birbiglia

Birbiglia’s true blue. He’s got Georgetown going all the way, beating Kentucky in the championship game.

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Former head of the CIA General Michael Hayden has signed on as a member of a new Georgetown project that seeks to use law, policy, and technology as responses to the issue of cybersecurity, the Office of Communications reports.

He’s already helped design a February 16 exercise called Cyber ShockWave, “an exercise that brings together a bipartisan group of former senior administration and national security officials playing the roles of Cabinet members responding to a simulated cyberspace attack.”

The Los Angeles Times covered the exercise—which simulated a viral attack that debilitated millions of cell-phones, took down the Internet, and knocked out large swaths of the American power grid—and reports that participants had some jarring, if Hollywoodesque responses to the simulation. The dozen or so participants, former White House advisers and other top officials, it says, considered “putting the army in American cities, … nationalizing industries, rationing fuel and snatching suspects overseas.” Yikes.

“General Hayden is one of the most respected experts in national security and intelligence,” College Dean Chester Gillis said in Blue and Gray about Hayden’s adviser position. “As a senior adviser to Georgetown’s cyberproject, he will provide invaluable guidance and experience as we work to understand and tackle some of the most pressing issues around cybersecurity.”

Photo from Flickr user matthewbradley used under a Creative Commons license.

This week, the Voice sat down to talk with Chester Gillis, who was named Dean of the College at the end of last year.  We included a portion of the interview in today’s paper, but here’s the full transcript!

The Voice: How you are adjusting to this new job as Dean of the College? Do you find it particularly challenging or interesting?

Chester Gillis: Well in terms of adjusting, fortunately I had a year as interim dean to get the lay of the land. It was just a very good introduction to the position; it was very helpful. So in some ways this year, I’m doing some things for the second time, like last year, but also now I can implement a vision for the next five years. Are there challenges? There are a range of challenges. There are always a range challenges with this job. One is simply attending to multiple constituencies: the students, of course, the faculty, the alumni, the donors and the multiple stakeholders in the University from outside so it’s a very large constituency, very large, so any waverings tend to come from that, just like today. It’s just the reality.

That said, I have a superb staff here in the office, who are very knowledgeable, very experienced, and very helpful to make everything work so the leadership does the execution is happy on may levels and that makes everything possible. It’s as simple as that.

The Voice: I’ve spoken to a few students who are very excited about the proposed creation of a business minor in the college. I was wondering if you had any plans in the future for more of these cross-disciplinary majors?

Gillis: Specific ones, there are none at present. We’ll have to see how this one goes we’re working hard on it to make it happen.

The Voice: Do you have any idea of what the time frame would be?

Gillis: I don’t want to be held to saying next year. I would love to see it next year. I’d love to take my time do it right and do it quickly, but it requires a lot of coordination with the business school and the college and the provost’s office, so it’s not something you can simply fashion overnight.

We can’t even say, “Oh, we’ll just duplicate the program we already have.”  But I think once it’s done it will have a long shelf time, and if it’s successful, then it can be a model for other kinds of programs between schools.  But this is a good start and it’s an important start. We haven’t done it before, so it sets benchmark, and that’s another reason we want to do it well and do it carefully so it is successful. If it doesn’t benefit our students, if it’s not well-designed, it’s not good. If it is well-designed and it benefits students, then I’m in favor, and it could serve as a model.

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Interviews of University administrators by official Georgetown publications are generally pretty fluffy, but the question and answer session Georgetown Alumni Online recently had with Chester Gillis, the newly permanent Dean of the College, is surprisingly meaty.

Gillis starts off the interview by talking about how Georgetown has changed since he started working here 21 years ago.  He says the quality of the faculty has improved and that the students, while consistently excellent, have increasingly adopted a disconcerting pre-professional mindset.

He also talks about what his big plans are as Dean, both in the short and long-term.  Over the summer, he and the rest of the dean’s office will be discussing how to improve the advising system and give it more of a mentoring dimension.  A big long-term focus is going to be improving the sciences, with the goal of securing funding for the long-awaited new Science Center and adding 35 scientists to the Georgetown faculty over the next few years.

Possibly the most interesting part of the article, though, is when he talks about the need for allowing College students to do work through the SFS, MSB and NHS:

A second goal I have, (and I don’t mean this to contradict my comments about liberal arts), is to see the lines between the schools a bit more porous. If a student in the College wants to minor in a business discipline, I think that’s perfectly legitimate. I think it’s perfectly fine to have a history degree and a minor in finance.

I’ve had discussions with Dean Daly at the business school and he’s open and enthusiastic about this idea. The same is true for the School of Foreign Service and Nursing and Health Sciences, though that may be something to entertain down the road, as we should work with school at a time.

Congratulations!

Georgetown University’s College has been officially deanless since Dean Jane McAuliffe left to become the eighth President of the female liberal arts college Bryn Mawr last February. A search for her replacement lead by professor John R. Neill ensued.

Tonight, President Jack DeGioia emailed the undergraduate student body to announce that he and Provost James J. O’Donnell appointed Chester Gillis, the former chair of the Theology department who has been holding down the fort as interim dean since July, to become the College Dean “effective immediately.”

The full text of the email is after the jump.

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