In recent months we have seen an increase in hate crimes against Asian Americans, most acutely in California, but also occurring in other cities with Asian populations, including New York. Our own Professor Tiffany Yip, Ph.D., professor and chair of the psychology department, held an important conversation on the topic with WFUV’s Robin Shannon, host of Fordham Conversations, last month. I encourage you to listen to, and reflect upon, their interview.

The University condemns in the strongest possible terms the use of hateful rhetoric and violence against people of Asian descent, and the xenophobic and racist thinking which underlies those attacks. It is wrong, of course, when any group is singled out for hateful treatment, but it seems especially bitter to scapegoat a group—one that includes our neighbors, friends, and members of the University community—for a pandemic in which they are suffering the same fears and deprivations as every other American.

It is especially in moments like this that we should enlarge, rather than shrink, our circle of compassion. Being people for others emphatically does not mean “only others whom we deem worthy.” I want to believe that we are making progress in this sphere, however fitful it may seem, and that more and more people of goodwill are finding their voices and opposing ignorance and bigotry wherever they find it. Because that is what we are called to do, my friends: called by the Gospel; called by our loved ones and friends; and called by the better angels of our nature.

Please know that I pray for all of us to have the discernment and will to do what is right in these trying times.

Sincerely,

Joseph M. McShane, S.J.

Dear Members of the Fordham Family,

I have previously referred to racism as “the second pandemic” from which our nation is suffering and sadly, this assessment is consistently borne out in the news media and in our daily lives. It is therefore critical that Fordham continue to move ahead to implement “Addressing Racism, Educating for Justice,” the action plan that the University’s leadership team developed and published over the summer, and which was the subject of the chief diversity officer’s annual report and my State of the University address near the start of the fall semester:

• Action Plan
• Chief Diversity Officer’s Report
• State of the University Address

I am writing to you in these waning days of the fall semester to share with you an update on the progress that we have made so far in implementing the 34 initiatives that were outlined in the plan. (The members of our Diversity Leadership Team and I will reach out to you on a regular basis as we move into the spring semester and beyond to keep you abreast of additional developments in this mission-centric undertaking.)

Anti-Racism Training; Test-Optional Admissions; Racial Justice Network; Diversity-Focused Human Resources Policies, Programs, and Procedures:

To signal its deep commitment to the work of confronting racism and educating for justice, during the summer, the Board of Trustees created a new standing committee: the Mission and Social Justice Committee. In September, the Mission and Social Justice Committee laid the foundations for its work and identified a series of goals that would guide that work:

• Increasing the number of Black and other students of color at Fordham
• Ensuring that Black and other students of color know that they are welcome at Fordham
• Measuring the effectiveness of these actions

On 17 November, the Mission and Social Justice Committee of the Board of Trustees jointly met with the University’s diversity leadership team—Kay Turner, vice president for human resources; Rafael Zapata, chief diversity officer, special assistant to the president for diversity, and associate vice president for academic affairs; and Juan Carlos Matos, assistant vice president for student affairs for diversity and inclusion—who outlined the ways in which their areas of the University are implementing or planning to implement the following elements of our anti-racism plan:

1. Anti-racism training for all members of the Fordham community. Substantial progress has already been made in this area. For instance, the Board of Trustees, the members of the cabinet, and the deans as well as a number of administrative units have already undergone or begun this training with the help and guidance of experienced professional trainers. In addition, anti-racism sessions and training modules were included in the orientation programs for all entering students, and the Student Affairs staff underwent a mandatory, all-day training program focused on diversity, equity, inclusion, and anti-racism. Finally, the Office of Human Resources Management has worked with outside vendors and experts to develop and offer a series of training sessions and online tutorials on how to confront racism.

