“The court is careful to say that it’s limited to the circumstances in this case. Remember, this is a case that is principally about Chinese influence and control over the consumer, the information consumers get, and the data harvesting of U.S. consumers. So if you limit it to that, which is what the court tries to be careful on, it doesn’t reach as broadly. 

“The focus of the opinion is on the data harvesting of consumers’ information. Even though the plaintiffs argued that what Congress was really focused on was the content manipulation concern, … they also made the data harvesting argument, and this is what the court seized on.”

“[The court] said this is not a content-based regulation … and it is addressed to the concern that Congress had about the collection of consumer information. Now, that raises the kind of questions many of us ask about all the apps that collect information about consumers as a matter of course. It’s not just TikTok: it’s Instagram, it’s Facebook, it’s it’s X. So I guess this might give some of these companies some pause. I think the court tries to be careful about the limit, the scope of this, and focus on the threat from China and a foreign adversary.”

“This is addressed not just to ByteDance. This is also addressed to the app stores and to cloud servers. They too would be potentially in sights of a DOJ action, so Trump could sign an executive order that says, let’s not do anything. But, you know, I think if I’m a company that is impacted by this law, I would still be worried.”

“People have been reporting that Trump might sign an executive order that demands or requires DOJ [to]stand down, that they not enforce.

“People say that Trump may extend the deadline by 90 days. I don’t know if that is possible, though, because the statute requires that there be a deal on the table for that extension to be effective. There has been no deal on the table, even though people have talked about such a thing. So Trump would have to unilaterally extend the 90 days, without the requirements set out by the statute. So, you know, I’m not sure that is possible. What Trump could do is try to get Congress to repeal the law or write some different law. 

“In terms of unilateral action, I’m not sure that there is much that he could do other than an executive order.”

It takes one trip to learn it like the back of your hand because it isn’t much bigger.

Walk straight into the NCAA’s oldest on-campus basketball arena — opened Jan. 16, 1925 — and you’ll hit a wall, forcing you to turn (left or right) into a narrow hallway, past a parade of plaques of former Rams. The 3,200 seats hug the court. Everyone sits in coach, spitting distance from the sideline, beneath a cathedral ceiling and clerestory windows, allowing sunlight to touch the floor.

You can sit anywhere you like: 1971. 1947. 2023

“There is no bad seat because you’re right on top of everything,” said Jim Murphy, Class of ’83. “It brings you back in time. They don’t make ’em like this anymore.”

When Fordham beat Boston College, 46-16, in Rose Hill Gym’s first game — refereed by “The Fordham Flash,” Frankie Frisch, a future Baseball Hall of Famer, then the Giants’ second baseman — it was one of two regulation-sized basketball courts in the city.

Rose Hill Gym — which opened months before Lou Gehrig replaced Wally Pipp — has hosted games every season except 1943-44, when it served as barracks for the U.S. Army, housing hundreds of troops in training during World War II. It was an alternate football facility for the Seven Blocks of Granite and hosted practices for the Knicks, as well as home games for St. John’s, when Alumni Hall was under construction.

It is where Kareem Abdul-Jabbar played his final game for Power Memorial, winning the school’s third straight championship — its 78th win in 79 games — behind then-Lew Alcindor’s 32 points, 22 rebounds and eight blocks.

It was home to a freshman basketball team coached by Vince Lombardi and a JV squad featuring Denzel Washington and coach P.J. Carlesimo. It is where Vin Scully took his first cuts behind the mic and Mike Breen first yelled, “Bang!”

It is where the long-hidden potential resurfaced two seasons ago, when shirtless students painted their faces and opponents grew uneasy, as first-year coach Keith Urgo led Fordham to its most wins since 1971 and rechristened the gym “Rose Thrill.”

“We don’t want bigger or better. We love it here,” said Fordham sophomore guard Jahmere Tripp. “Playing in a gym with that much history, it’s kind of the same feeling to me as playing in a big arena. It’s a different vibe when you walk in the gym. There’s not too many like it in America.”

