“Trying to address race and racism in the curriculum was something that I and a lot of faculty members were trying to do on our own, and grant funding provided by Fordham helped us to support each other in doing this work,” said assistant professor Elizabeth Leisy Stosich, Ed.D., who co-hosted the retreat. 

The retreat was specifically designed for members of GSE’s division of Educational Leadership, Administration, and Policy. It was the most recent part of a two-year-long journey initiated by Stosich and her colleague Elizabeth Gil, Ph.D. The two educators sought to bring equity and anti-racism to their own division at Fordham—a program that prepares educators for leadership responsibilities and positions.   

A Collaborative Effort with Prestigious Educational Leaders

During the 2021-2022 school year—the first year of grant funding—five ELAP faculty members worked together to center equity and anti-racism in five of their program’s graduate courses. With this year’s funding, they wanted to include students and alumni—educators themselves who possess unique perspectives in leading equity and anti-racism work. 

“The most rewarding aspect of coming together was working in community with one another to do deep and meaningful work that is ongoing,” said Gil. “Our faculty’s willingness to share their syllabi and receive feedback was also key for us to delve into strengthening our courses and programs. People’s willingness to share their instructional plans can sometimes be a challenge, but these instructors were willing to be vulnerable in order to help us all improve in our practice.”

The all-day retreat was attended by 11 members of the ELAP program, including former New York City Schools Chancellor Meisha Ross Porter, who recently graduated from Fordham with her Ed.D. and now serves as an adjunct professor at GSE. Together, they analyzed five course syllabi in their program. 

‘A Major Impact on Our Curriculum’ 

First, they looked at the syllabi’s mission statements and adjusted words to make them more powerful and actionable, said doctoral student Lizzette Ruiz-Giovinazzi. Next, they analyzed core assignments and pointed out things that the professors had missed, she said. Who was the author? Did they have a “white-centric” mindset on what leadership should look like? Did the syllabus include resources written by diverse authors who could provide a different perspective?

“I’ve always thought that you can’t criticize the instructor. At the end of a course, you often fill out these surveys that feel very surface-level … But this retreat was so open and interactive. It was a safe environment for us to all talk, and it gave us a voice,” Ruiz-Giovinazzi said. “It created a sense that feedback does matter.” 

The retreat was partially facilitated by Edward Fergus, Ph.D., an expert on leading for equity and anti-racism who works extensively with schools and districts. Fergus, who served as the keynote speaker at the 2020 Barbara L. Jackson, Ed.D. Lecture, helped the team to create conditions where they felt comfortable about doing this important, yet sensitive work, and gave them guidance on how to revise their courses and the overall ELAP program. The ELAP faculty plan on sending their revised syllabi to Fergus, who will provide additional feedback for revisions. Then they will incorporate their revamped syllabi in their actual classes as early as this fall, said Stosich. 

“In total, we will have revised 10 of our courses to center equity and anti-racism. This will have a major impact on our curriculum,” said Stosich. 

Lyntonia Gold, a second-year doctoral student in the ELAP program, said that the decision to include current students and graduates from all programs—including those who studied online and at the Rose Hill campus—allowed a broader range of feedback given to faculty. 

“Including a diverse set of stakeholders from various areas of an organization and gathering a variety of perspectives is essential to building a program that values equity and anti-racist practices at its core,” said Gold, who is also an executive director in strategic partnerships for advancing collective equity in the New York City Department of Education’s Office of Diversity, Equity, Belonging and Inclusion. 

The retreat may have long-lasting impacts beyond Fordham. Ruiz-Giovinazzi, a Bronx-born Puerto Rican who serves as the assistant superintendent of curriculum and instruction at Nyack Union Free School District, said that she wants to encourage her district’s teachers to share their syllabi with each other and provide constructive feedback, too. The retreat was also influential in a more emotional way.  

“I find it very hopeful that the professors took the time to do this work. I was in awe that these conversations were even happening, and I was emotional while driving to the retreat. I was nervous about taking the day off because I’m new in this school district,” said Ruiz-Giovinazzi, who started her position last spring. “But my superintendent was like, ‘This is important work. Go ahead.’ … All of this makes me feel a sense of hope for where education is going.”

Anne Fernald, Ph.D., professor of English and special adviser to the provost for faculty development, said one of her hopes for the retreat was to provide participants with inspiration and time to reflect on lessons of equity and inclusion gleaned during the pandemic and how technology and pedagogy can be used to advance those goals.

“Much of what we learned about racial justice and teaching online in the past two years was learned in crisis,” she said. “This retreat was designed to give us the chance to deepen those lessons while getting to know colleagues—both other teachers and some of the many support staff here at Fordham.”

Professors gathered in the mornings to workshop key concepts into their syllabi, including racial justice and anti-racism work. For example, Grace Shen, Ph.D., associate professor of history, led a worksop on “decolonizing the syllabus.” She discussed a class that was developed with funds from a Teaching Race Across the Curriculum grant, which supports ways that professors can integrate questions of race into their curricula. Shen, an expert in late imperial and modern China, showed how she incorporated those questions into her syllabus for the class.

“This way, everyone in the room heard from one colleague in a lot of detail of how she did it, so they can go back to their department and say ‘I have notes on how history did it, and here’s where I think history’s experience matters to our discipline,” said Fernald.

As the conversations evolved, so too did a shared understanding of what anti-racist teaching is and could evolve to be. The session was very hands-on, she said, with professors teasing out a common language for anti-racist teaching.

“In many cases, this is where the discussion starts,” Fernald said of the morning sessions.

Steve D’Agustino, Ph.D., director of online learning, teamed with Fernald during the pandemic to reconceptualize teaching when everyone in the community was separated. Those lessons and benefits from online instruction have now carried over to in-person teaching. For example, he noted that the pandemic showed that students with disabilities who might not be able to attend class in person could fully participate online.

“There are people who are initially drawn to online learning as a form of assistive technology,” said D’Agustino,

A truly inclusive classroom would ensure that their unique perspective would contribute to the course, as well as provide much-needed access to learning, he said.

“During the pandemic, we all learned so much about teaching in mediated ways, teaching at a distance, perhaps even flipping my classroom,” he said, going on to explain the flipped classroom concept:

“In a traditional classroom, students do classwork in class and homework at home. In a flipped classroom, I may create learning activities for the students that they interact with at home, like a recorded lecture, and then in class they solve problems together.”

Groupwork and Beyond

During the four-day retreat, Fordham specialists held workshops that examined group dynamics. Sarah Gambito, professor of creative writing, held a workshop on creating community, and Jane Bolgatz, Ph.D., associate dean for academic affairs, looked specifically at the design and dynamics of group work.

Bolgatz discouraged starting large group work right away. She noted that most students come into the classroom competitive, so before starting out with larger groups, she advised keeping it simple by setting students up in pairs, then threes, and later fours.

“They got themselves into Fordham for goodness sake. They’re used to being competitive, so you’re going to have to cultivate their cooperative muscles,” she said.

For that reason, Bolgatz also expressed concern about the debate format, where students argue a particular point of view, rather than working together to understand why a particular group holds a particular view. She cited an earlier refection by Christie-Belle Garcia, Ph.D., former assistant dean for student support and success, which discouraged pitting students against each other via competitive situations.

“If we are caring for our students and we are putting them in a win-lose situation instead of a win-win situation, then we’re going to have people losing,” she recalls Garcia saying. “And sometimes that’s fine. That’s true in life. But I just would temper that with our cooperative time, where we’re all going to be better at this task because we’re all getting better together,” she said.

Bolgatz also talked about aspects of exclusivity inherent in debate that professors need to be cognizant of.

“Think about what a debate may be for a learner for whom English is not their first language. They’re just as smart as everybody else, but they just can’t think about the answer as fast if they’re still understanding the question,” she said.

