Coco de Marneffe and Ian Muir Smith, both FCLC ’22, were the lead organizers of this year’s Local Conference of Youth (LCOY USA), an annual event that brings together over 125 young people from across the country carefully selected for their leadership in the climate movement. Ashira Fisher-Wachspress, FCLC ’23, and current Fordham student Kenny Moll were also part of the 15-person organizing team for the event, which took place in Tempe, Arizona in September.

De Marneffe, who majored in theology, served as the conference’s general coordinator. She said a “Religion and Ecology” class she took her senior year, taught by Christiana Zenner, Ph.D., started her down this path. She hopes LCOY will inspire other young people to get involved in climate advocacy. 

“You don’t have to be a Nobel Prize-winning scientist to contribute to this work. You just have to find your place in your community,” she said. “For me, it started with one class I took in college. Thanks, Fordham.”

The National Youth Statement

The centerpiece of the conference is the National Youth Statement, a list of climate-related policy demands that the young delegates draft together. Smith describes the statement as a democratically-crafted tool that advocates can use to push policy makers further on climate change. Once complete, the statement is shared with local governments and incorporated into the Global Youth Statement, the official youth stance on climate change presented at the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change’s Conference of Youth and Conference of Parties, which will be held in November in Baku, Azerbaijan.  

Smith acknowledges that some of the statement’s demands may seem radical — such as disbursing at least $446 billion annually in climate finance to the Global South, or increasing federal investment in public transportation to reduce car dependency by 50% by 2030 — but he says that’s as it should be. “It’s the responsibility of youth in some ways to push our policymakers to consider what is radical. Really, it only seems radical because what we’re doing now is so inadequate,” he said. 

Climate Week in NYC

De Marneffe, Smith, Moll, and Fisher-Wachspress also organized a NYC Climate Week event, which coincides with the U.N. General Assembly in New York City. There, they presented the National Youth Statement to U.S. climate negotiators from the State Department as well as to other young climate organizers. 

“A lot of this work is unglamorous,” said de Marneffe. “What makes it worth it is the people around you who are encouraging you, and who believe in the same things you believe in.”

“It settles down into the unconscious,” he says. “I’m teaching a class on emotions this fall, and that’s one of the points—the emotions you feel have to do with how a situation is framed. It’s like the old subliminal advertising thing.”

For Karen Greenberg, director of the Center on National Security at Fordham Law School, threats to democracy from disinformation are vast and real, but voters and election officials have never been more vigilant.

“Look, we know we’re being spun,” says Greenberg, co-editor of Our Nation at Risk: Election Integrity as a National Security Issue. 

“The question is, can we step back for a moment and say, ‘I know I’m being spun. How do I either ignore this and move on to something else, or how do I put this in a category where I know that this is likely disinformation or misinformation and see what I can do to verify it?’”

Here are some tips Greenberg and Davenport shared to help you stay aware of—and minimally influenced by—disinformation this election season.

Be skeptical of new messages about the election—and their messengers.

“Whenever you see new information about the election, really close to the election, you should be suspicious,” says Davenport, who directs Fordham’s Peace and Justice studies program and is a frequent political commentator for publications like Newsweek and America. “If there’s some new news source that you’re just seeing for the first time this fall, and you have questions, google them and find if there are any reports about this source.”

On social networks, he says, keep an eye out for new friend and follow requests from people and groups you don’t know, and “just be conscious that you are being manipulated by algorithms, and their goal is to addict you to hateful content because that’s what sells.”

Greenberg notes that there are laws in place against promoting disinformation related to elections, but they’re hard to enforce without buy-in from private companies. 

Don’t let disinformation lessen your belief in objective facts.

As deepfakes, doctored photos, and AI-generated images flourish, it may feel tempting to dismiss the possibility of objective truth in the media we consume. Davenport cautions against this kind of wholesale skepticism, though.

Disinformation campaigns often try to foster chaos and confusion, Greenberg says, and create the sense that “a country can’t quite hold it together through a transition period.”

“There has to be a counternarrative to ‘we’re doomed, we’re victims,’ she says. “We’re not victims.”  

Be patient at the polls.

No matter how well-trained volunteer poll workers are, it’s going to be hard to prepare them for “any kind of aberrations that come up because of misinformation,” Greenberg says. “Go early … and just be patient.”  

And don’t be deterred, Davenport adds. 