The happy surprise is that the incredible student warmth that I had at Loyola is also here at Fordham. I didn’t know if the bigger institution in blunt, aggressive New York would be different, but it’s not. These students are amazing and so kind to each other. And the challenges are the challenges of higher ed. We are navigating an increasingly hostile world where higher ed is a political football. And the growing affordability crisis is something we have to deal with, too.

One thing that Jesuit schools collectively have been doing and thinking about is, how do we better remind people what Jesuit education is? There’s a very important part of Jesuit tradition: When you go into a foreign land, you don’t just shout at people in Latin. And I think when we talk to Gen Z, it’s not enough to talk to them about cura personalis and magis, right? We have to translate into their language, so we’ve really been working hard to do that.

We have to make it clear that this is not a place of intolerance, that to be a Catholic institution does not mean we don’t want people of other faiths or people who are not of faith. And if you are a person of faith, no one is going to make you feel stupid or anti-intellectual or presume your politics. You get to be your full self here in ways that aren’t always true in an increasingly hostile secular world that is disrespectful of all religions too often.

In response to a question about the importance of athletics in higher ed and the changes with the transfer portal and NIL:

I think that in important efforts to regulate those handful of schools that make lots of money on athletics, the risk is that they kind of ruin it everywhere else. Schools like ours and most in this country spend money on athletics — we don’t profit off of them at all, not even close.

And we do it because we’re trying to enrich the lives of students. We look at our outcomes for student athletes. They graduate at higher levels, and they have incredible career outcomes. Employers love them because they’re the kind of kid who got up at six in the morning to go out in the cold and practice and learn teamwork and discipline. So we don’t want to lose that in the context of regulating Power Five football.

A region’s second-place franchise can emerge from shadows if an owner is willing to shell out cash, Fordham University professor Mark Conrad said, citing the NBA’s Steve Ballmer, who has remarkably made L.A. Clippers games fashionable events.

“The focus of New York baseball could be shifting now,” said Conrad, who teaches sports law at Fordham’s business school.

“The Mets were run like a minor league team for years under [former owner Fred]Wilpon. And now you have [Cohen] coming with a Steve Ballmer mentality: ‘This is my thing, and I will do what it takes.’ It’s a new incarnation of a George Steinbrenner.” 

But is it possible to escape our attraction to fast fashion? And will crossing these items off your shopping list make things better or worse? Fordham experts weigh in.

Human Rights Abuse

“People get excited about the $2 T-shirt” and don’t think about the impact on factory workers making the clothing, said Susan Scafidi, director of the Fashion Law Institute at Fordham.

Catastrophic garment factory fires and forced labor charges against China’s cotton industry have brought attention to human rights abuses, and even resulted in Congress passing the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act in 2021, which banned imports from businesses in Xinjiang, China, that use forced labor. Paltry wages for field and factory workers, the majority of whom are women, are another well-known concern.

“Labor is one of, if not the most, expensive inputs in fashion,” Scafidi said, but ”when it comes to making fast fashion, it has to be cheap, cheaper, cheapest.”

Tik Tok Temptation

Younger consumers, mainly Gen Z and Millennials, are at the forefront of the demand for fast fashion, heavily influenced by social media and desire for the latest styles, said Fordham economist Giacomo Santangelo. 

“Platforms like TikTok are pivotal in shaping fashion choices,” he said. “This constant exposure to new styles and the desire for instant gratification lead to frequent buying, fueling the fast fashion market.”

Fast fashion brands’ low prices make their products broadly accessible, he said, noting that their affordability is especially appealing because of the state of the global economy and the desire to save money during the holiday giving season. Demand is also fed by the convenience and proliferation of fast fashion e-commerce sites, he said. 

Environmental Impact: ‘A Global Crisis’

That demand for fast fashion is also impacting the planet, due to overseas factories’ carbon emissions and water pollution, as well as all the products that end up in towering landfills, according to environmental watchdog organizations.

Clothes are being cast aside more quickly and in greater quantities than ever. Donated items from countries including the U.K., the U.S., and China are sold to vendors in places such as Ghana, which has one of the world’s largest secondhand clothing markets. But because these markets can’t handle the volume, many items are never worn again and end up in landfills or rivers. 