2. Admissions and Enrollment: As was promised in the action plan, the University has adopted a test-optional undergraduate admission policy. Moreover, the admission team has focused on ways to attract more Black and Latinx students to the University. Among other things, we have expanded the number of high schools in neighboring communities to which we commit to meet full need for their graduates admitted to the University, and our efforts will be further aided by a $250,000 addition to the scholarship fund established by the Fordham Jesuit Community targeted at recruiting students from the schools in the Cristo Rey network. This work includes Gabelli students tutoring and mentoring student in the honors program at Cardinal Hayes High School. Gabelli students are in the classroom with the Cardinal Hayes students, helping them with college-level assignments. The program, now in its third year, is a recruiting pipeline from Cardinal Hayes to Fordham. So far, their efforts are showing promising results: in the Early Action/Early Decision admission cycle, the number of Black students offered admission has increased by 34%, and the number of admission acceptances offered to Latinx students has increased by 22%. Finally, for the 12th year in a row, with the help of a grant from the Bloomberg Foundation and the assistance of the Commission on Independent Colleges and Universities, Fordham hosted the only College Access Fair (held virtually) for Black and Latinx students in New York state, attracting 915 students this year.

3. The Creation and Nurturing of a Culture of Inclusion on Our Campuses: Since it is clear (as the Mission and Social Justice Committee noted in its first meeting) that it is not enough for us merely to strengthen our outreach to applicants, we must do all that we can to ensure that the students whom we bring to Fordham find a welcoming home for their hearts. Therefore, the Office of Multicultural Affairs (OMA) has created a Racial Solidarity Network. In addition, OMA offered workshops exploring implicit bias and racism to over 800 students, including all RAs, commuter assistants, and orientation leaders. The Office of Human Resources Management has created diversity-focused recruitment, retention, and talent management practices for use by all of the schools and divisions of the University.

4. Student-Affirming Outreach Initiatives: In July 2020, a group of 48 deans, directors, administrative assistants, and other staff participated in a pilot student-outreach initiative to try to understand how the pandemic and this summer’s heightened awareness of racial injustice was affecting them. Out of the 175 returning students with whom administrators and staff had conversations, most students wanted to be connected to the Office of Career Services, class deans, advisers, and the libraries. Students spoke about wanting to be more active and integrated at the University. They also spoke of the benefits and drawbacks of the hybrid offerings. Some students also shared their sense of displacement associated with the abrupt return home due to the pandemic.

Prioritizing the Hiring of a More Diverse Faculty and Staff:

I am pleased to tell you that out of the 26 Arts and Sciences full-time tenure/tenure-track faculty hired this year, 50% are persons of color; and overall, 48% of the new full-time staff, administrators, tenure/tenure-track and non-tenure/tenure-track faculty hired since 1 July 2020 are persons of color: 53% are women; 14% are Latinx, and 17% are Black. Finally, in the area of Academic Affairs, I am happy to report that with a bequest that the University received recently from her estate, Fordham has created the Margaret Peil Distinguished Chair in African and African American Studies, the first of its kind at the University.

Moreover, in the area of Residential Life, almost 46% of the RAs at Rose Hill and almost 60% of the RAs at Lincoln Center are people of color.

• At Lincoln Center, 10.8% of RAs are Latinx and 18.9% are Black;
• At Rose Hill, 20.6% of RAs are Latinx and 9.2% are Black;
• At Rose Hill, 54.6% of the RAs are women; that percentage is slightly higher at Lincoln Center.

In addition, in the course of the fall semester, Counseling and Psychological Services (CPS) offered support spaces and one-off workshops on a variety of topics, including: Coping with Imposter Syndrome; Drop-In Support Space for Armenian Students; What Does It Mean to Be Asian Now and How to Cope With It; Building Community for International Students; and Navigating Police Brutality and Racial Trauma. CPS also offered weekly support groups, including: Women of Color Healing and Empowerment Circle; LGBTQ+ Community Support Space; and Chinese International Students Drop-In Group.

Creating a More Richly Inclusive, Anti-Racist Curriculum:

This academic year, the Arts and Sciences faculty and deans are undertaking a systematic assessment of the current Core Curriculum and framing a proposal for its future revision. (The faculty-led Core Curriculum Task Force should begin this revision work in fall 2021.) Arts and Sciences’ current work is centered on responding to student requests to integrate anti-racism into the existing Core Curriculum. At the same time, individual programs and departments are beginning to respond to the call for teaching race across the curriculum by implementing interim revisions to their core (e.g., Art History, Theology) and major (e.g., English) course offerings.