“Don’t be scared away. Even if you see something telling you that the line at your polling place is two hours long.”  

Take advantage of available election resources.

Despite all the worries that election disinformation sparks in experts, Greenberg is heartened by what she says is “an incredible amount of attention” being paid to the issue by voters, law enforcement, and election officials. And she feels confident that voters are, on the whole, savvy enough to have their antennae up. 

To stay informed, she recommends resources like Election Law Blog and Democracy Docket. And Davenport points out that contacting your county clerk’s office—or checking its website—is a good way to get any necessary information about voting.  “We still need to tell people about the threats,” he says, “but then with that, we can say, ‘And here’s how you can find reliable sources on these topics.’”

“If we don’t have healthy political discourse, then we don’t have a healthy democracy,” he said on Sept. 24 at Fordham’s Lincoln Center campus.

“America is founded on ideas that require debate and refinement that comes from talking, from arguing.”

In a lecture and Q&A with Fordham President Tania Tetlow, Dickerson laid out the structural reasons Americans are engaging less with each other on controversial topics. 

The event kicked off Fordham’s FitzSimons Presidential Initiative on Civics and Civility, a year-long project of education and engagement created as a model for respectful dialogue and cooperation among Americans. 

The Gold Standard from the ’80s

The reason political discourse feels unproductive today is because the country’s political climate has shifted dramatically, he said. 

In the 1980s, the relationship between President Ronald Reagan and House Speaker Tip O’Neil became a gold standard for bipartisanship, as Reagan, a conservative Republican, and O’Neil, a liberal Democrat, worked together on issues such as Social Security.

That was only possible, Dickerson said, because, in 1982, voters in 85 House districts sent a Democrat to Congress and yet also voted for Reagan for president. To satisfy these “Reagan Democrats,” O’Neil and Reagan needed to work together. The number of districts where this kind of “split ticket voting” takes place has since plummeted to just 16 in 2020.

He pinned the blame on “money, movement, and media.” In 2012, it cost an average of $500,000 to run for a House seat and $11.4 million to run for a Senate seat. Today, it costs $2.7 million for a House seat and $26 million for a Senate seat. Since outrage fuels fundraising, candidates have no incentive to keep the discourse civil.

Fewer Politically Diverse Counties

Meanwhile, Americans have continued to move to communities where political leanings are more homogenous. In 1976, 25% of them lived in counties where one political party consistently won landslide victories. Today, that number has increased to 58%.

“So in these kinds of counties…the political contest doesn’t then become between two parties,” Dickerson said. “It gets fought in primaries. It [becomes a fight]among the people of the same party. And that tends to lead opinions in the party over to … the more extreme side.“

Finally, he said, mobile devices have made it difficult for people to take time to think in a nuanced way about complex issues.

‘Give Space and Grace’ 

To solve the problem, Dickerson recommended that Americans recognize the ways the current system is designed to keep us in conflict with each other. That means checking yourself to make sure you aren’t disagreeing with somebody because your peers are driving your response. 

It also means placing a premium on freedom of speech, the value of asking why when we are unsure of ourselves, and prioritizing understanding over knowledge.

“So give space and grace to those you disagree with. Listen, restrain judgment, and don’t pile on.”

Watch the full lecture and conversation.

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.

“One of the things that stood out to me about Tim is how his convictions on fighting for middle-class families run deep. It’s personal,” Harris wrote in an Instagram post announcing her choice of Walz.

Walz, 60, is a former high school teacher and football coach who served in the U.S. Army National Guard for 24 years. He also served as a congressman for six terms before running for governor in 2018. He is in his second term as governor after being reelected in 2022.

Doubling Down on ‘Weird’

Walz was the first to call the Republican candidates “weird”—a term that has taken off among Democrats in the campaign against former President Donald Trump and J.D. Vance, a U.S. senator.

Fordham experts agree that Walz should appeal to middle-class voters, and also say that popularizing “weird” probably helped his chances.

“Walz will add to the already increased excitement among the Democratic base, since he’s already been an effective spokesperson for the campaign introducing the ‘weird’ angle that Harris and other Democrats have doubled down on,” said Boris Heersink, Ph.D., associate professor of political science.

“Harris’s final list of vice-presidential options was a strong one and each of the candidates she was reportedly considering could have contributed something valuable to the ticket and in office. That being said, the selection of Walz to me seems like a smart choice,” Heersink added. “His record in Minnesota as governor includes a long list of policies that Democratic voters strongly support. And while Minnesota is not a swing state, he may appeal to middle and working-class voters in the Midwest.”