Meanwhile, garment factories continue to pollute rivers with toxic dyes and use tremendous amounts of fossil fuel for production and shipping across the world, according to the watchdog groups. And much of fast fashion relies on synthetic fibers made from plastic derived from crude oil and natural gas.

“There is a vast amount of waste and climate impact,” Scafidi said. “It has become a global crisis in that way.”

The Flip Side

But solutions to the problem are not as simple as they may seem. For one thing, fast fashion employs and supports the global poor and fuels developing economies, said Matthew Caulfield, Ph.D., assistant professor of ethics in the Gabelli School of Business.

“Most Americans—even Americans one would typically consider to be lower income—are nonetheless, by purchasing power standards, considered to be part of the global rich,” he said, adding that a single adult earning $24,000 per year makes more than seven times the global median.

“This is not to say that [fast and cheap production]is an unmitigated good—there are environmental concerns—or that the companies themselves have unassailable practices,” said Caulfield. “It’s only to suggest that one intuition that often seems entirely clear (that buying local is ethically superior) is not entirely clear. There are trade-offs we must navigate.”

[W]hen a reader told me to take a peek at the recent NCAA men’s water polo rankings, I saw a lot of sunny California schools I expected to see:

UCLA, USC, Stanford, Berkeley (aka the water polo “Big Four,” I’m told), the University of the Pacific (inland, but sounds nice), Pepperdine (idyllic), UC San Diego (sure) and UC Santa Barbara (of course)…you know, the sort of schools that sound like fabulous places to chuck a ball around a pool. 

And then I saw a school I didn’t expect to see at all:

Fordham.

As in Fordham University, in the Bronx–the New York City Jesuit school with distinguished academics, famous alumni (Denzel Washington, Vince Lombardi) and plentiful public transit access—but not exactly anyone’s idea of a beachside water polo Xanadu.

This past Sunday in Baltimore, I watched Fordham’s men’s water polo team swamp Johns Hopkins 28-12, improving their record to a perfect 24-0. It was a dominant display, sort of like watching the Globetrotters work over the Generals, but in water. (How’s that for some water polo analysis?)

Fordham has been lights out all season long. They’ve had big wins over proven East Coast rivals like Princeton (a ranked program and an NCAA tournament semi-finalist last year) and Harvard (no idea; apparently a school near MIT and Tufts.). Fordham even tore through a recent swing of California teams (including Pacific, UC-Santa Barbara, and San Jose State) that got the sport buzzing.

It’s to the point that the Rams shot to fifth in the country in the most recent NCAA RPI poll–and they’ve been as high as No. 2 in the weekly coaches poll. 

That’s not just milestone territory for Fordham water polo–it’s a historic performance for any Fordham team in any sport, ever.

“It’s absolutely thrilling,” says Fordham’s president, Tania Tetlow.

Read more here: Is This Undefeated Team the Best Story in College Sports?

Tania Tetlow grew up in a uniquely Catholic and Jesuit-influenced household, where dinner conversation centered around intellect, scripture, and justice. Throughout her career, her Jesuit formation and devotion to justice have guided her.

On this episode of The Catholic Leaders Podcast, hosts Kerry Robinson and Kim Smolik sit down with Tetlow, who grew up in New Orleans and spearheaded efforts to raise millions to rebuild and reimagine the city’s libraries after Hurricane Katrina as chair of the New Orleans Library board. She is a trailblazer in Catholic higher education, having served as the first female president of Loyola University New Orleans before becoming the first female president of Fordham in 2022.

Tania Tetlow grew up in a uniquely Catholic and Jesuit-influenced household, where dinner conversation centered around intellect, scripture, and justice. Throughout her career, Tania’s Jesuit formation and devotion to justice have guided her, whether she was prosecuting violent crimes, helping lead recovery efforts for the New Orleans Library system post-Hurricane Katrina, or serving as the first female and lay president of a major Catholic university. 

On this episode of The Catholic Leaders Podcast, hosts Kerry Robinson and Kim Smolik sit down with Tania Tetlow, the current president of Fordham University. Tania grew up in New Orleans and spearheaded efforts to raise millions to rebuild and reimagine the city’s libraries after Hurricane Katrina as chair of the New Orleans Library board. She is a trailblazer in Catholic higher education, having served as the first female president of Loyola University New Orleans before becoming the first female president of Fordham in 2022.