Questioning for the Advanced Learners

Jon Craven, Ph.D., associate professor of education, said he develops a syllabus by asking students what they want to learn and what questions they want to be answered. It’s a method he reserves for graduate students.

“We know how adults learn and if they don’t have a stake in the purpose for learning, they will go through the hoops of completing the components of the syllabus without learning much,” he said. “The construct you hold in your head on what teaching is—and who you are teaching— impacts what you do in the classroom.”

Learning Commons at LITE

Each day of the retreat closed with the professors convening in the Walsh Family Library’s new LITE Center. For that week, the modular spaces at LITE, which stands for Learning & Innovative Technology Environment, acted as a one-stop-shop for the duration of the retreat and provided professors with resources to work on their new syllabi, including consultants from IT, the Center for Community Engaged Learning, Blackboard, Educational Technology and Digital Scholarship, Fordham Libraries, and Student Support.

“I can come here and talk to someone from IT, get access to a 3D scanner, or make a podcast. Here, I can sit with an expert. And the leadership here seem very committed to making this as much a one-stop-shop for faculty as possible,” said D’Agustino. “The truth is we’re in a process of hybridization; no one is just in the digital space anymore, and no one is just in the physical space.”

Here, in a poorly lit first-floor food court on Mott Street, members and guests of the Asian American and Pacific Islander Alumni at Fordham Affinity Chapter turn their heads, suddenly, when the ruckus rambles through the door. Chinatown’s lions have arrived to let the Fordham Rams know about the Year of the Tiger.

Across two large tables, this sprawling, multigenerational group is united by some shared heritage and a lot of shared history: Their families came from China, Korea, and Burma, and now they’ve brought their own spouses and children to dine over char siu bao, congee, rice noodles with dried shrimp, sesame balls with red bean paste, fry bread, and kimchi. Tea tops the table all over: some steaming, some iced with boba bubbles.

Everyone here has some connection to Fordham University. Sure, the school was founded in 1841 primarily for Irish, Catholic immigrants by an Irish immigrant who became the first archbishop of New York, but today it’s everybody. “Is it not delightful,” Confucius asked more than two millennia ago, “to have friends coming from distant quarters?” Some are alumni, some are current students; one man, a Navy lifer, is here just because his two kids went to Fordham and he’s proud about it.

The group formed just a year ago, but that’s not surprising: The pandemic period has been particularly turbulent for Asian Americans, with sporadic incidents of anti-Asian aggression growing more and more frequent. The FBI estimates a 73% increase in such events across the country in 2020, with many of them occurring in New York City. This has led to waves of protest and acts of solidarity amid concerns about how anti-Asian bias is affecting young people in particular.

“I got involved last year,” says Mark Son, a 2010 Fordham Law graduate and one of three co-leaders of the group, which was founded by the Hon. Christopher P. Lee, FCRH ’71, LAW ’79. “I was worried about the anti-Asian-American hate crime. I think it was very important to do this sort of work, trying to keep a voice present in the conversation.”

Son, a principal law clerk with the New York State Supreme Court in the Bronx, views the community and its foundation as a building block to social justice, growth, and learning. “Students had expressed concern,” he adds, “and we wanted alumni to create a network. Even within the Asian American community, we have different subsets: Chinese, Koreans—Kyaw,” he points to Fordham senior Kyaw Hein, eating pork dumplings and listening in on the conversation—“is from Burma. We have a guy from Tonga. So it’s a learning experience for us, as well.”

Edwin Wong, another co-leader of the group, notes how much things have changed from the time he earned an M.B.A. at Fordham’s Gabelli School of Business. “In 2004, it was getting there,” he says of the University’s growing Asian American population, “and now we’ve got lots of Koreans, Chinese, Filipinos, and South Asians—a distribution list of more than a thousand people. Before, people took it for granted, but now people are getting engaged with the community.”

While at Fordham, Wong says he started what he calls the Fordham Asian Business Network for students and alumni eager to draw on the collective strength of a growing community in a shrinking world. “You need a network, so I started that,” he says, noting that he and many of the alumni in the group would love to see Fordham launch an Asian American studies program that would grow to become as prominent as the University’s departments of African and African American and Latin American and Latino studies, which have their roots in the late 1960s. (This work is already underway: With support from two University grants—an Arts & Sciences Deans’ Challenge Grant and a Teaching Race Across the Curriculum Grant from the chief diversity officer—a group of 10 Fordham professors is developing a curriculum for a minor in Asian American studies.) Son says that he looks forward to seeing “a community that’s more welcoming,” with more Asian Americans teaching as professors and in leadership positions.

With their small children bedecked in maroon college apparel, some toddling if they’re able to walk at all, the alumni say they plan to return to the neighborhood in just a week, when the largest new year celebrations will kick off. “My hope is that in the future,” says Wong, “we could have a Fordham group march in the larger Manhattan Lunar New Year parade, the same way that Fordham participates in the annual St. Patrick’s Day Parade.”

After lunch, they all move through streets chockablock with onlookers and revelers wearing masks, playing games, throwing small fireworks against the sidewalk, and shooting off confetti poppers. The group rambles through the narrow lanes, lingering on Bayard Street, home to many iconic businesses such as the Mei Lai Wah Bakery and the Chinatown Ice Cream Factory. At the Chinese Consolidated Benevolent Association, President Justin Yu welcomes the group, offering them—you guessed it—more food. They talk about both Fordham and their community’s future in a changing world for Asian Americans while nibbling on sweet sponge cake.

It’s not hard to see, as parents unwrap snacks for their littlest, who they have in mind. After all, it’s a new year.

Learn more about the Asian American and Pacific Islander Alumni at Fordham Affinity Chapter on the group’s web page and its Facebook and Instagram accounts.

Board of Trustees

Fordham’s Diversity Fund has received $329,000 in gifts to date.

University Leadership

In addition to attracting accomplished and talented leaders, the University is committed to ensuring that the senior leadership of the University is diverse and representative of the city we serve. This year Fordham brought on board several experienced and gifted senior leaders: Tyler Stovall, Ph.D., as dean of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences; José Luis Alvarado, Ph.D., as dean of the Graduate School of Education; Anand Padmanabhan as vice president for Information Technology and CIO; Jenifer Campbell as dean of Students at Lincoln Center (a promotion from director of Residential Life at that campus); and Tracyann Williams, Ph.D., as the assistant dean for Student Success at Fordham College at Lincoln Center.

Office of the Chief Diversity Officer

Teaching Race Across the Curriculum

The Office of the Chief Diversity Officer (OCDO) launched its inaugural Teaching Race Across the Curriculum (TRAC) Grant Program, designed to aid academic departments in their efforts to thoughtfully and intentionally integrate questions of race into their curricula, both in core offerings and within a major or minor, and support excellence in the teaching of topics related to race in the curriculum.

The OCDO also added new resources to its diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) pages:

• Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion at Fordham
• Anti-Asian Racial Violence Resources
• Teaching Race Across the Curriculum (TRAC) Grant Funding

Academic Affairs

On May 6 and 7, the Department of English held a Teaching Racial Justice Symposium, bringing together English teachers and writing tutors who are committed to supporting the department’s Teaching Racial Justice Initiative, setting goals for the upcoming academic year, and learning from some of the leading scholars of antiracist pedagogy. The two half-day events, Visioning an Antiracist Writing Program and Visioning an Antiracist Writing Center, featured the panels “Directions in Antiracist Writing Pedagogy & Program Design” and “Directions in Antiracist Writing Center Work.” The symposium was one of the signature initiatives from this year’s Teaching Race Across the Curriculum (TRAC) grant program.