Jacob Smith, Ph.D., assistant professor of political science, said, ““He was not an initial favorite in the VP search, but got a lot of attention popularizing the line of Trump and the GOP being ‘weird.’ His ‘happy warrior’ style was likely appealing to Harris.”

Progressive Record

One group that was behind Walz early on was progressives, Smith said, despite him having a more moderate voting record in Congress that fit his moderate to right-leaning district. 

He has been more progressive during his governorship. For example, Minnesota passed laws supporting free school breakfast and lunch, universal background checks for guns, and legalized marijuana, Smith said.

Winning in Conservative Areas

Walz got his start in politics winning a seat in Congress in 2006. Smith said he was what is often known as a “wave baby”—he won in 2006 largely because of George W. Bush’s lack of popularity when a lot of Democrats without previous political experience won. The district he won was Republican-leaning. But Walz’s background as a teacher, football coach, National Guardsman, and rural Nebraska native may have held particular appeal to the small-town Midwest voters, he added.

“Walz survived a number of tough reelections in Congress and barely won reelection in 2016 as his seat shifted heavily towards Donald Trump. He has lots of experience winning tough reelections in conservative areas,” said Smith.

Walz would be the third Democratic vice president from Minnesota elected in relatively recent years after Hubert Humphrey in 1964 and Walter Mondale in 1976.

“This is a historic moment,” said Boris Heersink, associate professor of political science at Fordham. “There are no similar cases where an incumbent president in the modern era had every intention to run for reelection, won the delegates necessary to get nominated, but was effectively forced out.”

Pressure mounted for Biden, 81, to step aside after his June 27 debate performance, which many called “disastrous,” and raised doubts about his fitness for office only four months before the election. Since then, dozens of prominent Democrats have pressed him to withdraw so they could nominate a candidate who would fare better against former President Donald Trump, the Republican nominee. But as late as Friday, Biden continued to insist that he would stay in the race.

Heersink said the campaign to oust Biden was “not just because of one bad debate but because that debate confirmed a lot of preexisting views of his age and fueled a growing frustration among many that this current generation of politicians refuses to step aside.”

Avoiding a ‘Free-for-All’

It remains to be seen, however, if the party leadership will back Harris for the nomination, and reports of division among Democrats are already surfacing.

“The delegates that were elected during the primaries this past spring will need to vote, and they theoretically are free to vote for whoever they want,” Heersink said. “However, it seems likely to me that Biden and other party leaders will want to avoid this becoming a free-for-all.

“While Biden stepping aside obviously adds considerable confusion to the race, it does also provide Democrats with the opportunity to put together a ticket that will excite people in their base and make not just the case that voters need to reject Trump, but that there also is a positive argument for voting for the Democrats in November,” said Heersink.

Christina Greer, associate professor of political science, said, “It’s historic, complicated, and not yet decided. Chicago will bring much to light, and luckily for Dems, Biden decided to make this decision before the convention.”

‘Sighing With Relief’

Jacob Smith, assistant professor of political science at Fordham, said, “I think a lot of Dems are sighing with relief today.” He added, “Also, the behind-the-scenes action once again shows nobody should bet against Nancy Pelosi.”

“I think enthusiasm among younger voters will be higher [for Harris],” said Smith. “While incumbents usually have an edge, the age issue was just going to dominate the fall campaign for Joe Biden. Harris won’t have that baggage.”

If Democrats choose another nominee, however, it would “ignore the crucial role of Black voters in the Democratic Party in addition to being pretty rude to Harris as the sitting VP,” Smith said. “Everyone will need to be vigilant against racism and sexism, but I do believe that Harris is the stronger candidate and that is why President Biden ultimately stepped aside.”

Heersink said, “A majority of voters has very consistently indicated that they do not want Trump to be president again. But a majority of voters also believed Biden was incapable of executing the job for another term. Trump is still the Republican nominee, but Democrats now have the space to overcome the major obstacles to a victory in November.”

“After lengthy deliberation and thought, and considering the tremendous talents of many others, I have decided that the person best suited to assume the position of Vice President of the United States is Senator J.D. Vance of the Great State of Ohio,” Trump said in a post on Monday on his Truth Social network.