Moreover, during Academic Orientation for the fall semester, Fordham College at Rose Hill and Fordham College at Lincoln Center made The Colossus of New York, by two-time Pulitzer Prize winner Colson Whitehead, the first Summer Read shared by the two colleges. The faculty of the two schools prepared students for their orientation sessions with programming throughout the summer, and followed the orientation experience with sessions that addressed a range of topics, including race, identity, and belonging, throughout the year.

Building Stronger Relationships with Our Neighbors:

The University is looking into ways to make our campuses more accessible and welcoming to the local communities once we are out of the pandemic and can contemplate having visitors on campus again. You may know that there have been a number of events open to the public before COVID-19 forced us to close off the campuses entirely, and the Center for Community Engaged Learning, student government, and our many service and cultural clubs have been at the forefront of our efforts to actively work with our neighbors on and off campus. In that vein, you may have noticed that the Fordham News weekly newsletter has begun listing off-campus community events in its calendar.

As I have said before, Fordham’s anti-racism action plan is an evolving one: although we cannot accomplish everything we would wish in any single academic year, Fordham is focused on this effort at every level, beginning with the Board of Trustees and the University’s senior leadership. I will continue to share updates with the University community as we have new initiatives and achievements to report.

Finally, I would like to offer my profound thanks to everyone in the Fordham family who has taken up this work and made possible the changes we have achieved to date. I am humbled by your dedication and effort, and grateful for all you do in the service of the University community.

Sincerely,

Joseph M. McShane, S.J.

Below you will find the annual report of the Chief Diversity Officer. You will find here that the University is moving forward on multiple fronts in pursuit of greater diversity, equity, and inclusion. That said, it is not everything we can do, nor is it everything we intend to do. This work—dismantling racism, especially structural racism—is neither linear nor ever finished. This is why I refer to the action plan for confronting racism and educating for justice as iterative and ongoing.

I want to speak directly to the Black people and other people of color in the Fordham community. I know this has been a difficult year for you in many ways. The killing of Black people by police, the disproportionate harm that communities of color have suffered during the pandemic, and the upswelling of racism across the country have burdened you uniquely. I know this, as does every member of the Board of Trustees, every member of the administration, and every member of the faculty and staff. While no single institution is capable of curing these social ills, I promise you that Fordham is committed to doing its part to combat racism and anti-Blackness.

We will not be able to address every issue before us in the 2020-2021 school year: there is simply too much to accomplish in a single academic year. But we will devote all the resources we can—both in funding and staff time—to this very important work.

I hope you will take heart at the progress laid out in the annual report from the Chief Diversity Officer, and trust that we are committed to doing more, always.

Sincerely,

Joseph M. McShane, S.J.

—————————————————————

To the Members of the University Community:

This has been a year like no other. It is with great humility that I share with you an overview of the work of our office during the past academic year while providing a vision and preliminary update regarding the critical work to come. 

The work of any office concerned with diversity, equity, and inclusion is, at its core, focused on the identification and disruption of patterns of exclusion and marginalization, and the norms, systems, and structures that produce and perpetuate them. This work also involves identifying and promoting new and existing norms, policies, and practices that foster justice, success, and belonging, consistent with our mission and most deeply held values. This is what we have striven to do since my arrival as Fordham’s inaugural Special Assistant to the President, Associate Vice President for Academic Affairs, and Chief Diversity Officer in January 2018. 

Building on the work of the previous three semesters, last year we made important strides in a number of strategic DEI areas: 

Students and Student/Community Programs 

• We supported a range of outstanding events and programs organized by and for students and student organizations, the Office of Multicultural Affairs, the Center for Community Engaged Learning (CCEL), the Fordham Collegiate Science and Technology Entry Program (CSTEP), and numerous academic departments. 
• In January 2020, with the Office of Multicultural Affairs and the Center for Community Engaged Learning, we launched Martin Luther King, Jr. Week, featuring events on the theme: The Radical King. 
• We launched a prototype version of a non-credit first-year experience course, New York is My Campus, at both the Lincoln Center and Rose Hill campuses. 
• We continued to build a strong partnership with #TheBronxIsReading and the Bronx Book Festival. 

Faculty and Staff Diversity 

• Forty Five percent of all new tenured and tenure-track hires this year are persons of color, with particular success in the Arts & Sciences and the Graduate School of Education. This is the result of our continuing work in conducting active, engaged faculty searches, working closely with academic departments, and partnering with a range of disciplinary- and area-specific organizations. 
• We continued to collaborate with Human Resources to build a more robust infrastructure for administrative search and selection processes, and to partner with colleagues from Mission Integration and Planning to conduct diversity and mission-focused search committee training. 