The Graduate School of Education (GSE), with the OCDO, co-sponsored “We’re Speaking: Giving Voice to Empirical Research on Anti-Racism and Social Justice,” a conference
highlighting the research of GSE students, on April 21. Nearly 100 students, faculty and staff attended.

Arts and Sciences

The Conference of Arts and Sciences Deans (CASD) offered capacity-building workshops on “Antiracism as Everyday Practice” to department chairs, program directors, and associate chairs, in partnership with the education and training organization ArtEquity this spring.

Fordham School of Law News

• PRIDE: Fordham Law OUTLaws Are a Catalyst for Inclusion
• Juneteenth Event Explores Race and History Through a Family Lens
• The Fordham Law Community Reflects on Pride’s Past, Present, and Future

Undergraduate Enrollment

The Office of Undergraduate Admission has been committed to the goals of increasing diversity, equity and inclusion in our efforts to recruit, admit and yield the Class of 2025. As of June 30, more than 43% of the class identify as domestic students of color and an additional 7% are international. The largest percentage increases were among Black and multiracial students. In order of percentage increases they are:

• Increased representation in the incoming class of students who identify as Black by 181% to 216 students.
• Increased representation in the incoming class of students who have more than one racial or ethnic identity by 84% to 136.
• Increased representation in the incoming class of students who identify as Hispanic/Latinx by 62% to 551 students.
• Increased representation in the incoming class of students who identify as Asian by 31% to 432.

The Class of 2025 represents a 39% increase in students from New York City, and a 79% increase of students from The Bronx over last year’s incoming class. Overall, we believe the test-optional policy played a major part in enrolling the largest, most diverse, and most accomplished entering class in the University’s history, as did our close collaboration with the DEI Council.

Our efforts included a number of initiatives at every stage of the admission process including most notably:

• Developed and implemented 7 new programs for students of color throughout the college application cycle including: 2 sessions for applicants in the fall (introduction to Fordham, its community and the application process) as well as sessions for admitted students this spring (3 on academics and 2 on Student Life). Ninety-five students enrolled who attended these programs.
• Granted eligibility to National African American Recognition Program (NAARP) Scholars as candidates for our National Recognition Program Scholarship, in addition to our existing consideration of National Hispanic Recognition Program Scholars. This year we have awarded the scholarship to 129 NAARP Scholars and 256 NHRP Scholars.” We enrolled 15 NAARP scholars with full-tuition awards. 1 additional NAARP student enrolled as a Dean’s scholar and 1 student is joining the class as a Cunniffe Presidential Scholar.  We have also enrolled 40 NHRP students with full-tuition awards.
• Executed outreach to students of color with a welcome email from Dr. Anthony Carter, member of Fordham’s Board of Trustees.

Student Affairs

Divisional Staff Training: Student Affairs requires all full-time and part-time staff to participate in a Divisional Training Day each semester. The topics for the training days vary, but are focused on issues related to our students and how staff in the Division of Student Affairs can best serve students. Diversity and inclusion have been the main topics for numerous mandatory Divisional Training Days with significant focus during the 2020–2021 academic year on anti-racism, including the spring 2021 Jesuit Mission and Commitment to Anti-Racism training.

Diversity Graduation Celebrations: In collaboration with the President’s Office, the Office of the Chief Diversity Officer, and Senior Week committees at Rose Hill and Lincoln Center, the Office of Multicultural Affairs formalized four identity-based graduation celebrations for Asian, Black, Latinx, and LGBTQ seniors. Spring 2021 marked the first year these programs were offered to the undergraduate student population in this way. While there had been some similar events for Black and LGBTQ students during spring 2019, this iteration involved student committees for each graduation celebration.

Human Resources Management (HR)

HR prepared an Affirmative Action Plan (AAP) for Women and Minorities, which sets up flexible goals to mitigate underutilization of these populations to reflect the gender, race, and ethnic profile of the labor pools from which Fordham recruits and selects.

HR revised its New Hire Orientation Seminar, which now includes a video greeting from Father McShane; a video greeting from Rafael Zapata, Fordham’s chief diversity officer; and a video greeting from Kareem Peat, Fordham’s Title IX coordinator, as well as information on the University’s DEI initiatives.

HR instituted Monthly Diversity and Inclusion E-News, which covered:

The April 29 event was the deans’ second forum for alumni on their commitment to furthering the University’s action plan for addressing racism and educating for justice. Fordham announced the plan in June 2020 after nationwide protests against police brutality and racial injustice prompted members of the Fordham community to describe their own experiences of discrimination on campus.

“We’re asking hard questions, addressing proposals that have come forward, and moving forward indeed with hope and confidence into a future … that is marked by greater inclusivity, greater diversity, and greater commitment shared to building a much more just world as we educate for justice and seek to eradicate racism,” said Joseph M. McShane, S.J., president of Fordham, in opening remarks.

Father McShane and the four deans were joined by moderator Valerie Irick Rainford, FCRH ’86, a Fordham trustee who is spearheading anti-racism training efforts within the University, and Rafael Zapata, Fordham’s chief diversity officer.

The panelists spoke of changes underway in the curriculum, recruitment of faculty and students, new programs, and other efforts to embed anti-racism in the University and effect permanent change.

“For students to come here from different backgrounds, it is vitally important that they feel that this institution represents them, that they do not feel like … they are here on sort of sufferance, that they feel that their communities are a part and parcel of what makes Fordham tick, what makes Fordham an excellent place,” said Tyler Stovall, Ph.D., dean of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences.

Faculty Diversity, Community Connections

Stovall emphasized the importance of forging links between the University and the diverse, vibrant communities surrounding the Rose Hill and Lincoln Center campuses. Zapata noted current efforts like a collaboration with the Bronx Book Festival and a speaker series focused on Bronx writers facilitated by faculty. “We are an institution of this wonderful borough, and I think that’s something we need to talk about a little bit more,” he said.

In efforts to diversify the faculty, Eva Badowska, Ph.D., dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences and associate vice president for arts and sciences, said 50% of the arts and sciences faculty members recruited to begin this academic year are people of color. In addition, Fordham announced the creation of the Margaret Peil Distinguished Chair in African and African American Studies and is currently recruiting for a newly created postdoctoral fellowship in critical race studies in the sociology and anthropology department, as well as a new position in the English department—a rhetoric specialist—to support the faculty’s work on revising the composition program toward anti-racist learning objectives and pedagogy.

Arts and Sciences also announced the creation of a new affiliate program in African and African American studies to elevate that department’s visibility and foster an interdisciplinary approach to anti-racism, Badowska said. Fifteen faculty members across departments have committed to joining the initiative.

On the point of hiring diverse faculty, Rainford noted that “once you hire those individuals, I think it’s also about inclusion and access.”

Stovall said a newly formed group of Fordham faculty members of color would be meeting soon to discuss diversity among faculty and at the University generally. “I think these leaders are going to have an awful lot to say, and it’s going to be up to us to listen,” he said.

He pointed out the importance of integration, “one of the terms we tend not to talk about.”

“Ultimately, what we are all about in this endeavor is producing an integrated educational experience and ultimately an integrated society,” he said. “Study after study has shown, in despite of people’s fears of integration, that actually integrated education benefits not just students of color but all students, and makes them stronger students.”

“This is a major pathway towards the ultimate goal of Fordham University,” he said.

Zapata said his office is offering a grant program titled Teaching Race Across the Curriculum to help academic departments integrate questions of race within their courses, particularly those that all students take.

“Students want to see themselves in the people that teach them, that they encounter throughout [the University], but they also want to see themselves in the curriculum. They’ve talked a lot about that,” he said.