How can hurricanes create complications ahead of an election?

A massive hurricane disrupts people’s lives in many important ways, including affecting people’s personal safety and where they can live. Ahead of an election, there are a lot of practical limitations about how an election can be executed – like if a person can still receive mail-in ballots at home or elsewhere, or if it is possible to still vote in person at their polling location if that building was destroyed or damaged.

Another issue is whether people who have just lived through a natural disaster and will likely be dealing with the aftermath for weeks to come are focused on politics right now. Some might sit out the election because they simply have more important things to worry about.

Beyond practical concerns, how else can a natural disaster influence an election?

The other side of the equation, which is what political scientists like myself are mostly focusing on, is whether people take the fact that a natural disaster happened into consideration when they vote. 

Two scholars, Christopher Achen and Larry Bartels, have argued that sometimes voters are not great at figuring out how to incorporate bad things that happened to them into a voting position. In some cases, it is entirely fair to hold an elected official responsible for bad outcomes that affect people’s lives. But at other moments, bad things can happen to us without that being the fault of an incumbent president or governor. And voters should ideally be able to balance out these different types of bad things – those it is fair to punish elected officials for, and those for which it isn’t fair to hold them responsible. 

How else do voters consider bad events when they vote?

Scholars like John Gasper and Andrew Reeves argue that voters mostly care whether elected officials respond appropriately to a disaster. So, if the president does a good job reacting, voters do not actually punish them at all in the next election. However, voters can punish elected officials if they feel like the response is not correct. 

The fact that Hurricane Katrina hit Louisiana in 2005 was not the fault of then-President George W. Bush. But the perceived slowness of the government response is something a voter could have held him responsible for.

How do voters’ political affiliations affect where and how they lay the blame?

Colleagues and I have shown that how people interpret the combination of a disaster and the government response is likely colored by their own partisanship. 

We looked at both the effects of Superstorm Sandy on the 2012 presidential election and natural disasters’ impact on elections more broadly from 1972 through 2004. One core finding is that when presidents reject state officials’ disaster declaration requests, they lose votes in affected counties – but only if those counties were already more supportive of the opposite party. 

If there is a strong positive government response, the incumbent president or their party can actually gain votes or lose voters affected by a disaster. So, Republicans affected by the hurricanes could become more inclined to vote against Harris if they feel like they are not getting the help they need. But it could also help Harris if affected Democrats feel like they are getting enough aid.

The major takeaway is that if the government responds really effectively to a natural disaster or other emergency, there is not a huge electoral penalty – and there could even be a small reward. 

That is not irrelevant in a close election. If Republicans in affected areas in North Carolina feel the government response has been poor and it inspires them to turn out in higher numbers to punish Harris, that could matter. But if they feel like the response has been adequate, research suggests either no real effect on their support for Harris – or possibly even an increase in Harris voters.

Read the full interview here.

We’re seeing migrants from all parts of Africa coming to Senegal to make it to Europe. Why are they coming and why this specific route?

“Well, one reason is because of profound uncertainty about their futures. We have to understand that, for various reasons across this continent, people are just uncertain about what their futures will bring. They have economic uncertainty because you have in the rural areas … uncertain rainfall. You don’t know what the crops are going to yield year to year. And then you have growing populations in urban areas where there’s just increasing reliance on informal markets, and people don’t know if those informal markets and those informal jobs that they have in the informal sector are going to be there tomorrow. They have changing agreements, changing politics, which means that people just don’t know even if they have a livelihood today, will they have it tomorrow? Will they be able to provide for their families and communities tomorrow? And coming through here to Senegal is a relatively affordable route to take the boat to get to the Canary Islands.”

We’ve seen various agencies trying to explain to people that this is an extremely dangerous way to get to Europe to try to prevent people from going. People keep on taking this journey. Why?

