On April 8, 2024, there will be an eclipse of the sun, visible from Fordham’s New York City location. According to the National Science Foundation’s National Center for Atmospheric Research, the oldest account of an eclipse was recorded on a clay tablet discovered in 1948 among the ruins of the ancient city of Ugarit, in modern-day Syria. Ugarit was overthrown shortly after the eclipse, a fate we don’t expect New York City to suffer next week.

The 2024 eclipse will begin in New York City at approximately 2:10 p.m. and should end around 4:36 p.m. Our viewing area will achieve approximately 90% coverage of the sun. The optimal viewing time will be between 3 and 4 p.m.

If you plan to view the partial solar eclipse in the New York City area, you must take precautions.

• Make sure to protect your eyes with ISO-certified solar glasses from a trusted supplier when looking directly at the partially eclipsed sun.
• Do NOT look directly at the sun during the event.
• Sunglasses will NOT protect your eyes.
• Use sunscreen with an SPF of 15 or higher.

Solar Eclipse Glasses
Beginning Friday, April 5, Public Safety will be distributing free ISO-certified solar glasses on a first-come, first-served basis at Room SL04  Lowenstein Center (just past the security desk) at Lincoln Center, and Thebaud Annex at Rose Hill. One pair of glasses per person, please.

All public libraries throughout New York City are giving away free eclipse glasses on a first-come, first-served basis. Additionally, free eclipse glasses are being distributed every day between 6:30 a.m. and 9:30 p.m. at Moynihan Train Hall—MTA Long Island Railroad ticket windows (421 8th Avenue, New York, NY 10001).

You can also pick up a free pair of “I Love NY” eclipse glasses at various New York State Welcome Centers, Thruway Rest Stops, and other locations throughout the state.

Following these steps will allow you to safely enjoy the view of the solar eclipse.

Sincerely,

Robert Fitzer, Associate Vice President
Fordham Department of Public Safety

Follow us on threads: https://www.threads.net/@ramsafe_1841

Last November, Wines found the image in an 1840 article about the then-new college while he was “systematically” sifting through periodicals at the Catholic Historical Research Center of the Archdiocese of Philadelphia. He came across an issue of the Catholic newspaper the Truth Teller with a headline “New Catholic College, at Rose Hill, Westchester County, New-York.” The article appeared a year before the institution, which would become Fordham, was founded as St. John’s College. It was also a time when Westchester still held jurisdiction over the area, and when New-York was still hyphenated.

“I think it’s probably the only copy in the world and this was probably included as part of the original fundraising campaign to get the college started,” Wines said. “These are newspapers that are not indexed on Google. You have to actually just go page by page.”

Wines said that historians like himself have to go where the material is. In many cases, Fordham’s history is spread out among several libraries, from O’Hare Special Collections at Fordham’s Walsh Family Library to Columbia University’s Avery Library to the Hesburgh Libraries at the University of Notre Dame.

“The fact is we can’t bring everything to Fordham, so we bring the information and then we tell people where we found the information,” said Wines.

The woodcut print reveals many lost details of the original building, and the accompanying article brings to light information about the building’s interiors as well as the heretofore unknown, if somewhat repetitive, name of the architect: Thomas Thomas (1781-1871), a well-established architect who was also working on St. Peter’s Church on Barclay Street in Manhattan.

The new building’s entrance opened onto a central hall with a spiral staircase that swept up to the second floor and a rooftop lantern, providing light and ventilation. A southern room of the house—now the president’s office—was, fittingly, a chapel. Just off the chapel was a working greenhouse. The northern wing served as a refectory. A back porch overlooked a pasture that is now Edwards Parade, and the marble Greek Revival front steps, still in use today, looked out on Martyrs’ Lawn.