Expanding Scholarship and Internship Opportunities

Laura Auricchio, Ph.D., dean of Fordham College at Lincoln Center, pointed to the Office of Undergraduate Admission’s “above-and-beyond” efforts to increase diversity among incoming students. Changes this year include an effort “to appreciate and value a wider range of student experiences in the admissions process,” she said, as well as new events for prospective students of color who would be part of the fall 2021 entering class.

Also important, Auricchio said, is the recently created Trustee Diversity Scholarship Fund, which grew out of a scholarship fund that Rainford founded. “Before we could even announce it, we were starting to get donations,” Rainford said.

A new Cultural Engagement Internships program, funded by Fordham College at Lincoln Center and Fordham College at Rose Hill, has created paid internships that place students with New York nonprofits and cultural organizations that mostly serve communities of color or advance the work of anti-racism. “This opens up the internship opportunities to students who might not otherwise be able to afford” to take unpaid internships, Auricchio said.

And diversity in the yearlong Matteo Ricci Seminar for high-achieving students on both campuses has grown by opening it up to all students who want to apply, rather than relying on a select pool of students recommended by faculty, she said; she also cited the importance of bringing on Assistant Dean Mica McKnight, a woman of color, as co-leader for the Fordham College at Lincoln Center program.

Supporting Students

In other efforts on the undergraduate level, Maura Mast, Ph.D., dean of Fordham College at Rose Hill, said administrators on both campuses are developing a program to support first-generation students—61% of whom are students of color—and their families as the students navigate college life. At Rose Hill, the college is expanding access to undergraduate research opportunities by developing a one-credit course on the ins and outs of conducting research, such as developing a proposal and finding a mentor, Mast said.

“It’s … so important that we intentionally support students as they are and who they are, when they get to Fordham and when they’re at Fordham—that we are transparent and effective in this work,” she said.

In a culmination of longstanding efforts to increase diversity in the college’s Honors Program, 60% of students offered admission this year are either BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, or people of color) or first-generation students, Mast said.

The University has also secured a planning grant from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute to join a national learning community aimed at building capacity for developing inclusive, equitable, anti-racist approaches to STEM education—in first-year “gateway” courses, in particular—to support students who are underrepresented in these fields, she said.

The panelists took questions, including one about why the University doesn’t have an Asian American studies program with a major and minor offered. Badowska said she had met with members of the faculty—which would have to propose any new program, according to University statutes—about surveying the existing classes and resources to see what might be offered immediately while they work on developing a program.

“It is the curriculum that reveals who we are, and it is our academic programs that say we’re an anti-racist university or we are not an anti-racist university,” she said. “So that’s one of the reasons why an Asian American studies program is so critical for us to develop at this moment.”

Eradicating Racism

In response to another question—“Do you really believe that racism can be eradicated at Fordham?”—Rainford spoke of a long-term effort.

“There are some that still believe that racism doesn’t exist,” said Rainford, who is Black. “But the fact of the matter is, it’s in the fabric of everything in the country.”

“It will take time and effort, and we will not eradicate racism in our lifetime, but we certainly can help advance racial equity,” such as through the efforts the deans described, she said.

Zapata responded, “It’s going to take courage, the courage to … listen to the experiences of people who don’t always feel they have a chance to voice their experiences.”

Stovall said, “We currently live in a world where scientists are literally talking about creating human immortality in less than a century. So in that kind of world, I think all sorts of things are possible, including eradicating racism.”

Hurdles to Surmount

Asked about obstacles the University faces, Mast mentioned funding—for staffing, on-campus housing, and financial aid, for instance.

Badowska spoke of the challenges that would be inherent in changing the University’s culture to a point where everyone in the arts and sciences community would possess the five competencies that the deans have proposed:

• Knowledge about racism, white privilege, and related topics;
• Self-knowledge and a commitment to self-work and continuous learning in these areas;
• Commitment to disrupting microaggressions and racist dynamics in the classroom, the workplace, and beyond;
• Commitment to systemic change through examining policies and practices to make sure they support racial equity; and
• Reimagined community and allyship, or a capacity to form equitable partnerships and alliances across racial lines.

“We know that we have a long road before we can say that everyone has these five capacities, but we’ve identified them,” she said.

The event drew 64 attendees, nearly all of whom stayed nearly a half-hour beyond the event’s one-hour allotted time.

“That, I think, shows the great hunger and thirst that the people of Fordham have for this great work that we’re about together,” Father McShane said. “One of the things we have to remind ourselves is that this is a beginning, and that’s an important observation and an important thing for us to own. We have a long journey ahead of us, but we are up for it and will keep at it.”

“Racism, sexism, and other ‘isms’ are not simply irrational prejudices, but long-leveraged, strategic mechanisms for exploitation that have benefited some at the expense of others,” he said.

Hamilton, the Henry Cohen Professor of Economics and Urban Policy and founding director of the Institute on Race and Political Economy at The New School, noted that in a just world, one’s race, gender, or ethnicity “would have no transactional value as it relates to material outcomes.” The pandemic made it abundantly clear that is not the case.

“We should recognize that the biggest pre-existing condition of them all is wealth itself,” he said.

Hamilton’s lecture, “A Moral Responsibility for Economists: Anti-Racist Policy Regimes that Neuter White Supremacy and Establish Economic Security for All,” was the second distinguished economics lecture, which was launched last year by the economics department’s climate committee as a way to enhance diversity and inclusion.

‘Dysfunctional Concentration of Wealth and Power’

Hamilton began by pointing out that even before the pandemic, the United States was afflicted by an “obscene, undemocratic, dysfunctional concentration of wealth and power.” Currently, the top .1% of earners in this country—defined as those earning $1.5 million a year—own as much of the nation’s wealth as the bottom 90 percent of earners. The bottom 50 percent of earners own 1% of the nation’s wealth, he said.

This has affected Black people and other people of color disproportionately, as they’ve been denied economic opportunity through official policies such as redlining in the 1950s and events such as the Tulsa Race Massacre in 1921. But the narrative of why Black Americans have been unable to attain wealth has not reflected this history, he said.

The Narrative is Wrong

“Much of the framing around the racial wealth gap, including the use of alternative financial service products, focuses on poor financial choices and decision-making on the part of largely Black, Latino, and poor borrowers. The framing is often tied to and derived from a culture of poverty thesis, in which Blacks are presumed to have a low value for and desire for education,” he said.

“The framing is wrong; the directional emphasis is wrong.”

The idea that education alone is the path to prosperity is itself belied by what Hamilton called the “property rights,” which are the advantages that whites have been granted through history by the government.

Disparities in Education and Health

Black college students today are saddled with an average of $53,000 in debt, while white students graduate with an average debt of $33,000. Black college graduates are actually overrepresented in graduate education, relative to their share in the population, he said, but this is not enough. On average, a Black family with a head of the household who dropped out of college still has less wealth than a white family where the head dropped out of high school, he said.

“The fact that a Black expectant mother with a college degree has a greater likelihood of an infant death than a white expectant mother who dropped out of high school, and a Black man with a college degree is three times more likely to die from a stroke than a white man who dropped out of high school—these are all examples of property rights in whiteness,” he said.

Hamilton said that reparations are a necessary remedy but would only be a start. Only by implementing a program such as baby bonds, where government creates investment accounts for infants that give them access to capital when they turn 18, would we get the bold, transformative, anti-racist, anti-sexist policies that are long overdue.

“We need a deeper understanding of how devaluing, or othering, individuals based on social identities like race relates to political notions of deserving and undeserving,” he said.

“The structures of our political economy and race go well beyond individual bigotry as a matter of course.”

Eye-Opening for Students

Andrew Souther, a senior majoring in economics and math at Fordham College at Rose Hill, said that the talk was eye-opening for him, as his senior thesis is focused on behavioral economics, where biases and discrimination are key concepts.