Hours later, Vance and Trump—who had a large bandage on his right ear after Saturday’s shooting—shook hands and sat next to each other during the Republican National Convention’s opening night program in Milwaukee.

Vance, age 39, who rocketed to fame as the author of the book (and ensuing movie) Hillbilly Elegy (Harper, 2016), is the third-youngest person nominated for vice president by a major party. A former critic of Trump who once privately compared him to Hitler, Vance now aligns with the former president on several key issues. He echoed Trump’s calls to cut aid to Ukraine, deport migrants, and increase tariffs on all imported goods. 

Doubling Down on MAGA

Fordham experts said the pick is a bit unusual given Vance’s past criticism of Trump and the fact that he doesn’t bring “something different” to the ticket. Though it’s not surprising, they said, that Trump would aim to reinforce his brand of conservatism.

“Vance is very much a choice that underlines what Trump has been doing since the 2020 election, which is doubling down on the concept of MAGA as a replacement of traditional conservatism,” said Boris Heersink, Ph.D., associate professor of political science.

“Historically, it has been common for presidential candidates to try to balance the ticket in terms of intraparty disagreements. Clearly, this choice isn’t doing that.”

Jacob Smith, Ph.D., assistant professor of political science, agrees that in Vance, Trump has chosen someone similar to himself—both in experience and policy.

“Like Trump, Vance is famous for something outside of politics and has little experience in elective office,” he said. “Sometimes, campaigns try to choose someone who adds something different, although other times, such as the Clinton/Gore campaign of 1992, a campaign will double down on a particular strength or message,” he said.

Help in Ohio?

Heersink has done research on the effect vice-presidential candidates have on elections, specifically within their home states. He said that while Vance may deliver Ohio votes, that is unlikely to have a big impact.

“Ohio has drifted so far to the Republican side that it is basically a guaranteed win for Trump regardless of who his running mate is, and additionally, Vance underperformed in Ohio in 2022 in comparison to Trump in 2020.”

Smith said Vance could perhaps “help a little bit in the Midwest, if he ends up being a strong choice, but research shows VP effects are minimal even in home states, much less regions.” He noted that a one or two-point additional performance in Ohio “could be important down-ballot though” for Ohio’s upcoming Senate and House contests.

Rhetoric Could Ramp Up

One area where Vance is expected to play a significant role is in the tone of the campaign, and there, Smith is not hopeful that he will lower the temperature of national rhetoric, as many have called for since Saturday’s attempted assasination. Within hours of the shooting, Vance blamed President Joe Biden on Twitter for the attack.

“My guess is that Trump had already decided on Vance before the shooting, or it was down to Vance and one or two others by then,” Smith said. “However, the effect of the pick will be to rachet up the temperature more.”

New York Governor Kathy Hochul put a halt to the hotly debated congestion pricing plan this week, indefinitely shelving the MTA’s plan to charge drivers up to $15 to enter Manhattan below 60th Street. 

The governor said she feared the tolling program, slated to start June 30, would “create another obstacle to our economic recovery.”

Fordham Now checked in with Annika Hinze, Ph.D., associate professor of political science and director of Fordham’s Urban Studies Program, about the impact of the 11th-hour decision. 

“Congestion pricing was always going to be an imperfect scheme, but it was also an attempt to reduce traffic in the city, as well as channel money to the MTA, which it desperately needs,” she said. 

“Now policymakers are signaling that the environmental implications of this aren’t as important as the economic implications. But in 25 years, they will have become the prime economic issues of the day.”

Shifting people from cars and trucks to public transportation is a key component to New York City’s economic health and livability, she said, as well as efforts to fight climate change. Doing that requires both a carrot—improved mass transit—as well as a stick—a tax for driving into the most congested areas of a city.

In New York City, the law that authorized congestion pricing requires it to generate $1 billion annually, which the MTA would use to finance transit construction projects. Governor Hochul said the state will pursue other ways to fund the MTA, possibly in the form of a tax on city businesses.

Hinze noted that the plan had some quirks that had not been addressed well (or at all), so there was some understandable frustration among residents. 

“A congestion pricing scheme would have been much more justifiable in a metro area with a sophisticated and broadly accessible public transit system with trains, light rail, and buses,” she said.

“But even [in a city]with such a transit system in place, like London, congestion pricing was always going to be unpopular with some. It is inconvenient for some commuters to have such a system in place, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that it is the ‘wrong’ thing to do,” she said.