From Teacups to a Manor House, Excavating Rose Hill

Gilbert and Wines have spent a good portion of their careers researching Fordham’s history.  Gilbert is the editor of Digging the Bronx: Recent Archeology in the Borough (The Bronx County Historical Society, 2018), which includes a chapter written with Wines titled “Seventeen Years Excavating at Rose Hill Manor.” The book takes a practical look at archeology in the Bronx, including a chapter on the business of archeology to specific cases, as well as case examples of excavations in Van Cortland Park, Riverdale, as well as Rose Hill.

Gilbert said the 70-page chapter on Rose Hill is just an overview of the 17-year excavation. The excavations, which began in 1985, allowed scores of students from history and archeology classes to uncover everything from teacups to religious medals to the foundations of the original buildings, including Rose Hill Manor, which was razed in 1896 to make way for Collins Hall. Much of the material that was excavated fills rooms in Dealy Hall and in the basement of Cunniffe.

“If you look at the college’s history from 1890, the original Manor House was said to have been [George] Washington’s headquarters. That is romantic, but he probably just rode by on a horse,” said Wines, before adding, “We discovered in Washington’s papers that during 1776, a detachment of colonial troops was on campus. They were camped in the orchard. We found him coming back again in 1781.”

Dispelling campus lore is a necessary part of the job, said Gilbert.

“In our business, we’re trying to uncover as much new information as possible about what this place was like. Decades, centuries ago, before the college came here,” Gilbert said. “Ultimately, what we discovered, and what we probably knew subconsciously anyway, is that when local histories are put together, they’re frequently put together very quickly with very little information and that once those narratives form, they become fossilized.”

Staying Power

The drawing of Cunniffe House depicts the early days of an institution whose students would go on to bear witness to a civil war, two world wars, Vietnam, 9/11, as well as the current coronavirus crisis, which, with the recent wholesale shift from face-to-face interaction to online interaction, is unique in Fordham’s history.

The college held classes throughout the Civil War, World War I, and World War II. The 9/11 tragedy caused disruptions, but there was not any notice to vacate campus, said Gilbert. Wines said that campus protests during the Vietnam War are the closest parallel. The upheaval forced the administration to send students home and faculty were instructed to grade them on the basis of work completed for the semester—but this was well before laptops and Zoom allowed for instruction to continue, he said.

While Gilbert and Wines agreed that many romanticize the past, sometimes Fordham’s history can be quite, well, romantic. On reading the 1840 description of today’s Cunniffe House in the Truth Teller article, it’s hard not to be taken in by purple prose, some of which holds to this day.

“It is located in a beautiful situation remote enough from the city to make it in the country, enjoying all the advantages, and yet so near the city as to afford it all the conveniences attainable in town,” reads the text accompanying the image.

The article continues on to delve into the architectural details of the “blue free-stone building,” mentions the new railroad that was being built a short distance from the college, and waxes poetically about how the “river Bronx meanders not far from the college, amongst undulating fields, and magnificent forests.”

When the image of Fordham appeared in the Truth Teller, University founder Archbishop John Hughes was still 13 years away from announcing the construction of St. Patrick’s Cathedral. For the newspaper’s Catholic readership, the new college represented hope and staying power for the future. One particular phrase in the text accompanying the image, still resonates, particularly now:

“…[I]t will stand a perineal monument of zeal and success to the admiring eye of posterity.”

“In so little room as the state of Israel and the Palestinian territories, there is entirely too much hatred,” said Patrick J. Ryan, S.J., Laurence J. McGinley Professor of Religion and Society. “Notice that I call all three of these territories the Holy Land. We must keep in mind that all three of these territorial divisions are holy for Jews, holy for Christians, and holy for Muslims, but holy for each faith community in a different way.”

The history of religious ties to the area and how they impact the present-day conflicts were the central themes of the fall McGinley lecture titled, “Faith and Conflict in the Holy Land: Peacemaking Among Jews, Christians and Muslims.”

The lecture and panel discussion, which took place on Nov. 12 and Nov. 13 at the Lincoln Center and Rose Hill campuses, respectively, featured a keynote speech from Father Ryan followed by two respondents—Ebru Turan, Ph.D., history professor at Fordham, and Abraham Unger, Ph.D., GSAS ’92, ’07, campus rabbi and associate professor of government and politics at Wagner College.