Capacity Building 

• The Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) Council finalized the Fordham DEI Strategic Framework to inform DEI planning across the university. 
• The Office of Admissions hired their inaugural Associate Director of Diversity Initiatives, Mary Balingit, who joined Fordham in early March 2020. 

Faculty Development and Pedagogy 

• We continued to work closely with Dr. Anne Fernald, Professor and Special Advisor to the Provost for Faculty Development, in hosting inclusive pedagogy workshops, including one at the beginning of the academic year on Anti-Racist Pedagogy and Practice. 
• Graduate students are creating and participating in anti-racist pedagogy workshops. 
• There are currently 421 Fordham faculty, graduate students, post-docs, and administrators who have taken advantage of our institutional membership in the National Center for Faculty Development and Diversity, providing access to a range of faculty development resources. We also supported an additional 18 Fordham faculty to participate in the Faculty Success Program, bringing the total number of participants to 45 since Spring 2018. Learn about member resources. 

Policy

• In May, Fordham adopted a Test-Optional Admissions Policy for undergraduate students starting with the Fall 2021 entering class. 
• More recently, Fordham announced the adoption of a Chosen Name Policy. 

AND THEN CAME COVID-19 

In early March, the COVID-19 pandemic had an abrupt and devastating impact on our institution, city, and region. We suffered the loss of countless family and friends, as well as frayed bonds with our loved ones that make us truly human – all in order to beat back this dreadful disease. The pandemic shed light on what is both beautiful and deeply troubling about our human relations. On the one hand, there was profound compassion, courage, and collective action to care for one another in a time of crisis. On the other was xenophobia directed against Asians and Asian Americans, and the disease’s disproportionate impact on already vulnerable populations: the aged, people of color, the poor, the lonely, essential workers, caretakers, persons with disabilities, and those with already compromised immune systems. 

THE MURDER OF GEORGE FLOYD 

On May 25, our country was further rocked by the video recorded murder of George Floyd, an unarmed Black man, at the hands of Minneapolis Police, sparking nation-wide protests against contemporary and historic police and vigilante violence against Black people in the United States. As difficult as 2020 has been, the events of the year have allowed more and more people and institutions to witness – many for the first time – the debasing and deadly nature of systems of racial and economic inequality in the United States. As a result, they have begun to take more serious steps to address long-standing, deeply-rooted challenges at the individual and systemic level. 

THE WORK AHEAD 

While this work is certainly not new at Fordham, as evidenced by Father McShane’s November 2016 Diversity Action Plan, it has taken on a new urgency among students, faculty and staff, as well as alumni and members of the communities surrounding our campuses. 

Father McShane’s June 29th Action Plan, Addressing Racism/Educating for Justice, highlighted both ongoing priorities, as well as a bolder set of initiatives, to help us more fully live out our mission. Several initiatives are already underway, including: 

• A series of outstanding summer and fall events hosted by the Fordham Law School Center on Race, Law and Justice. 
• ASILI, in collaboration with other student organizations, offered programming over the summer via Instagram Live and other social media platforms. 
• Numerous schools, divisions, and departments are developing and implementing plans to conduct anti-racism training for their students, staff, and faculty. 
• The Office of Human Resources is currently working on developing University-wide training on issues of diversity, equity, and inclusion. 
• Fordham will be co-sponsoring a series of events this fall on issues of race, identity, and community in partnership with the Bronx Book Festival. 
• Advanced conversations with students, faculty, and deans from various academic departments are taking place regarding curriculum, with many potentially supported by Teaching Race Across the Curriculum (TRAC) grants. That program will be officially announced within the next two weeks. 
• The Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) Council convened on Friday, September 4th, to begin to map out challenges, opportunities, and strategies in support of Father McShane’s June 29 Action Plan, and for on-going outreach and discussion throughout the Fordham community. 