“It would’ve been a big signal to say, ‘We’re going to prioritize this, even if it’s unpopular because it’s the right thing to do.”

“It would have signaled, ‘We’re going to invest in and expand public transit infrastructure.”

Many have criticized the governor’s sudden reversal, noting that as recently as two weeks ago she said congestion pricing was critical to “making cities more livable.” Hinze said she thinks Hochul’s motivations to end the program were political. 

“It’s an election year. I assume that she looked at the polling and said, ‘Look, this is not the right time to push for this,’” she said, noting that a Siena College poll from April found that 72% of New York suburban residents opposed congestion pricing. 

That includes House districts that Democrats lost in the 2022 elections. Shelving the plan potentially helps Democrats win those races and win back the House of Representatives in November. 

“In a lot of districts down-ballot, Republicans are doing quite well, in particular on Long Island where congestion pricing is particularly unpopular,” Hinze said.  

Hinze thinks the program may not be dead for good.  The program has already been authorized by the New York State Legislature, and the MTA has already spent $555 million on the infrastructure for the program.

“My hope is that maybe it will not be indefinitely postponed. After the election, we can revisit it; maybe there will be better proposals, and some of the snags will be resolved, so we can pass something that’s better,” she said.

Urban areas are currently home to 55% of the world’s population, according to the United Nations, and that’s predicted to increase to 68% by 2050.

Cities and Climate Change, a course being offered as part of Fordham’s M.A. in Urban Studies program, aims to provide students with the tools and knowledge to implement those solutions.

“It’s about how climate change is going to impact urban life, but also how cities can transform the crisis into something that’s really valuable in terms of sustaining existence,” said Rosemary Wakeman, Ph.D., who will teach the course again next spring.

Wakeman, a professor of history and the former director of Fordham’s Urban Studies program, created the course last year, knowing that students whose future work lies in government, urban planning, and architecture will need to take into account rising sea levels, utilities strained by extreme heat, and poor air quality during their careers.

“It’s very practical in trying to set out a framework to help people make decisions.”

New Yorkers learned during Super Storm Sandy how vulnerable cities along coastlines are, Wakeman said. In the class, Wakeman explores how these cities are coping with the problem, including Indonesia’s plan to move its rapidly sinking capital from Jakarta to the island of Borneo by 2045.

“If you look at cities and urban regions internationally, you find a whole range of solutions that are being tried. Some of them, like Jakarta, are very radical, and then you get possibilities that are much more a step-by-step approach,” she said. 

Cities’ vulnerability to storms and flooding has inspired their municipal governments to succeed where national governments have failed. 

“Most researchers have argued that looking at national governments for answers to climate change has been an unmitigated failure,” Wakeman said. 

“Despite the U.N. efforts and the various conferences that have been held, the carbon footprint is getting larger, and very little is being done in terms of coping with sea level rise. You have to look at cities in urban regions to find out how successful various strategies have been.”

Nisa Hafeez, GSAS ’23, an urban studies master’s graduate who took the class last spring, is now working on transportation issues as a mobility analyst for sustainable design, engineering, and consulting firm Arcadis IBI Group. 

She said the class resonated deeply with her, having experienced the effects of climate change personally. When she was a child growing up in Karachi, Pakistan, winter temperatures dropped into the 40s, but now they rarely drop below the 60s, and in the summers, there are noticeably longer stretches when the mercury tops 100 degrees. Pakistan is no anomaly either, as the past nine years have been the warmest years on the planet since modern recordkeeping began in 1880.

In some ways, the course gave Hafeez hope because she learned about how many governments are actively working to address the problem.

“It’s an important topic for young people because we are the ones who can actually have a voice in really promoting change,” she said. 

During the COVID pandemic, a story in the New York Times caught the eye of economics professor Troy Tassier, Ph.D. Using anonymous cell phone data, researchers showed that nearly 50% of residents in New York City’s wealthiest communities had left the city.

Those in poorer communities stayed for the most part, working at in-person jobs and commuting along their normal bus and subway routes. As a result, Tassier said, in the first year of the pandemic, the rate of mortality in some of the hardest hit, poorer neighborhoods was five to six times higher than it was in affluent areas in New York City.

It inspired Tassier to produce research on herd immunity and other infection-related data. In February, he published The Rich Flee and the Poor Take the Bus: How Our Unequal Society Fails Us during Outbreaks (Johns Hopkins Press, 2024), which investigates how social inequality affects epidemic outbreaks.