“Yes, well, it’s a conundrum as to why so much money is thrown at these kinds of raising-awareness campaigns that the European Union will carry out. Why don’t these ever seem to work? Why don’t there ever seem to be any measurable results from these campaigns? And it’s because there’s actually a cultural script for migrating here that’s existed for hundreds of years, where young men will come of age through migration. In fact, that’s how they become men. That’s how they gain status and prestige in their communities. And that’s exactly what they’re seeking when they migrate abroad. They’re seeking voyage. They’re seeking to discover new places. They’re seeking to go to places like London, Paris, New York, places that, you know, I would also like to go to, but we also migrate for all these various reasons. And thus, they want to confront risk. Confronting risk during their journeys makes it even more prestigious, makes it show that they can overcome that risk. And these people, in many places across West Africa, come from communities where not migrating is not living.”

There have been a lot of efforts from Europeans to fund development projects here on the continent to try to make people stay. In fact, where we stand in Senegal, it’s one of the fastest growing economies in the world. So why is it that people are leaving despite there being some level of economic opportunity right here at home?

“I mean, that’s a great question. I think people ask that a lot, and the real reason is because people aren’t seeing the benefits. These people who are leaving are simply not seeing the benefits of this economic growth. There is significant economic growth, but unfortunately, the people who end up seeing that are often not from not from these countries, for example. The agreements that have been made with previous governments aren’t always the most advantageous, and they’re just not trickling down to people … who are seeking to migrate now. Second of all, people know that if they migrate, the kinds of jobs that they can get in Europe—which, by the way, needs their labor in many ways—they know that they can remit much more money than these aid packages will ever give. I mean, the amount of money they remit, as you know, just makes what European and American aid [provides]seem so much smaller. And so people much prefer to migrate as opposed to experience the kind of social death they might experience here, even risking actual death. They don’t want to suffer that kind of social death of failing nearby their families and community.”

But just how much do polls really matter?

We asked Fordham’s resident expert, Monika McDermott, Ph.D., a professor of political science who studies voting behavior, political psychology, and public opinion. She has been an election night analyst for CBS News since 2002 and works as a campaign and polling consultant in the U.S. and abroad. 

“Whether polling matters depends on the purpose for which people intend to use it,” she said. “For campaigns, political polling is extremely valuable in formulating messaging and determining weaknesses and strengths of the candidate.”

McDermott explained that some things pollsters ask about—such as issues and priorities—provide great insight into the race. But most media outlets choose to ignore those questions in favor of the electoral horse race: which candidate is ahead and by how many points. “For that purpose, polls aren’t great,” she said. 

How accurate are polls at predicting who will win?

Polls only provide a snapshot in time. The numbers are only good at the moment they’re measured. As we say in polling and elections, the only poll that counts is the one on Election Day. 

How do pollsters decide who to poll?

Polls used to be done using random samples of telephone numbers. Since the advent of cell phones, things have changed. Now, many polls are based on volunteer opt-in panels of respondents. So they only measure the opinions of people who have chosen to be included. This means that while polling can still approximate a “representative” sample of Americans, most polling no longer relies on the original statistical assumptions behind random sampling. That doesn’t necessarily mean they aren’t good and useful, but it is a different animal.

How much do poll results influence campaign strategy?

In my experience, polling is extremely valuable in determining issue priorities and messaging for the candidate to best persuade the voters they need on their side. They can also point out weaknesses in an opponent’s campaigning and positions, which is also useful.

What are the gold standard surveys?

In my personal opinion, the most reliable surveys come from organizations that are trying to recruit their respondent pool based on random sampling. It’s a blend of old and new methods and avoids the purely opt-in effect. The National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago, which does polling for the Associated Press, among other organizations, does this, and they are the closest to the pure science of sampling.

Campaign polls that use registered voter lists are actually also reliable, as they want to talk only to voters. Media organizations don’t do this because they frequently would rather be able to talk about the American public at large.

Why were the polls so wrong in 2016?

2016 was not the polling disaster that people like to think it was. The national polls were dead-on. [Hillary] Clinton won the popular vote (by a point or two, which was the prediction), which is all that national polls are designed to measure. They are not representative of the electoral college vote and that’s what decides the election.

The problem in 2016 came from estimates from state polls. State polls are notoriously hard to do. Only experts in that region know the ins and outs that are special to that state’s politics and electorates.