With the fall semester officially underway, planning and strategy meetings with key stakeholders across the University are taking place with greater frequency, helping to move us from aspiration, to prioritization, to action and eventual implementation. There will be more specifics to report in the coming weeks and months, and we promise to share news of progress and relevant developments as they unfold. Importantly, we also invite your ideas to help our community heal, continue to learn and grow, and work collaboratively toward sustainable, systemic change, and racial justice. 

Yet, this will continue to be a year like no other. While we in the state, region, and city of New York have – for the time being – beaten the disease back, COVID is still among us, and must continue to be navigated with the utmost care. Moreover, the recent shooting of Jacob Blake, unarmed and in front of his children, by a Kenosha, WI, police officer, is yet another reminder of the urgency of this moment in the struggle for racial justice. Let us go forward, together, in love and solidarity, affirming in all that we do that BLACK LIVES MATTER, moved by the words and example of a previous generation of New York City youth fighting for justice: Pa’lante, Siempre Pa’lante. 

Yours Sincerely, 

Rafael A. Zapata 

Special Assistant to the President for Diversity, Associate Vice President for Academic Affairs & Chief Diversity Officer 

After decades and centuries, we have still not created a nation and a culture in which all citizens are truly equal, a nation in which each citizen is treated with dignity.

The Black community has never enjoyed the kind of respect, and has never had access to the range of opportunities, that other communities in our country have had. The protests that have occurred across the country and that have brought together people from every race, ethnicity, religious affiliation, and age group in the aftermath of the brutal killing of George Floyd are both a cry of the heart coming from a community that has been the victim of systemic racism for our entire history, and a call to a national examination of conscience on race relations and on racism itself. And a call to action for Fordham.

In the course of the past few weeks, the members of the Board of Trustees, the administration, and I have watched and listened. We have read the many emails, petitions, and Instagram posts that have come from the University community. We have all been moved and dismayed by these statements and testimonials, and deeply saddened by the trauma that prompted them. Therefore, it is clear that the national awakening has come to Fordham. To be sure, we have in the past made strides in our efforts to create a more diverse, inclusive, and affirming community. But this moment has made it clear that we can and must do more. We all know this in our bones and in our hearts.

In the immediate aftermath of George Floyd’s killing, the chair of our Board of Trustees convened a special meeting of the Executive Committee of the Board devoted to addressing the scourge of racism. During the meeting (which was attended by a majority of the board’s members), our conversations were led by the Black members of the board. That meeting was followed by a meeting of the Board Strategy Committee. The board came away from both of those meetings with a firm belief that the question of racism was of such great mission-importance that they have both recast the charge of the Mission and Identity Committee to include Social Justice (and hence that committee has become the Mission and Social Justice Committee, which will be co-chaired by Anthony Carter and Thomas Regan, S.J.) and asked us to make the confrontation of racism in all its forms an important part of our strategic planning.

The same passion for confronting racism has been clear in all of the conversations that I and the other members of the administration and faculty leadership have had in the course of the past month. Indeed, the Board of Trustees feels so strongly about this that they have mandated annual anti-racism training for all faculty, administrators, staff, and students—including the president’s cabinet and the Board of Trustees.

Therefore, with the backing of the whole Fordham community (from the board to the faculty to the staff to the students), the administration, the provost, the vice presidents, the deans, the chief diversity officer, and I have drawn up the action plan that is outlined below. As the board, the administration, and I share it with you, I assure you that this should be seen as the first in a series of steps in what we now recognize must be an iterative process: as we listen more attentively and as we do more, we will learn more and adjust our plans and actions accordingly. Therefore, let us begin.

Goal: Develop Robust Admissions Strategies for Effective Recruitment of Students of Color to Fordham

Recruitment and Pipeline Development

The University will launch an aggressive recruitment program for Black and Latinx students, with a focus on talent identification, pipeline development, and enhanced financial aid aimed at substantially increasing our undergraduate Black and Latinx student populations. We are committed to dedicating significant resources to achieve this goal.

Actions

Create an overnight Multicultural Admitted Students’ Yield Program designed specifically for historically underrepresented students and their families.

Continue to co-sponsor (with the Commission on Independent Colleges and Universities) and host the only college open house for Black and Latinx students in New York state.

To promote the University’s interest in furthering diversity, Fordham will increase the amount of financial aid available to our Black (and Latinx) students by prioritizing the creation of endowed scholarships in our new capital campaign.

