The Eli J. and Helen Shaheen Collection in Philosophy was established in 1995. Eli (’34, ’36 JD) taught at Notre Dame before serving as an officer in the Army during World War II. A community leader in Sturgis, Michigan, he was owner and president of the Sutton Tool Company for 41 years before selling it and forming Sturgis Enterprises. He served the Notre Dame Council 1477 of the Knights of Columbus for more than 50 years. The Knights of Columbus building on campus was dedicated to him in 1969. Eli and Helen’s two daughters, Christine Broussard and Paula Eide, are graduates of Saint Mary’s College.

The Shaheen Endowment has been a valuable resource for Hesburgh Libraries in collecting reference works and scholarly books on ancient and comparative philosophy, allowing for the documentation of non-western philosophical traditions. For example, it allowed for the purchase of the important new Dictionary of Early American Philosophers in two volumes (edited by John R. Shook) and The Continuum Companion to Pragmatism (edited by Sami Pihlström), as well as Zacharoula A Petraki’s The Poetics of Philosophical Language: Plato, Poets and Presocratics in the “Republic,” and Joachim Kurtz’s The Discovery of Chinese Logic.

The Shaheens also supported the Libraries’ Eli and Helen Shaheen Collection in Architecture, as well as a fellowship in the Law School, the Eli J. Shaheen Professor of Classics, the Shaheen-Mestrovic Memorial, and two Endowments for Excellence.