“The language that Dr. Hamilton used in basically describing racism as this very strategic collective investment, as one group strategically investing in this identity of whiteness which has a return and also extracts from other people—that is a really, really powerful concept,” he said.

“It really cuts at something much deeper and much more radical than just conversations about behavioral biases, which of course are important too.”

Sophie Mitra, Ph.D., a professor of economics, said Hamilton’s perspective was an example of a topic students at Fordham might not otherwise be exposed to in the course of their studies, a key goal of the series.

“At a time of extreme polarization in the United States, Dr. Hamilton’s scholarship and anti-racist policy proposals are more important than ever,” she said.

“He powerfully prompted us to think about the need to move from an economy centered on markets and firms to a sustainable moral economy, an economy with, at its core, economic rights, inclusion, and social engagement.”

The full lecture can be viewed here.

Please join us for two panels featuring Fordham students, faculty and staff who will reflect on the historical and contemporary impact of anti-Asian violence and racism in the U.S., strategies for healing, and the possibilities for interracial solidarity at Fordham and beyond.

PANEL 1: WEDNESDAY, MARCH 24, 2021
5:00pm – 6:30pm
Click here to join Zoom meeting

Featuring:

• Mary Balingit – Associate Director for Diversity Initiatives, Office of Admissions
• Arthur Liu – FCRH ’23, Economics and Political Science double major, and President/Asian Cultural Exchange
• Jennie Park-Taylor – Associate Professor, Counseling Psychology, Graduate School of Education
• Stephen Hong Sohn – Professor, and Thomas F.X. and Theresa Mullarkey Chair in Literature, School of Arts & Sciences

Moderator: Rafael Zapata, Chief Diversity Officer, Special Assistant to the President for
Diversity, and Associate Vice President for Academic Affairs

PANEL 2: MONDAY, MARCH 29, 2021
5:00pm – 6:30pm
Click here to join Zoom meeting

Featuring:

• Eric Chen – Professor, Counseling Psychology, Graduate School of Education
• Arianna Chen – FCRH ’22, Political Science and English double major and Vice President of Diversity and Inclusion/United Student Government
• James Kim – Associate Professor, English, School of Arts & Sciences
• Tiffany Yip – Professor and Chair, Psychology, School of Arts & Sciences

Moderator: Jeffrey Ng, Director, Counseling and Psychological Services

Special thanks to Akane Zusho, Interim Dean of the Graduate School of Education and Professor of School Psychology; Carolyn Velazquez-Atis, Administrative Assistant to the Dean at the Graduate School of Education; and Jacqueline Gross, Senior Executive Secretary in the Office of the Provost, for their critical support in making this event happen.

Less than a century later, the country erupted in a bloody civil war over one side’s assertion that they should continue to be free to own those slaves.

During World War II and the Cold War era, the U.S. fought the threats to freedom posed by the Nazis and Communism, while Jim Crow laws and segregation made life for many Black Americans nearly intolerable.

And even in 2021, the Confederate battle flag is embraced by some Americans as a symbol of freedom.

Misguided? Yes? But hypocritical? According to Tyler Stovall, Ph.D., dean of Fordham’s Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, not necessarily. These examples from history, Stovall says, show that for Americans, freedom has always been nearly synonymous with whiteness.

“In many ways, our idea about freedom are shaped by our views of race. To be white is to be free, and to be free is to be white, in essence. This idea has been shaped by this racial history, from the Enlightenment to the present day,” he said.

Stovall, a historian who came to Fordham this summer from the University of California, Santa Cruz, tackles this concept in White Freedom: The Racial History of an Idea (Princeton University Press, 2021), which was released on Jan. 20.

Stovall began working on the book in 2014, but the introductory chapter took on a special resonance when a mob attacked and occupied the Capitol while Congress was ratifying the win of President-elect Joseph Biden. Stovall wrote one inspiration for the book was the 2008 naming of Emancipation Hall, a section of the Capitol that was dedicated to the enslaved Black people who helped build the complex.

“It was a wonderful event, but it did beg the question, why would you call something Emancipation Hall to honor people that weren’t emancipated when they worked there? Why not call it Slave Hall? What does the fact that you couldn’t do that say about the relationship of this history to American history in general?” he asked.

He also couldn’t simply dismiss as a paradox the fact that the 18th century was considered an Age of Enlightenment in the United States and France, and yet also the height of the slave trade. In fact, the Declaration of Independence makes more sense, he said, when you understand that one of the biggest demands of the colonists was the right to do with their property whatever they saw fit.

“The biggest kind of property at the time was Black slaves,” he said, noting that it came up 85 years later as well.

“In the beginning of the Civil War, it’s really the Southern rebels who talk about freedom, not the North. Even more forthrightly than in 1776, you had people saying, ‘We’re fighting this war to preserve our freedom—our freedom to own slaves.’”

The Statue of Liberty, which has a more complex history than many understand, gets its own chapter. Although it’s often considered a sort of patron saint of immigration, its creation was rooted more in ideas of liberty. It was conceived by French scholar Édouard de Laboulaye, an abolitionist who was pleased that France has once again become a republic and that the U.S. had finally renounced slavery with the end of the Civil War.

It only became a welcoming symbol of immigration, Stovall said, after Americans began to see European immigrants as white—a perception that happened gradually, and not until well into the 20th century. And the immigrants felt it as well.

“Those immigrants who gazed rapturously at the magnificent statue upon their arrival in New York harbor may have seen a symbol of freedom and prosperity, but they also saw a vision of whiteness, of what they ultimately could become in America.”

Stovall titled the last chapter of the book “Freedom Now? The Fall and Rise of White Freedom during the Cold War.”

“A really powerful assertion emerged in the mid-20th century that freedom had to be universal and could not be just white freedom. In many ways, those struggles were defeated—not entirely, by any means—but they suffered major reverses and major losses,” he said.

He noted that the Supreme Court issued the ruling Brown vs. Board of Education in 1954, and decades later, public schools are arguably just as segregated as they were back then.

The events of the last two months have felt made the book seem especially prescient. Stovall noted in his conclusion that “white freedom” has never been just about race, but it advocates racial distinction and white privilege as a way of achieving the ability to live in security and peace, have adequate food and shelter, and raise children with confidence for their futures.

“There’s a basic material level of assurance and prosperity that has been lost. The prosperity may happen, but it may very well not in a world where most of the profits are going to a very small group of people who are in no mood to share,” he said.

“That’s what’s driving a lot of this anger, and it’s racialized because it’s also connected to the growing racial diversity of the U.S. People are really angry, and they’re willing to believe things that have no foundation in reality whatsoever, like this idea that the election was stolen.”

Nonetheless, Stovall is optimistic, because extending freedom to all people is an idea that he thinks a majority can rally around. Anti-racism work has again taken center stage in the American public sphere thanks to the success of the Black Lives Matter movement, and, he noted, the attack on the Capitol has been called out by prominent commentators as a “white riot.”

“The issue of how to make people freer is ultimately something that I think is possible to mobilize all people around. The problem with white freedom is, it ultimately doesn’t persevere. If everybody isn’t free, then ultimately nobody is free,” he said.

“Freedom means the freedom of families and individuals to enjoy all sorts of things in life, and you can’t have that unless everyone is entitled to have it. I do believe [people understand that]and I do believe people will see this through.”

To illustrate the story, “A Communal Reckoning,” we commissioned Bronx artist Laura James, a painter and illustrator who specializes in sacred images and scenes of everyday life. James uses vibrant colors and draws on Ethiopian Christian iconography in her work, an influence evident in the wide, almond-shaped eyes of the people she depicts.

“Those eyes—they’re all over in Ethiopian art, but especially in the churches,” she said. “They often have angels painted on the walls, just heads and wings with these great big eyes, and [the idea is] that they’re watching you, they’re protecting you.”

