 Richard Spohn Brings
Passion for Public Service
to McCarthy Center
For Richard Spohn (left), joining the University of San Francisco as the director of the Leo T. McCarthy Center for Public Service and the Common Good is a homecoming of sorts. He grew up in the shadow of USF and attended St. Ignatius High School when it was located where the Koret Center now stands. As a teenager living in the neighborhood, he recognized Leo McCarthy, the man who inspired the center Spohn now directs, as a “Big Man on Campus.”
“I remember that there was a major campus politician by the name of Leo McCarthy,” Spohn said. “It was only later in the ’70s when I went to Sacramento that I came to know who this BMOC was.”
Although working in the world of academia is new to Spohn, Jesuit education and the mission of the McCarthy Center are not.
“I was in the Jesuits for six and half years after high school, and got my bachelor’s and masters from Fordham. I have AMDG (Ad Majorem Dei Gloriam) indelibly branded on my tush,” he said.
Spohn, who also holds a law degree from Harvard, was director of consumer affairs during the Jerry Brown administration when Leo McCarthy was speaker of the state assembly. After several years as a partner at a San Francisco law firm, he moved to Guatemala. There he worked at a Jesuit university developing a dialogue and conflict resolution program for labor disputes.
“We brought together the leaders of the business and labor communities in Guatemala for a first-time ever sit-down dialogue,” he said. “It was really an historic breakthrough. In a culture that is as confrontational as Guatemala’s, this was a radical change.”
Leading the McCarthy Center is an extension of this public service-oriented work. As director, he will focus on preparing students to be effective, ethical leaders in public service. And that doesn’t mean the center will be training social workers, he said.
“When we say public service and the common good, it will be in the public and private sectors, always incorporating the perspectives of the disadvantaged,” he said. “Public service and the common good are wonderful themes, but to pursue them it takes more than inspiration, good will, and high hopes. It’s serious business. We are going to impart the tools students need to be sophisticated, professional, real world, tough-minded public servants in the public or private sector.”
The university made a targeted effort to recruit Spohn to lead the McCarthy Center, USF President Stephen A. Privett, S.J. said.
“Richard enjoyed Leo’s confidence and support, and we orchestrated a targeted and aggressive effort to recruit him,” said Fr. Privett, who has known Spohn since they entered the seminary together in 1960. “Richard represents a unique blend of complete familiarity with Jesuit education, public service in government at a leadership level, successful private practice in law, and effective philanthropic work in a developing country.”
As a university professor, Spohn will teach a public administration course in the spring, and a class in the law school in the fall. Former San Francisco Mayor Art Agnos, a self-described “student of Leo McCarthy training,” will teach a class on urban government in the spring. Guest speakers will be tapped, and the center also will sponsor conferences, colloquia, visiting scholars, and dialogue sessions.
The center will be guided by a steering committee of faculty drawn from a number of departments and schools. The university’s service learning program, headed by Jack McLean, also has been incorporated into the center. The center currently is compiling a database of all public service activities on campus, from lectures to service learning activities.
“As a service to the community we want to provide one-stop shopping, or a central clearinghouse, for all public service activities at USF, not just those that are sponsored by the McCarthy Center,” Spohn said.
The center’s programs will be rolled out gradually. The first priority is to raise $5 million to establish the center’s $7 million endowment. (Currently, $2.2 million has been pledged.)
The McCarthy Center will develop a curriculum for undergraduates who intend to pursue public service as a profession, whether in the public or private sectors. A “USF in D.C.” program, sponsored by the McCarthy Center and the politics department, will begin next semester. Scholarships will be available through the center’s Martin Ignatius Welch Fund. Preliminary plans for the center also call for developing a master’s degree program and two joint degrees, one with the law school and another with the business school. Several colleges and universities offer similar joint degree programs, but the stamp of the McCarthy Center will be the ethical component that will be intrinsic to all it does.
“The Jesuit tradition of men and women for others speaks to the kinds of public servants that the country really needs,” Spohn said. “One need look no further than the current corporate scandals, which are precisely the result of unethical practices. People who were not steeped in ethics, and who pursued only their own monetary interests, have done incalculable damage to millions of people. We will be preparing students for ethical leadership for the common good.”
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