“Values and Ethics in Making a Living” was the title of a symposium devoted to Jacobs’s work held at Boston College on April 10-11, 1987. Jacobs was invited to give a pair of keynote talks based on her latest research into economic life and ethics. Five years later, with valued input from BC faculty and students, she published Systems of Survival: A Dialogue on the Moral Foundations of Commerce and Politics.

Jacobs’s writings and ideas had become well known to the BC community through Joseph Flanagan, SJ, who served as chair of the philosophy department from 1965-1993. Flanagan created both the Perspectives Program—a four-year interdisciplinary course of study that integrates the humanities with social and natural sciences through the exploration of the great books of Western Culture—and PULSE, a service-learning program that combines the study of philosophy and theology with weekly volunteering at social service agencies. Flanagan introduced many BC faculty and students to Jacobs’s writings, among them fellow Jesuit philosopher and theologian Bernard Lonergan, who taught at BC from 1975 until 1984. Best known for his magisterial Insight: A Study of Human Understanding, Lonergan dubbed Jacobs “Mrs. Insight,” recognizing that her inductive method of reasoning, based on close observation and analysis of particular phenomena, complemented his own.

Yet it was Richard Carroll (Dick) Keeley, then director of the PULSE Program, who was most responsible for bringing Jacobs to campus. Dick Keeley pursued Jacobs for more than a decade: first as an undergraduate then graduate student at Boston College wanting to understand her methods of analysis, and then as director of BC’s PULSE Program, intent on bringing her to campus to share her wisdom in person.

Keeley interviewed Jacobs at her home in Toronto in 1985, and then persuaded her to participate in the 1987 symposium organized by BC’s Lonergan Institute. Jacobs was accepting very few invitations at the time, but the keen interest in her work shown by the BC community convinced her it would be a worthwhile experience.

It was. Lonergan Institute associate director, Kerry Cronin, then a freshman student, recalled Jacobs joining the audience in clapping at the conclusion of her own talks, elated that she had succeeded in sharing with responsive listeners her new insights into economic ethics.