The need for such efforts is acute: “Well over half of the people at Rikers right now are suffering from some mental health issue that could be addressed,” said one speaker, Richard Alborn, president of the Citizens Crime Commission of NYC, referring to New York City’s Rikers Island prison.  

Of 6,700 inmates, an estimated 1,400 have severe mental illness, and 1,500 and 1,800 suffer from opioid and alcohol abuse, respectively, he said.

“Shame on us if we don’t address that,” he said.

Academics, experts in crime and healthcare, and elected officials—including Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg—spoke at the Jan. 16 Mental Health & Crime event, sponsored by Fordham, Northwell Health, and the Citizens Crime Commission.

Speakers focused on one of today’s most vexing challenges: the inordinate number of crimes committed by people who suffer from mental illness or substance abuse.

“Not everyone who has a mental health issue or confronts a mental health challenge commits a crime, and not every single person who commits a crime has a mental health challenge,” Aborn said. “Our job, if we’re going to be true to the goal of prevention, is to identify those intersections.”

A Case Study

The program was arranged to highlight a typical case as it winds its way through the system, from the first 911 call to the prosecution and sentencing of the accused. 

Speakers included members of the New York Police Department, such as Monica Brooker, Ph.D., assistant commissioner of the department’s Behavioral Health Division, as well as members of the judiciary, such as Matthew D’Emic, FCRH ’74, presiding judge for the Brooklyn Mental Health Court.

In a fireside chat with Fordham Law School professor Deborah Denno, Bragg touted the proposal of a new law, known as the SUPPORT Act, which will mandate crisis intervention for mentally ill offenders who are accused of misdemeanor crimes but are deemed too unfit to stand trial. Currently, intervention is only mandated for those accused of felonies.

He praised New York Assemblyman Tony Simone and New York State Senator Brad Hoylman-Sigal for proposing the new law.

He also touted the success of programs designed to help stop the downward spiral of people suffering from mental illness. Neighborhood Navigator, launched last year by the NYC Office of Neighborhood Safety, employs outreach workers who approach people on the street who are in obvious distress and offer them everything from a cup of coffee to help with housing.

Bragg said Court Navigator, a similar program that connects criminal defendants with nonprofits such as the Fortune Society, is even more potentially transformative because of the way it helps address underlying causes of crime.

“My Spidey sense tells me this is going to be one that we’re going to want to double down on,” he said. “Just being in the courtroom, seeing workers interact with defendants, and seeing the results—this has real promise,” he said.

The Mental and the Physical 

Michael Dowling, GSS ’74, President and CEO of Northwell Health, lamented the traditional separation of mental and physical health. 

One of Northwell’s initiatives to address issues like the shortage of psychiatrists is a partnership with the City of New York to open a new high school dedicated to careers in mental health, radiation medicine, nursing, and physical health.

It’s an issue that affects Northwell monetarily, as he estimated that it costs the company $100 million annually to provide mental health care to patients, many of them on Medicaid. There’s also a moral imperative, though, because adolescents, in particular, have shown increases in depression and anxiety since 2012. 

“There is no health without mental health. People need to talk about it differently,” he said. “It’s changing, but it needs to change much, much quicker.”

“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.”

Fordham has and will continue lending full cooperation to the NCAA during their investigation, including following the NCAA’s bylaws to maintain confidentiality. Therefore, we’re unable to share any more details on the matter at this time.

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.”

That’s the topic of a recent book by Richard Teverson, Ph.D., assistant professor of art history, who puts a spotlight on something that tends to be overlooked in histories of conquering powers: the hopes and dreams of the conquered.

Studying such “past futures” is growing more popular in the humanities and social sciences, said Teverson, author of Visions of the Future in Roman Frontier Kingdoms 100 BCE–100 CE, published in September by Routledge. “You can’t get a full picture of a decision that someone makes in the past,” he said, “unless you have a sense of what they thought could happen.”

Teverson gained this sense by examining public art created during the empire’s expansion. He got the idea for the book from his students—when they wrote in a midterm exam about the imagined futures reflected in the Arch of Constantine in Rome, he decided to apply this idea at the former empire’s edge and beyond it, to structures created by people who later came under Roman rule.