Launch the Urban Justice Scholars Program to bring to Fordham each year a cohort of 15 high-achieving, low- to moderate-income students from across the country whose academic, cocurricular, and vocational goals focus on understanding and addressing social and economic inequality from a wide range of disciplinary perspectives.

The University has already adopted a test-optional admissions policy. In Fordham’s undergraduate admission process, each application will continue to be reviewed holistically as we look for students who will be academically successful and bring personal qualities of integrity, perseverance, and leadership to our campus communities.

Actions Supporting the Building of a Better Admissions Pipeline

Create the Bronx Bothered Excellence Scholars Summer Program to serve historically underrepresented high school students in grades 10 through 12 who are committed to the Catholic and Jesuit mission of justice and cura personalis.

Drawing on the success of our outreach efforts at local Catholic high schools in the Bronx and Manhattan (such as Cardinal Hayes High School, Cristo Rey New York High School, and the Academy of Mount Saint Ursula), we will expand our efforts to include other neighborhood high schools, both public and private.

Goal: Recruiting and Retaining a More Diverse Faculty, Administration and Staff

Actions

Fordham will continue to prioritize the diversification of the ranks of the entire staff of the University: administrators, faculty, and staff.

Building on the success that we have had in the past few hiring cycles, the chief diversity officer will continue to conduct annual workshops for deans, chairs, vice presidents, and search committees to familiarize them with the University’s expectations for hiring practices.

Launch the John LaFarge, S.J., Visiting Scholars and Fellows Program, which will bring doctoral candidates to Fordham to facilitate the career growth and success of degree candidates who are underrepresented in their proposed fields of study to work with Fordham faculty mentors in their fields.

Launch the Joseph Fitzpatrick, S.J., Postdoctoral Fellowship and Cluster Hire Program, a postdoctoral scholars program designed to attract young scholar-teachers whose work takes an interdisciplinary, praxis-oriented approach to examining the structures, policies, and practices that produce racial and gender inequality in American society.

Goal: Develop Curricular and Cocurricular Initiatives That Support the Imperative of Confronting Racism and Educating for Justice

Actions

Increase support for the work of the special assistant to the provost for faculty development to enhance initiatives focused on anti-racist pedagogy and practice.

The Office of the Chief Diversity Officer will offer Teaching Race Across the Curriculum Grants to assist the faculty’s efforts to develop ways to integrate questions of race, racism, inequality, and justice into their introductory courses as well as in Values Seminar and Interdisciplinary Capstone Core courses.

The deans of all of the schools will work with their faculty members to ensure that courses include content-appropriate discussions or treatment of issues of racism, inequality, and diversity as often and as richly as possible.

Use faculty resources to create a library of print, audio, and audiovisual resources on racism, race, and diversity. This library will make it possible for faculty to use these resources as asynchronous elements to achieve the goal of providing all first-year students with the course that contains a strong introduction to anti-racism called for in the University’s Diversity Action Plan during the 2020–2021 academic year, and to embed discussion of issues associated with diversity, inclusion, and racism in their existing courses.

Strengthen and expand our Higher Education Opportunity Program (HEOP), as well as our Collegiate Science and Technology Entry Program (CSTEP).

The University will increase its support of and work to raise the visibility of the Department of African and African American Studies, as well as the Bronx African American History Project.

The University will co-sponsor and significantly increase its support of the Law School’s Center on Race, Law and Justice in order to convene scholars across the University working on issues of racial justice. The center aims to be a hub of scholarship on issues relating to race that strengthens the University internally and helps to build its reputation in the wider community.

Goal: Create a More Welcoming and Affirming Campus

Actions

The University has made provision in the plans for the new campus center at Rose Hill for the creation of a much-needed dedicated Multicultural Center. A similar center will be established on the Lincoln Center campus.

Supplement the goal of supporting diversity in all University policies with the goal of confronting racism in all we do.

Institute annual, mandatory anti-racism training for all faculty, administrators, staff, and students—including the president’s cabinet and the Board of Trustees.

The Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Council, which collects suggestions and feedback from all constituencies at Fordham, shall make twice-annual recommendations to the president on necessary actions and policies.