For Together We Rise, the painting featured on the cover, James worked with Fordham Magazine art director Ruth Feldman. She chose to depict the story’s “secular theme with that ancient style,” she said, and with Fordham’s Keating Hall and Edwards Parade in the background.

“It’s not churchy; it’s not a Bible story,” James said of the painting, but she wanted to give people a sense of the spiritual nature of the work of anti-racism, particularly at a Jesuit university. She said that came through to her as she read the cover story, a roundtable conversation among six members of the University’s Board of Trustees.

“To see people, to hear them, to talk and communicate—it’s all very, very important. There are more students in the image than anything else, and it really is up to them to hold people accountable and make sure discussions happen, the listening and the hearing, and the seeing with these eyes,” she said.

“We have to see the humanity and the divinity in one another, because yes, we are all made in the image of God, no matter what color you are.”

James said she paid particular attention to the tone of the conversation depicted on the cover.

“Everybody’s not smiling, ‘Oh, I love you,’” she said. “It’s like, ‘Hey, we’re really looking at each other and saying let’s talk about this. There’s so much to learn. And then we have to do something about it, by the way. We can’t just have all this information and sit on it.’”

‘A Sermon for Our Ancestors’

Together We Rise is not the first time James has mixed sacred and secular with a focus on societal issues. In A Sermon for Our Ancestors (2006), she brought the ancient Ethiopian Christian style to bear on U.S. history, juxtaposing 10 scenes of slavery and the slave trade with the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5:1-14).

In one scene (in the top center panel), more than a dozen Black people console each other after witnessing a lynching, as two white men look on, indifferent and unmoved. Above that panel James painted the words of the second Beatitude: “Blessed are they that mourn, for they shall be comforted.” And in the painting’s large central panel, Christ addresses groups of enslaved people, some arriving by ship, others in chains, with the words that follow the blessing on those who are persecuted. “Ye are the salt of the earth,” the text reads in part. “Ye are the light of the world.”

“Representing Christ as an African places him in solidarity” with the enslaved people depicted in the painting, Rebekah Eklund wrote in The Visual Commentary on Scripture. “The work’s title points both to the past (the enslaved Africans) and to present-day African Americans (‘our ancestors’). The message is clear: the suffering slaves, and their present-day descendants who suffer still, are blessed.”

‘Love One Another’

The vigilant, mutually supportive group James depicted for Fordham Magazine is more directly related to another one of her earlier works: Love One Another (2000), a detail from which illustrates the feature story in the print edition of the magazine.

James created this earlier work as part of a series of more than 30 paintings she produced to illustrate a Book of the Gospels published by Liturgy Training Publications. She said the Chicago-based Catholic publisher commissioned her to create artworks that would be more inclusive in their depiction of biblical figures and stories, and more reflective of the racial and ethnic diversity of the church itself.

For two decades, the book has been used in Catholic parishes in the Archdiocese of Chicago and throughout the country and the world. It’s currently in its second edition, James said, and this past May, James’ work on it was the subject of a feature in U.S. Catholic magazine.

“The sacred art of Laura James challenges and inspires,” John Christman wrote in that story. “Her compositions are filled with people navigating the difficult task of reaching fullness of life within a community.”

A Community-Focused Artist

James grew up in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, the youngest of eight daughters of immigrants from Antigua, and she has called the Bronx home for the past 17 years. She said she became more involved in her community after she illustrated a children’s book, Anna Carries Water (Tradewind Books, 2014), and the publisher’s biography for her noted that she lives and works in the Bronx.

Today, she is a member of Bronx Community Board 6, which represents the Bathgate, Belmont, East Tremont, and West Farms neighborhoods, and includes Fordham’s Rose Hill campus. She also promotes the work of other artists as the founding director of BX200: The Bronx Visual Artist Directory, an online database that highlights a curated selection of works by more than 200 Bronx artists, connecting them with collectors, businesses, and other artists worldwide.

In 2020, James collaborated with the nonprofit arts group Chashama to curate four public art exhibitions in the windows of 1 Fordham Plaza, just across the street from the Fordham Metro-North stop and the University’s Rose Hill campus.

James said she designed the installations—including Living Walls, about our connections to the natural world, and Black Lives/Black Matters—to “add a bit of artistic color and happiness to Fordham Road,” and to strengthen pedestrians’ sense of hope and community at “a time when we are all feeling isolated” due to the coronavirus pandemic.

In addition to painting scenes from the Bible, James has created works inspired by Buddhism and by the Yoruba religion as well as ancient Egypt, often highlighting the divine feminine. She is currently working on a series of 10 paintings on the theme of race and reparations that she said is inspired in part by a William Faulkner quote, taken from his 1951 novel Requiem for a Nun: “The past is never dead. It’s not even past.”

James said she is encouraged by the sharpened focus on anti-racism not only at Fordham but throughout the country, particularly among students.

“It’s good—and it’s necessary, it really is, because we cannot go back. All of these Black Lives Matter protests, it’s not like it’s a moment that passed, and it’s done now,” she said. “Once students get to places like Fordham or wherever they’re going to better themselves and their families, they’re going to let people know what’s going on. They’re not going to allow the status quo.”

“We have to move forward,” she added. “[Jesus said,] ‘Love one another.’ That was 2,000 years ago. I don’t know how well that has done, but we’re getting there, slowly but surely—and I think faster now, actually.”

View Laura James’ website to learn more about her and her work.

“The heartfelt testimony given by members of our community in the course of the summer has made it searingly clear that racism is also present here at Fordham,” Father McShane said in his September 12 State of the University address, referring to stories of discrimination students and alumni of color shared, largely on social media.

“As painful as that admission may be, we must face up to it. Therefore, let me be clear: anti-racism, diversity, and inclusion are institutional and mission priorities at Fordham.”

Case in point: The trustees have mandated annual anti-racism training for all faculty, students, staff, and administrators—including the president’s cabinet and the board itself. And they have charged the newly renamed Mission and Social Justice Committee with ensuring that diversity and anti-racism are central to the University’s efforts.

In late October, Fordham Magazine brought together six members of the board for a candid discussion of bias, inclusion, and what it will take to bring about meaningful, lasting change at the University and beyond.

The Participants

VALERIE RAINFORD, FCRH ’86
Moderator
Valerie Rainford is the CEO of Elloree Talent Strategies. Previously, she was a managing director at JPMorgan Chase, where she led the company’s Advancing Black Leaders strategy. She also had a 21-year career at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, where she was the first Black woman to rise to senior vice president. She is the author of Until the Brighter Tomorrow: One Woman’s Courageous Climb from the Projects to the Podium (Elloree Press, 2014). A Fordham trustee since 2019, she is currently spearheading anti-racism trainings among the trustees and within the University as part of Fordham’s action plan for addressing racism.

ROBERT D. DALEO, GABELLI ’72
Chair, Fordham University Board of Trustees
Bob Daleo is a former vice chairman of Thomson Reuters, where he served as executive vice president and chief financial officer before retiring in 2012. He joined the Fordham Board of Trustees in 2008 and was elected chair in 2012.

MARY ANNE SULLIVAN, TMC ’73
Vice Chair, Fordham University Board of Trustees
Mary Anne Sullivan is senior counsel at Hogan Lovells. Previously, she served as general counsel for the U.S. Department of Energy. She became a Fordham trustee in 2016 and has been vice chair of the board since 2018.

ANTHONY P. CARTER, FCRH ’76
Anthony Carter retired in 2015 as vice president and chief diversity officer at Johnson & Johnson. At Fordham, he has served as a member of the Diversity Task Force, and in 2017 he led the search committee for a chief diversity officer. He joined the board in 2018 and is now co-chair of its Mission and Social Justice Committee.