Nations or groups being taken over deserve to have their aspirations understood rather than being told to simply “get on board” with their new ruler’s vision, he said. 

“Even people who you might think are on the losing side of history have a future that they’re envisaging and, especially if it’s no longer feasible in some way, are engaged in a really complicated idea about how to fit their aspirations to reality,” he said.

Protecting Rights Through Art

In 14 BCE, as Alpine tribes were falling to Roman conquest, the local ruler Cottius made a deal with the Romans to absorb his kingdom into the empire and remain as magistrate.

To proclaim the new order, he commissioned an archway that, Teverson argues, was designed with the future in mind: As opposed to the Romans’ usual depictions of peacemaking, which might show a vanquished barbarian kissing the hand of a Roman general, the arch contains a relief of Cottius shaking hands with the Roman emperor Augustus.

It also shows tribes receiving citizenship tablets—a way of codifying certain rights and privileges in case they were later challenged, Teverson argues. “This seems, to me, pretty direct in its aspirations and its concern for documenting a ritual of political transfer,” he said.

‘A Divinely Ordained Future’

Another example comes from Kommagene, in modern-day Turkey, a kingdom conquered by Rome in 17 CE. Before that, as wars involving Rome and other powers clouded the kingdom’s future, its ruler, Antiochos I, built a hilltop complex containing icons and images meant to convey a glorious destiny for the kingdom.

That was also his goal, Teverson argues, when the king took the unusual step of including an engraving of his own horoscope so that worshippers would compare it with the night sky and be reminded, “‘Oh, we are working in a kingdom that has a divinely ordained future,’” he said.

Crafting ‘the Futures They Need to Survive’

Through this and other stories of artistic expression, Teverson illustrates how people “craft the futures they need to survive” in the face of uncertainty about what’s coming. It’s an idea that resonates from ancient Rome to today’s marginalized communities who may have a picture of their own future in mind—but face strong headwinds in making it a reality, he said. 

An example might be city planners envisioning a future for a neighborhood—like Harlem, where Teverson lives—without consulting with the residents, he said. “If you want to understand the problems of Harlem, you need to, in some ways, ask yourself, well, what does Harlem think its future is going to be?” 

While writing the book, he was thinking of the looming problem of climate change and the questions that future generations might ask about the future we’re trying to shape today.

“Maybe even in my daughter’s lifetime,” he said, “they’re going to look back and [say], what were you planning in 2024?”

John McDonagh, director of facilities operations at Lincoln Center, said Higgins was a natural-born leader who possessed a broad, expansive knowledge of the construction trades that he eagerly shared with others. 

“He always took control of a situation—emergencies, anything. If you had an issue, you called him, and he’d get it taken care of,” he said. 

“The guy knew everything from carpentry and plumbing to electrical and welding. His skill set was unrivaled.”

Higgins was born on October 27, 1970, to Tom and Gail Higgins and grew up in the shadow of the Throgs Neck Bridge in the Bronx neighborhood of Silver Beach. He graduated from Monsignor Scanlan High School in Throgs Neck in 1988. 

He trained as a plumber and worked in maintenance and facilities positions for Maritime College and Mill Neck Manor School for the Deaf. He came to Fordham in 2016 after two years working as a plumber mechanic for the Hicksville School District in Long Island.

Just three years later, he was honored with a Sursum Corda award at the University’s annual convocation. He was lauded as one of the most valued members of the Facilities Department “because of his energetic approach to sharing his skills and knowledge with his colleagues.”

“Over the past few years, Jimmy has been at the forefront of several significant and unforeseen plumbing incidents, and it was his problem-solving abilities that were instrumental in helping the department in resolving those events,” his citation read. 

Higgins met his wife, Christine, a teacher at Mill Neck Manor, while supervising the construction of a new building there. She said she was attracted to him because of his troubleshooting skills, his sense of humor, and his “honest, true love of kids and people.” 

“He was a quiet genius when it came to fixing and building anything imaginable,” she said. “He was always kind, always helpful, and went out of his way for others.”

True to his maritime roots, Christine said he enjoyed fishing and relaxing with friends and family on boats, as well as bow hunting. Colleagues might not know that he was also an avid reader, she said.