‘Perpetual Migrants’

Father Ryan highlighted in his lecture that “nobody comes from nowhere” and that “all of us are both native and immigrant.”

Unger, who delivered the Jewish response, emphasized the fact that Jewish people, in particular, have been considered “perpetual migrants” and that this view of their history needs to be taken into account when thinking about present-day Israel and Palestine.

“I suggest the conflict reaches into the existential nature of the Jewish people itself, both for Jews and for the rest of the world when thinking about Jews,” Unger said.

The Jewish identity, according to Unger, has always included a sense of being a “marginalized outsider” or watching for the next wave of oppression. That’s why the desire for a homeland is so essential, he said.

If the conflict is looked at under that lens, Unger said, it can be seen as bigger than simply “how much area Jews and Arabs ought to respectively get out of the Holy Land.”

Sacred Sites of Significance

For Christians, the Holy Land is not “a major theme in Christian scriptural sources,” Father Ryan said, although Christians as early as the second century took an interest in the area, and that interest grew following the reign of Constantine.

“To Constantine we owe the location of the place in Jerusalem where Jesus died, was buried, and rose again—now the Church of the Holy Sepulcher,” Ryan said, noting that the Roman emperor commissioned the church. “Helena [Constantine’s mother] is said to have built the original Basilica of the Nativity in Bethlehem and an oratory on the Mount of Olives, marking the locale where the disciples witnessed the ascension of Jesus.”

In the Islamic tradition, the “sanctity of the Holy Land in Islam is concentrated in one particular spot in Jerusalem called the Noble Sanctuary,” said Turan, who delivered the Islamic response.

“The Noble Sanctuary houses two of the most sanctified and majestic monuments of Islam—the Dome of the Rock and the Aqsa Mosque,” she said, identified by Islamic authorities as the site of the Prophet Mohammad’s night journey and heavenly ascension.

Present-Day Challenges

Understanding these diverse religious ties to the Holy Land can help people better understand the ongoing conflict in the Middle East, according to the speakers. Still, they said there were no easy solutions.

“How can we have a safe Israel within its borders? On the other hand, how can we have a sovereign Palestine state with its own government and arms—these two are not compatible.” Turan said, stating that she still wished for peace. “That’s why it is not that easy, because the space is very, very tight.”

Unger highlighted another challenge: The area has seen its Christian population, which had oftentimes eased tensions between the Jewish and Muslim populations, decrease rapidly.

“There’s a tremendous Palestinian-Christian diaspora emerging,” he said. “This is a great loss for the majority Jewish population because the Christian-Arab population sometimes has been and also can be a bridge between the Muslim majority within the Arab sector…as well as a bridge to the West itself and to the Jewish majority.”

A Dream of Peace

Father Ryan, however, encouraged the next generation to look to history and then try to find a way forward.

“I have shared with you this evening my dream—an old man’s dream—in the hope that some young people here will see visions, visions of peacemaking in the Holy Land, peacemaking in every land,” Father Ryan said.

Anne Fernald, Ph.D., acting associate dean of the arts and sciences and professor of English and women’s studies, organized the Jan. 11 event to help Fordham faculty better address the curricular and instructional needs of students with disabilities such as hearing loss, blindness, learning disabilities, and psychological disorders.

“There is a lot that professors can learn from their students,” said Fernald, who believes that universal design learning techniques can transform pedagogy for today’s students.

“The goal is to help professors feel excited and comfortable about all of the different abilities and experiences that exist in their classrooms.”

Among the workshop’s attendees was Rafael Zapata, Fordham’s first chief diversity officer.

“There are so many ways that we can signal to students that who they are matters to us,” he said.

“As a community, we want to be supportive of them as much as possible to help them realize their potential.”