Building on the work of the Diversity Leadership Team, led by Rafael Zapata (chief diversity officer), Kay Turner (vice president for human resources) and Juan Carlos Matos (assistant vice president for student affairs for diversity and inclusion), redouble our efforts to create and sustain a campus culture that supports and cherishes our students, faculty, and staff of color.

Drawing from input we have received from our students, the counseling office, the Office of the Chief Diversity Officer, and the Office of Multicultural Affairs will continue to refine the following offerings: Black Healing and Empowerment Circle, Ally Solidarity and Support Space, Non-Black Students of Color Support Group, and Navigating Police Brutality and Racial Trauma Workshop.

Establish a peer mentoring program for students of color.

As was the case this year, the University will henceforth observe Juneteenth as a paid University holiday.

Goal: Build Lasting Partnerships With Our Neighbors

Actions

Launch the first Bronx Youth Summit on the Rose Hill campus during calendar year 2021, convening high school students from across the borough to study and actively address issues affecting their communities.

We will strive to become the primary sponsor and host of the annual Bronx Book Festival, as well as co-sponsor events with the organization throughout the academic year.

Led by the finance division and the Office of Government Relations and Urban Affairs, we will develop a plan to increase our university-wide contracting and purchasing with and from minority- and women-owned business enterprises (MWBEs), with a particular focus on those in the Bronx and Manhattan.

We will launch the Annual Fordham University Arts, Community, and Social Justice Banquet to honor local artists, youth, community organizations, as well as Fordham students, faculty, and staff whose work, service, teaching, and scholarship embody lives dedicated to justice for others.

Through the Fordham Foundry and Social Innovation Collaboratory, we will create a consulting service/office (staffed by undergraduate and graduate students from the Gabelli School of Business) to assist minority-owned neighborhood businesses in applying for funding, including loans from the Small Business Administration, and to help them draw up business plans that will enable them to achieve greater stability and success in the future.

Building on the work of the Center for Community Engaged Learning (CCEL), double or triple CCEL’s investment of time, energy, and attention in sustainable partnerships in areas around the Rose Hill and Lincoln Center campuses.

Use the expertise and services of the Graduate School of Social Service, the Graduate School of Education, the School of Law, and the Graduate School of Religion and Religious Education to create clinics or outreach to serve the members of our Bronx and Manhattan neighborhoods.

Goal: Amplify our Voice in Educating for Justice Beyond the Campus

Actions

Create an ongoing WFUV series on The Black Experience in America that will be aired on the station, ensuring that conversations on racism, race, and the richness of Black culture are shared broadly with the WFUV audience.

Seek a partnership with the recently established Museum of Civil Rights that will enable us to broaden the University’s involvement in the study of the Black experience in America.

Build collaborative relationships with the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, PEN America, and other prominent academic and cultural institutions in New York City.

Implementation

The divisions and departments responsible for the various initiatives outlined above will develop implementation plans. The Board of Trustees and the cabinet will be deeply involved in the process, reviewing those plans and follow-up reports with an eye to effectiveness and sustainability.

Concluding Reflections

To those of you who have shared painful memories via email and on social media, let me say I am deeply grateful for your forthrightness, something from which I learned more than I can say about the way in which systemic, structural racism inflicts pain on those who suffer from its power. You have my solemn word that we will do better.

I invite the whole Fordham community to see this inflection moment in our nation’s history and in Fordham’s history as an opportunity to work for the creation of a more just world.

Sincerely,

Joseph M. McShane, S.J.

It is with a heavy and (let me be honest here) angry heart that I write to you today. I suspect that your hearts are also angry and heavy with sorrow. And how could we not be angry, dismayed and sorrowful at this moment? In the course of the past few painful months, we have witnessed the savage and senseless killings of George Floyd in Minneapolis, and Ahmaud Arbery in Brunswick, as well as many other instances of violence—lethal and not—against people of color in the United States. That is not to mention the longstanding economic violence against people of color and their communities in this country, and the widespread, systemic and shameful disregard for the value of their lives in the eyes of others. (We have seen this systemic disregard quite clearly during the COVID-19 pandemic: amid the suffering across the country, and especially in the Bronx, communities of color were and are more vulnerable and more harshly affected than are white communities.)