She said she’d always treasure their time trekking up to a cabin in knee-deep snow in Hancock, New York, listening to Irish music on Sundays on WFUV’s Ceol na nGael, and listening to John Denver.

“He was a mentor to so many people without realizing it,” she said.

McDonagh, who attended high school with Higgins’s older brother Tom, considered him a friend for the past 30 years. He said he will miss the daily morning meetings where they’d discuss how to tackle the pressing project of the day on campus.

“Jimmy was a person who I could walk through campus and bounce technical ideas off of him,” he said.

“In our field, it’s a very precious thing to be able to trust somebody and have these conversations. That is something I’ll miss more than anything. I looked forward to those sessions every day.”

Higgins is survived by his wife, Christine, his first wife Karen, his brother Tom, his sister Ellen, and his children James and Jamie.

A wake will be held on Thursday, Jan. 16, from 3 to 7 p.m. at  Schuyler Hill Funeral Home, 3535 E. Tremont Avenue in the Bronx. A funeral Mass will be held on Friday, Jan. 17, at 10 a.m. at St. Frances de Chantel Church, 90 Hollywood Avenue.

Get involved now with these four service outings happening in January and February.

1. Help Provide School Supplies for Neighborhood Children

Monday, January 27, 2 p.m. to 3 p.m.
Lowenstein Center, Room 1004

Join your fellow Rams on the Lincoln Center campus to wrap school supply care packages for neighborhood children. Participants can also include personal notes of affirmation.

2. Create Food Packages for Senior Citizens in Need

Saturday, January 25, 9 a.m. to 11 a.m.
239 West 49th Street

Fordham’s commitment to the Broadway community goes beyond excellence onstage and behind the scenes. This month, the University is joining Encore Community Services—a Catholic Charity partner just a short subway ride from the Lincoln Center campus—to create food parcels that will support neighborhood seniors in need, many of whom worked in the performing arts. Since 1977, Encore has provided seniors with a range of services to help them live independent and dignified lives in the midtown Times Square and Clinton communities. For this reason, and its focus on initiatives such as “aging gracefully through the arts,” Encore has earned a reputation as “Broadway’s Longest Running Act of Loving Care.”

This event is sponsored by the Office of Alumni Relations, as part of its For and With Others Volunteer Day, but it’s open to the entire University community.

3. Fight Food Insecurity in the Bronx

Friday, January 31, 1:30 p.m. to 3:30 p.m.
St. Ignatius Middle School

Wednesday, February 12, 11:30 a.m. to 12:45 p.m.
McShane Campus Center Entrance

Among the issues affecting New Yorkers daily, food insecurity is one of the most pressing. According to the New York State Department of Health, about one in four New Yorkers report that they do not have sufficient access to food.

Two upcoming events give the Fordham community an opportunity to promote food security in its own backyard. Students and other volunteers will gather to make up to 200 meal packs for community fridges, and conclude the day with a brief Ignatian reflection. The first of these events will happen alongside students at St. Ignatius Middle School in the Bronx. The second will take place at the McShane Campus Center.

Both events are offered through Fordham’s Department of Mission Integration and Ministry, which is rooted in the Jesuit tradition of balancing reflection and action, a practice developed by St. Ignatius Loyola, the 16th-century founder of the Jesuits.

4. Connect with Those Experiencing Houselessness

Sunday, February 23, 11:30 a.m. to 4 p.m.
Meet in the Lowenstein Center Lobby

Volunteers will join forces with students enrolled in the Philosophical Ethics course at the Lincoln Center campus and visit Xavier Mission, a nonprofit organization in Manhattan’s Chelsea neighborhood. Together they will share in conversation and serve a hot meal to people experiencing houselessness in New York City. Attendees will take the brief subway trip together, with MetroCards provided.

This experience is presented by Fordham’s Center for Community Engaged Learning, which connects Fordham with dozens of local and global partners to provide students with opportunities for experiential learning, research, and civic engagement.

The role was created to bring together the work of Fordham’s government relations team and the Center for Community Engaged Learning (CCEL), helping to drive major public initiatives, such as the $50 million EPA grant, and make the University a catalyst for positive impact, locally and globally. Proulx will leverage his expertise in local, state, and federal government relations to secure funding for Fordham’s academic initiatives and amplify the University’s civic engagement at home and abroad.