THOMAS J. REGAN, S.J., GSAS ’82, ’84
Father Regan was named superior of the Jesuit community at Fordham in July 2020. He previously served as dean of the College of Arts and Sciences and the Graduate School at Loyola University Chicago, and as a Fordham trustee. He rejoined the board this year and is now co-chair of its Mission and Social Justice Committee.

GUALBERTO RODRIGUEZ, FCRH ’95
Gualberto Rodriguez has been the chairman of Grupo Navis since 2017 and managing partner of Semillero Ventures since 2016. From 2005 to 2017, he served as president of Grupo Navis, the San Juan, Puerto Rico-based firm that was founded by his grandfather in 1960 as Caribbean Produce Exchange. He joined the Fordham Board of Trustees in 2019.

The Discussion

This conversation has been edited and condensed for clarity and space.

VALERIE RAINFORD: So, the world has this problem, and many feel it’s pretty overwhelming and don’t know where to start. What gives you hope that we can make progress at Fordham?

BOB DALEO: One of the intentional actions we are taking is refining the focus of the trustees’ Mission and Social Justice Committee, which has oversight responsibility for our antiracism strategy. If we’re going to cure this, you have to start at the board level to make sure that the institution has in its process what the Jesuits have in their heart. And that’s a hard transition, to go from head and heart to how we behave as an institution.

We are an organization whose mission has always been about social justice. We’ve always talked about educating young men and women for others. What does that mean if it’s not for all others?

Calling out “social justice” in the title of this committee is our way of deliberately emphasizing our intent and ensuring that we stay focused.

We don’t have all the answers, but we are committed to combating racism, overt and covert, and doing our part to ensure the opportunity and ability for all to generate real wealth, to share in the American dream.

Understanding the Pain

In conversation, the trustees discussed some pernicious examples of bias and racism that students have experienced on campus in recent years—and they related those instances to their own experiences as undergraduates. Allowing these intensely personal stories to surface, they said, is part of the process of spurring the entire Fordham community to reflection and action.

RAINFORD: Are there specific experiences with racism that drive how you think about the work we are undertaking?

ANTHONY CARTER: We had an issue on campus several years ago when I was on the President’s Council. It was explained to me that a Black student, on move-in day—one of the most enthusiastic days for students—went downstairs to bring more stuff up to his dorm room, and when he got back, the N-word was carved into his door.

I wasn’t a trustee at the time, but my son had just graduated a year or so before that happened. I didn’t ask what is wrong with the school. I asked, what’s wrong with our students and families? Our focus was on making sure that the student did not feel the incident was systemic; it was not the baseline of what happens at Fordham.

That example brought back memories that I had of the white student union as a Fordham undergraduate during the 1970s, and my feeling, as a grown man still experiencing these things, is, how do we console? How do we make someone feel whole again? How do we make folks who are constantly subjected to this feel that we are better than this, and that your very being here, and that very experience here, indicates we have a lot of work to do?

I am emboldened, I am hopeful, because the leaders on this team believe as I do, that there’s zero tolerance for racism at Fordham University. And I think our students need to know that.

MARY ANNE SULLIVAN: Hearing Anthony’s examples makes me think of the Instagram posts by Fordham students and alumni after George Floyd was killed, and how shocked and hurt I was at how some Black students had been made to feel unwelcome. There was a story of a student who brought his little brother to see Fordham, and while he was giving his little brother a tour of the campus, he got challenged that he “didn’t belong” there. Having brought my little sister to campus when I was an undergraduate, and having her be so welcomed—it just crushed me to see that Black students were having such a different experience.

RAINFORD: Mary Anne, were you surprised, or was it the contrast that made you feel crushed?

SULLIVAN: It was the contrast, that I had done something so similar and had such an absolutely opposite experience.

GUALBERTO RODRIGUEZ: What it brought up for me is an experience I had in the first month of sophomore year at Fordham. I was in a U.S. history class, and the professor called on me to finish a very common American nursery rhyme parents use to put their kids to sleep. I didn’t know it, and he put me on the spot in front of the entire class by asking, “How come?” “Well, I’m from Puerto Rico,” I responded. And he’s like, “Isn’t that part of the U.S.?”

I felt so ashamed, that I really didn’t belong. I ran to my new theology professor, a Jesuit, and, like Anthony said, he consoled me. He made me realize, “You do belong. I know this professor. He’s a very kind man. He just doesn’t know about your background.”

I had written a letter, in my fear that I somehow found myself in the wrong place. He read my letter—I was trembling—and he said, “I think you should send this to him, and you should have a conversation.” So, my Jesuit professor, through the wisdom of his loving advice, empowered me to take on this issue by myself. And it was a beautiful conversation with a very kind man who simply had never thought about why a student from Puerto Rico would not know a common nursery rhyme in the States.

So my hopes are, in this whole process of tackling racism, that we dig deep for the Jesuit approach, a very loving, consoling, compassionate one, focused on justice with compassion, without anger.

THOMAS REGAN, S.J.: I taught for 19 years at Fairfield University in Connecticut. And Connecticut prides itself on planting dogwood trees. Every spring they have this magnificent dogwood festival, and the colors are just breathtaking. I was living in a residence hall, and I said to the student who lived next door to me, “I know it’s finals, but you need a little break from studying. You have a car. Go up to Greenfield Hill, and just allow yourself to see the beauty of Fairfield.” And so after dinner that night, I walked by his room. I said, “How was the dogwood festival?”

And he says, “Well, it was really pretty, but I got stopped three times by the police in Fairfield.” And your heart just goes out to him. Why can’t he go up to Greenfield Hill, like any other student, and have an enjoyable experience? Why is he deprived of that?

RAINFORD: So, the unfortunate reality is that racism is not new and is as prevalent today as ever. Each of us has seen it before, but have we taken it on to end it? To make it clear that as an organization, we will not tolerate racism? Now is the time to openly and proactively take it on as trustees of this great institution that we all love.

Making Anti-Racism Part of the Fordham DNA

The trustees spoke about the need to root out racism at the University in a systemic way, and why, despite a host of challenges related to remote learning and the ongoing economic and social impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic, they are committed to using the board’s authority to unite the community in combating racism and educating for justice.

RAINFORD: What are your thoughts for how we will embed anti-racism policies and practices in how we lead as a board?

CARTER: What I want us to be conscious of is that while we don’t have all the answers, the questions that we’re asking as a governance body can lead us to look for solutions. And not only look for solutions but to hold leaders in the Fordham community and beyond accountable for those solutions.

But there are two things, I call them syndromes. One is the fatigue syndrome. And one is the obvious racism syndrome. The fatigue syndrome allows us to believe, “Oh man, this has been going on for so long.” And I hear this from a lot of my white friends. “It’s not the time to talk about this. Since George Floyd and all the things happening before that, we’re just so fatigued.”

The racism syndrome says to me that we at Fordham have all made ourselves accountable. Whether we experienced racism or not, with our action plans, we embrace the fact that racism affects us all. This is not the time to be fatigued.

There are some things embedded in our strategic plan around this topic. But now we have embraced anti-racism policies and behaviors and mechanisms to solve this thing in a way in which we own it. And our Fordham community must know that, because we put people on notice. We put our own board on notice.

SULLIVAN: If we’re going to be relevant going forward, we have to make rooting out racism part of our DNA. This can’t just be a nice-to-have that we do on the side. It has to be a systemic change that comes about by a thousand different actions we take. It has to be part of our course offerings, part of our student body, part of our faculty, part of our public safety force.

It’s got to be everybody’s job to make Fordham relevant for the future. And the reality is, the future has many more students of color who are going to be looking for places in college, and a society that demands that we be representative of the communities we live in.