I do not think I have to convince any of you that these acts and this state of affairs are sinful and immoral, and that they go against everything that a Jesuit university stands for. I do, however, think that some of our fellow citizens need to be reminded that they are happening every day in our very midst—in our own communities. Although we don’t all like to admit it, people of color—and let’s be frank, especially Black people—live lives of relentlessly hostile scrutiny, and they have been telling us so since the ink on the Thirteenth Amendment was barely dry. Four years ago, when we were confronted with a sadly similar shameful moment, former President Obama wrote that, “When incidents like this occur, there’s a big chunk of our fellow citizenry that feels as if because of the color of their ‎skin, they are not being treated the same. And that hurts. And that should trouble all of us. This is not just a black issue. It’s not just a Hispanic issue. This is an American issue that we should all care about. All fair-minded people should be concerned.” And he was and is right. The problems that we must confront belong to all of us. Therefore, we need to own up to them. We have to own them. All of us. Their solutions also need to be owned by everyone, but especially by our leaders and those in positions of authority and influence.

Yesterday, in the immediate aftermath of George Floyd’s death former President Obama once again issued a statement that said, in part, “…we have to remember that for millions of Americans, being treated differently on account of race is tragically, painfully, maddeningly ‘normal’ — whether it’s while dealing with the health care system, or interacting with the criminal justice system, or jogging down the street, or just watching birds in a park.”

As you might imagine, I found myself returning to President Obama’s haunting reflections over and over again in the course of the past few days. And I was made uneasy by them—in the best possible sense of that word. For you see, I heard in them the unmistakable ring of truth. And that truth pierced me to the heart. Therefore, I asked myself how the Fordham family can and should respond to the challenges that the events of past week have presented to us. Of course, as a community of faith, we will pray for the repose of the souls of George Floyd and Ahmaud Arbery. We will also pray for their families as they wrestle with the losses they have suffered in and through the deaths of those whom they loved so dearly. That goes without saying, and I ask you to join me in those fervent prayers.

But, let’s be honest. That is not enough. We must do more. We are a university community. Therefore, we must also recommit ourselves to the work that is proper to us as an academic community. A university’s greatest strength is its intellectual capital—the research, teaching, and learning that occurs both in and outside of the classroom. It is our central mission, and the one on which we expend the great majority of our budget and most of our energy—intellectual and moral. Tapping into these strengths and assets, we must recommit ourselves to the work of educating for justice and to doing all we can to figure out how our beloved nation, to paraphrase President Abraham Lincoln, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all are created equal, has allowed itself to stray from the ideals (and the promises those ideals hold out to all) upon which it was founded.

We are not, however, merely a university community. We are a Jesuit university community. And what does that mean for us and the work we must undertake? As I have told you before, I believe that the issues that divide and challenge our nation are moral issues. Therefore, I believe that precisely because we are a Jesuit institution, we have a special responsibility to reflect on the events of the past week and on the challenges that they have created for our nation in particularly moral terms. What do I mean? Just this: We can remind our students (and ourselves) that ‎the situation in which the nation now finds itself is one that requires us to engage in an honest examination of conscience and consciousness so that we can be what God wants us to be. If we are willing to engage in this examination of consciousness, we will be able to take the first step toward the conversion of heart that will free us from the bondage of anger, frustration, and suspicion that holds us back.

I will not lie to you. The work of conversion is hard. And frequently it takes time. A long time. But I assure you that it is worth the exertion that it requires. The death of innocents calls us to it. The Gospel that has always stood at the center of our life and mission calls us to it. Therefore, let us all look into our hearts and see what justice would look like for the communities of color that are languishing and being crushed under the weight of racism in our country. Let us take to heart the loving invitation contained in the message issued on Friday by the United States Catholic Conference: “Encounter the people who historically have been disenfranchised [and]continue to experience sadness and pain and more authentically accompany them, listen to their stories, and learn from them, finding substantive ways to enact systemic change. Such encounters will start to bring about the needed transformation of our understanding of true life, charity, and justice in the United States.”

As I said, the work of conversion is hard, but if we commit ourselves to its rigors, we will be able to redeem the promises of our founding ideals for all of our citizens, who are (in the eyes of God) our brothers and sisters. Our beloved brothers and sisters.

You are in my thoughts and prayers today and every day.

Sincerely,

Joseph M. McShane, S.J.