“Fordham is a unique institution in New York City—it’s just part of our mission to serve the city,”  said Tokumbo Shobowale, Fordham senior vice president, CFO, and treasurer, to whom Proulx will report. “But we could do even more, and part of that is creating better relationships and more coordination with various organizations, public and non-public, across our communities in the city and beyond.”

Shobowale said Proulx intimately understands a university’s dual role in educating students and serving their communities. “He’s done exactly this kind of work for many years in different contexts and he’s very Fordham. He really understands the role that higher education—and government support for higher education—can play for our students.”

Proulx said he’s always known Fordham to be “an exceptional institution.”

“I think amongst all of New York’s colleges and universities, Fordham puts mission at the forefront of its work. A lot of universities share these values but have struggled with how to operationalize them. Fordham is a standout in this area—it’s an institution that’s continually trying to do better. And that’s why I’m so excited to have this opportunity.” 

He said he is particularly excited by the current leadership, namely President Tania Tetlow and Shobowale, who joined Fordham 15 months ago from The New School, where he served for 10 years after spending more than a decade working in city government.

“This leadership team sends the message that they recognize and respect Fordham’s excellence and they want to do more.”

A Personal Commitment to Creating Opportunity

Proulx spent six years at the nation’s largest public university system, the State University of New York (SUNY). There he served as vice chancellor for agency and community engagement, overseeing government relations, policy development, budget and research advocacy, community engagement, and marketing across the system’s 64 campuses. 

As the first in his family to go to college, Proulx is deeply committed to making college more attainable and affordable. New York’s Higher Education Opportunity Program (HEOP) gave him the financial and personal support he needed to graduate from St. Lawrence University in the Adirondacks. He’s also an alumnus of the CUNY Graduate Center. He said he’s proud of his work at SUNY in helping to expand the income threshold and eligibility requirements for New York State’s Tuition Assistance Program (TAP). 

“It’s important to me to be able to create those opportunities for others who come from similar backgrounds and similar struggles. … That commitment to serving and helping others lift themselves up has been the common thread throughout my career. I would never want to work someplace that wasn’t committed to doing better for others.”

Proulx has also worked on multiple initiatives to address climate change, from creating a statewide plan for agriculture innovations such as vertical farming to the $15 million EV charging network he helped secure for SUNY. Prior to his service at SUNY, he helped lead communications and organizing in support of New York’s 2014 ban on fracking.

He said he admires the exceptional work already happening at Fordham, and plans to build on it—first and foremost with a commitment to being accessible to the campus community. 

“I want people to know that they can reach out to me if they have an idea,” he said, “So we can talk through how to bring in new opportunities and resources for Fordham.” 

Read the full story on fordhamsports.com.

During Friday’s episode, in the category of “New York Colleges,” host Ken Jennings read out the prompt, hewing to the show’s inversion of the usual question-and-answer format: “In 2022 Tania Tetlow became the first layperson and the first woman to be president of this Jesuit university founded in the Bronx.”

The winning response—“What is Fordham?”—came from contestant Enzo Cunanan, a Cambridge University graduate student from Orlando, Florida.

Alex Trebek, Friend of Fordham

Billed as “America’s favorite quiz show,” Jeopardy! has aired in its current form since 1984, hosted for most of that time by Trebek, who died in 2020 at age 80 following a struggle with pancreatic cancer. He and his wife, Jean Trebek, had established a scholarship fund at Fordham, and they both received the Fordham Founder’s Award less than a year before his passing. Alex Trebek was awarded an honorary doctorate from the University in 2011.

The Trebeks’ scholarship is for students who come from East Harlem or Harlem, where their son, Matthew Trebek, FCRH ’13, runs a Mexican restaurant. In 2021, Matthew donated his late father’s wardrobe to a nonprofit that helps men coming back from homelessness and other struggles.

Alex Trebek said he was inspired to create a Fordham scholarship because of how his son’s Fordham education developed his intellect and leadership abilities and helped him become more well-rounded. “My hope for this scholarship,” Alex Trebek said in 2015, “is that it helps many other deserving students have that same transformational experience.”