The book examines pandemics from the past, from the Bubonic plague that devastated Hong Kong in the 19th century to the influenza pandemic that ravaged New York City in 1918. Why was it so important to highlight this history?

At the beginning of the pandemic, there was this narrative that this was a great equalizer, but I knew it wasn’t going to be true, just from past pandemics. In New York City in the 19th century, poor people were blamed for the pandemics because they were afflicted more than wealthy people. But it wasn’t their fault; it was the conditions that they were living in. During COVID-19, we were experiencing some of the same things.

Were you surprised by anything you encountered while doing your research?

The biggest surprise was just how similar past epidemics were to what happened in 2020, down to things like fights over masks. There’s a story from 1918 about a fight between a health inspector and a person standing on the street corner who was arguing with people, telling them they were fools to be wearing masks. They ended up in an altercation, and a couple of people were shot.

I have a cousin who lives in the South who was doing curbside pickup at a store in 2021, and she was accosted by two guys who tried to rip the mask off her face.

A major point of the book is that we should treat medicine as a social science. Do you think the pandemic made that clear to people?

No, and that’s one of my biggest disappointments. You still hear refrains coming from both the left and the right that public health needs to step away from proselytizing and just “follow the science,” but part of that science is how people are reacting to policies and to each other.

Something I’ve been grappling with is, last month the CDC eliminated the five-day isolation period following a positive infection. Now, these isolation periods are regressive because they harm working people who don’t have paid sick leave or might not be able to afford childcare if their child has to stay home to be isolated.

But the CDC shouldn’t be saying there’s a problem with the regressive nature of this five-day isolation; therefore, we need to get rid of the isolation period. What they should be saying is we have these problems in society, and we need to work to get rid of this inequality.

It’s not just as simple as people raising themselves up by the bootstraps.

Funded through a nearly $25,000 grant awarded to Dougnon by the Wenner-Gren Foundation in September 2023, the Water and Migration Project is a comprehensive ethnographic research program that analyzes the effects of post-drought migration patterns on housing, community, and livelihoods across three villages in Mali.

“Many scholars work on water and migration, but mostly as a future scenario, Dougnon said. “I’m looking at a group of people who really, collectively, left their region and settled in new places … this is concrete data.”

The Sahel region of western Africa, where Mali is located, suffered two notable periods of drought in 1973 and 1984. This devastated the local agrarian economy and displaced its inhabitants, leading to mass migration.

The project aims to collect data from those impacted communities through first-hand interviews, field observations, and archival records from entities such as local churches and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs).

Working for the Marginalized

When Dougnon reached out to organizations for data on these migratory communities, those institutions weren’t just willing to pitch in—they were eager.

Little information is available on the long-term effects of these droughts on mass migration, and researchers like Dougnon are working to fill a crucial gap that will hopefully lead to actionable relief efforts. Mali has continued to deal with droughts, affecting about 400,000 residents each year and reducing crop revenues by $9.5 million annually.

“I’m so proud that not only are the migrants interested in my research, but also the institutions,” Dougnon said. “The state and NGOs are interested in these results because …these [migrants] are facing challenges.”

For Dougnon, this human aspect is the key that has driven his work throughout his long career.

“All of my research has this humanitarian aspect—defending the marginalized,” Dougnon said.

Dougnon, who is currently on leave from Fordham to work on the project, has been conducting this research for the first six months of the grant. He will spend the remainder of the year compiling a report on his findings that he will present to the foundation, as well as to a workshop of Fordham community members studying comparable issues.

How Do Communities Adapt?

At Fordham, Dougnan teaches a variety of undergraduate and master’s level courses that combine his expertise in French with subjects like African society and the environment. An anthropologist by trade, Dougnon has been surveying the humanitarian effects of climate change, such as how natural resources get depleted and how that impacts internal migration, for more than 25 years.

Dougnon stressed that these small-scale examples of the effects of climate change—and how agricultural communities respond to them in real time—could provide key insights into managing potentially larger resource scarcity.

“My project wants to look at how they have been able to adapt to new places in the south of Mali,” he said. “How do they transform this landscape by bringing in technologies, social organizations, and so on?”

Dougnon hopes to use his findings to create a new, more robust project that can replicate these methods on a larger scale—ideally encompassing multiple countries in Africa.