Creating an Access Statement  

Rebecca Sanchez, Ph.D., an associate professor of English whose research focuses on transatlantic modernism, disability studies, and poetics, said one of the first steps educators can take to show students that they are invested in their success is to include an access statement in their syllabi.

The statement generally notes that there are different ways to access class materials, take exams, and participate in classroom activities.

“By creating your own access statement, you’re suggesting to disabled students that their arrival in your class does not constitute some kind of crisis for you, or is the first time you’ve thought about disability,” she said.

Showcasing Diverse Representations

Using an excerpt from Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s 2009 TED talk about the dangers of a single story, Alessia Valfredini, Ph.D., professor of modern language and literatures, encouraged attendees to be proactive and intentional about representations of ability and disability in their coursework. Whenever possible, coursework should showcase a variety of human experiences and perspectives.

“Our courses are a reflection of the world as we see it,” said Valfredini, who contributed via a transcribed video. “By presenting a certain type of class, we make a statement about who the legitimate actors in the work are.”

Using Technology

Lindsay Karp, a senior instructional technologist at the Lincoln Center campus, presented examples of how technology can take pedagogy to the next level. Her suggestions included making file names descriptive and specific, condensing URLs, using fonts and font sizes that are easier to read, and incorporating a table of contents in long text. She also suggested using subtitles and captions.

“Captions are not just fantastic for  [students] who are hard of hearing, but also for foreign students who are learning the language,” she said.

Reinforcing Learning

Carla Romney, Ph.D., associate dean for STEM and pre-health education at Fordham College at Rose Hill, argued for presenting materials in multiple modes.

She makes her lectures available in a video format and uses YouTube to create closed captioning. Students then take turns editing the captions.

“Making  [students] listen to the lessons twice and having them transcribe it is another means of reinforcing their learning,” she said.

Providing Options

Whether it be offering structured assignments or giving students an open-ended project, providing students with different variations of assignments may spark creativity and inspire them to take ownership of their work.

“Not everyone is interested in knowledge in the same way,” said Orit Avishai, Ph.D., assistant professor of anthropology. “People learn differently and have different kinds of preferences.”

Prioritizing Community Building

Creating opportunities for group work and community building can be especially transformative.

“Very often the people who are doing the work of supporting our students are other students in  [our] courses,” said Badr Albanna, Ph.D., assistant professor of neurophysics.

“The more work you can do to make that possible, accessible, and easy for students to do, that can have a tremendous impact on all students, and particularly for students whose needs you may not be aware of.”

On April 28, the Fordham community celebrated Spring Weekend with a “Color Run” across the Rose Hill campus.

Participants were splashed with colorful nontoxic powder as they ran, walked, jogged, and sprinted pass different checkpoints in the 5k run. The event was sponsored by Fordham’s Achieving Change Together (ACT) and the United Student Government.

When it came to job interviews—a topic on every student’s mind—the parents had some sage suggestions: Ask the interviewer for advice. Don’t let the qualifications scare you off; if you have 50 percent of what employers are asking for, then apply—provided you have the passion. And passion is key. An interviewer can tell within a minute if you have it or not.

The parents had more advice for those who get the job: If you make a mistake, admit it, and have a plan to fix it. Don’t compete with your boss; always make them look better.

Listen to the discussion:

The event was moderated by Richard (Rick) L. Treanor, Ph.D., PAR ’17, Partner at Oblon, McClelland, Maier & Neustadt, LLP. Panelists included:

Rich Cervini, PAR ’19, Senior Vice President of Production and Technical Operations, CBS Television Distribution

Donna Morris, PAR ’19, Executive Vice President of Customer and Employee Experience, Adobe

Ed Munshower, PAR ’18, Founder, Terrace Creek Capital

John Normile, FCRH ’84, LAW ‘, 88, PAR ’19, Partner, Jones Day

Jennifer Povlitz, PAR ’19, Managing Director & Market Head of Wealth Management, UBS

Maureen F. Zakowski, M.D., PAR ’18, Professor, Icahn School of Medicine, Mt. Sinai Hospital
[doptg id=”77″] ]]> 64194 https://now.fordham.edu/inside-fordham/voices-up-2016/ Thu, 21 Apr 2016 14:00:00 +0000 http://news.fordham.sitecare.pro/?p=44794 On April 12, Fordham hosted its annual Voices Up! concert, an event that combines new works in music and poetry, with original vocal compositions. This year featured Poets Out Loud prizewinner Nancy K. Pearson reading her work, and renown soprano Lucy Dhegrae in performance with baritone Kevin Chan. Accompanying on piano was composer Joshua Groffmann.

In the aftermath, however, it is crucial that the global community avoids acting on xenophobic fear and instead prioritizes the protection of human rights—the most ethical and effective response to ensure global peace and stability.

The panel consisted of a Rwandan genocide survivor, the UN assistant secretary-general for human rights, a Columbia law professor, and a Fordham ethicist, all of whom weighed in on subjects including terrorism, torture, and capital punishment at a discussion, “In Good Conscience: Human Rights in an Age of Terrorism, Violence, and Limited Resources.”

“Human rights abuses like genocide don’t happen overnight,” said Consolee Nishimwe, a human rights activist whose family was murdered during the Rwandan genocide. “It [first involves]a systematic discrimination of a particular minority group or groups within a society with the encouragement or participation of the government or authorities.”

The global spike in human rights abuses is alarming, said Ivan Šimonović, PhD, the UN assistant secretary-general for human rights. Between 2014 and 2015, the number of refugees and displaced persons increased by 20 percent, reaching a record high of 60 million. Between 2013 and 2014, the number of people killed in conflicts around the world increased 33 percent.

“A lot of [these]conflicts can be attributed to the clash between aspirations and opportunities,” Šimonović said. “Access to information has never been better, which means people are aware that life can be better than how they’re living. This leads to frustration, dissatisfaction, and demand for change.

“If regimes do not want to change . . . what does that lead to? Rebellion, extremism, and terrorism.”

With the number of violent incidences climbing, interventions such as Chapter 7 of the United Nations Charter—which allows the UN Security Council to take military and nonmilitary action to restore international peace and security—need to happen once red flags appear, and not after mass atrocities and widespread abuses have already occurred, Šimonović said.

One of the earliest signs of impending mass violence is dehumanizing language, he said. In the case of the Rwandan genocide exactly 22 years ago, the country’s radio station Radio Télévision Libre des Mille Collines broadcasted racist propaganda to incite hatred against the Tutsi ethnic group, calling them “cockroaches” and “snakes,” and accusing them of being witches.

“Genocide doesn’t come out of the blue. Not even sexual violence comes out of the blue—sexual violence in conflicts is a reflection of the treatment of women during peacetime,” Šimonović said.

“There are patterns and symptoms of human rights violations that can predict that we’re heading toward potential mass atrocities… One of these is dehumanization—saying that this group isn’t human. It was the case for Jews, the same for the Tutsis, and it is happening now with the Yazidis [an Iraqi ethnic and religious minority].”

Other presenters included Matthew Waxman, the Liviu Librescu Professor of Law at Columbia University, and Celia Fisher, PhD, the Marie Ward Doty University Chair in Ethics and director of Center for Ethics Education.

Waxman, an expert on national security law who worked at the White House during George W. Bush’s administration, spoke about the use of torture in counterterrorism efforts and how we might structure laws to clarify interrogation policies in the event of national crises.

Fisher discussed the ethical dilemma that psychologists face when called upon to do diagnostic assessments in death penalty cases. According to the American Psychological Association’s ethics code, psychologists must uphold ethical standards and protect human rights even when these standards conflict with the law.

Death sentences are disproportionately given to poor and disenfranchised people, because these populations often lack equal access to due process, Fisher said. Because the law is inequitable and thus immoral, psychologists should refuse to participate in the process, she argued.

The panel was moderated by Andrea Bartoli, PhD, dean of the School of Diplomacy and International Relations at Seton Hall University.