At my law firm, we cannot put forward a team for a client on a project if we don’t show that we are including members of color. And Fordham’s role is to fill the pipeline so that those people are there.

And Anthony, we do have a lot in the strategic plan that was already focused towards educating for justice, diversity, equity, and inclusion, but we’re now saying with everything we look at, how is it responding to the issue of racism in our society? How are we fixing the problem at Fordham in this one area, in this one area, in this one area?

We have four broad goals in the strategic plan, and I would say three of the four pretty explicitly lend themselves to anti-racism objectives. Holistic student development—addressing the needs of students to feel respected, to feel consoled, when necessary. Walking with our community. We sit in New York City, a very diverse community, and we are not nearly as diverse as the community we sit in. The goal is to develop more partnerships of all kinds that will engage the broader community. We are looking for ways to strengthen what we’re doing to have a greater impact. For example, cybersecurity is an area where we are partnering with the historically Black colleges and universities on a cybersecurity initiative. The fourth broad objective is STEM-plus. I would say people of color are underrepresented in STEM.

I’m a to-do list kind of person, and so I want to see what’s on our to-do list that is going to address this problem so we’re not just having pious thoughts and writing beautiful statements.

Changing the Way Fordham Looks

The trustees spoke about the barriers between Fordham’s campuses and the surrounding areas of New York City, and of efforts to recruit and retain diverse faculty and students.

RAINFORD: Maybe this is for you to help us with, Father, but what is Fordham’s unique opportunity given its Jesuit traditions around social justice? And what’s the thing that gives us the ability to do this differently than probably any other university in New York City?

FATHER REGAN: We have to change the way that Fordham looks. I’m just coming off six years of being dean of arts and sciences at Loyola University Chicago, and every time we hired a tenure-track faculty member, they sent three candidates up to the dean. And so I said, “If we don’t have a person of color on that list, you’re going to get it back.” It’s very competitive, but you have to be really intentional that you’re going to do this and hold people to the fire. Whoever is applying, the HR managers have to say, “Bring me a diverse slate of candidates and let’s change the way that Fordham looks.”

To speak to the Jesuits, we have this incredible Jesuit network. We could create scholarships for the students coming out of the 56 Jesuit high schools in the U.S. If you’re a person of color, you have a home at Fordham. We’re in New York; you can’t get a more diverse city than New York. And so we have to be reflective of this city.

But we also have to make people feel welcome. Because I listen, and see on Instagram—the students want to come, people who work here want to come, but they want to see people who look like them. We really have to say, this is who we are and we’re going to put up the money to make this happen.

RODRIGUEZ: It strikes me that there would be a special Fordham Jesuit way to address, on a day-today basis, the issues of inclusion and racism. That is what I would like to draw from the Jesuit tradition, this idea of comforting and consoling and reconciliation. That could make the process of having a different look to the faces—the process itself—interesting.

For example, an invitation to a prospective African American faculty or staff member would be to be part of a process of change. We have a Jesuit way to explore that experience of not yet being the end result. I think that will make us a very interesting lab as an institution for people who like to be the astronauts, the first on the moon, to experience that in a safe, consoling, socially interesting laboratory.

RAINFORD: I love that concept of a lab for anti-racism, done in a Fordham way, rooted in the Jesuit tradition. Now, how do we get that done?

Mastering the Architecture of Reform

Since the spring, deans, faculty, administrators, students, and staff have been working to advance Fordham’s anti-racism goals, but in conversation, the trustees expressed the need to establish a framework to ensure that the community’s efforts are not only unified but sustainable.

DALEO: In establishing a framework, the first thing you want to do is set the strategy; then you say, as an organization, “Okay, do we have the structure to properly implement that strategy?” And then the third thing is, “Do we have the people in that structure to run that process to implement the strategy?” I think one of the most important things we can do as a board is to be nudging the organization on these issues.

As a board, the one thing I’d like us to always come back to is, “Okay, these are great ideas. How do we get it done?”

We must also continually remind ourselves that our role is one of oversight. We are not the strategists but instead evaluators of the strategy. We have tremendous power, if you will, by shaping that, by pushing back and saying, “Nope, that isn’t quite right. Go back and think about it again.”

CARTER: This is moving. It’s motivating. We can be the masters of the architecture around designing inclusive behavior.

For example, we invite faculty to our board meetings, typically department heads; we should invite faculty of color to periodically meet with us. As the governing body, we determine how we want to engage. And from that engagement, we can become more solutions-oriented. “We’re here to hear you. What can we do?”

FATHER REGAN: Higher education has changed so dramatically, and the pandemic has just put that in floodlights. What does a university do? How is it going to look different after the pandemic? That’s exciting. That’s exactly where we need to go.

CARTER: I’m encouraged by the reports we get on what’s going on with COVID-19, how the University is proactively managing the crisis to protect the Fordham community. It is data-laden, well-researched; there is direction to it. Now we need to say, with that same sort of vigor, how do we apply that to those things that focus on social justice? How do we make that an agenda item with data, with information to measure our progress?

Once you tell somebody, “I need a report on that,” people get pretty serious. So, I think we have the energy to keep us aware of what’s going on with this backdrop we’re living in, but what are the other components that might be missing from those presentations that we need to know?

SULLIVAN: When we’re meeting in person as a board, we routinely have a lunch speaker. I would suggest that we set an expectation that whoever is presenting will address anti-racism. What is their school doing? What is their part of the University doing on this subject to advance our goals?

DALEO: I love all of your ideas, including the suggestion to increase our interaction with students and faculty of color so that we can talk about and learn how these issues affect them directly. As we move forward, the key will be to continually look for ways to institutionalize improvements for long-lasting change. Let’s continue to have these kinds of open discussions more broadly, because it’s easy to get frustrated by the problem of racism, to not know how to solve it.

I believe, and I think Fordham believes, the way you change the world is one life at a time. Our actions need to ensure that we are impacting every single life.

RAINFORD: Team, the essence of this conversation is that while we don’t have all the answers, the board is proactively engaged and owning the challenge. We’re committed to pushing each other and pushing the organization and asking all the questions that will continue to move the organization forward to create sustainable and equitable change. Thank you!

Addressing Racism, Educating for Justice

The University’s anti-racism plan features six broad goals and nearly 40 concrete action steps.

Six Goals, Six Examples of Work Underway

1. Develop robust admissions strategies for effective recruitment of students of color.

Fordham is expanding pipeline programs with local schools, such as Cardinal Hayes High School in the Bronx, that have a high number of Black and Latinx students.

2. Recruit and retain a more diverse faculty, administration, and staff.

Of 26 arts and sciences full-time tenure/tenure-track faculty members hired this year, 50% are persons of color.

3. Develop curricular and cocurricular initiatives that support the imperative of confronting racism and educating for justice.

With support from Teaching Race Across the Curriculum grants, academic departments are integrating questions of race and justice into introductory courses.

4. Create a more welcoming and affirming campus.

A multicultural center will be part of the campus center expansion at Rose Hill, and a similar center will be established at Lincoln Center.

5. Build lasting partnerships with our neighbors.

Fordham has joined the Bronx Is Reading to co-sponsor and co-host the annual Bronx Book Festival and other events.

6. Amplify our voice in educating for justice beyond the campus.

The Center on Race, Law and Justice recently hosted a webinar on police reform that included Benjamin Tucker, LAW ’81, first deputy commissioner of the New York City Police Department.

Read the complete action plan.

Read the December 2020 update on progress the Fordham community has made so far in implementing the initiatives outlined in the action plan.

At a Nov. 11 virtual event sponsored by Fordham and The Bronx Is Reading, which puts on the annual Bronx Book Festival, Rankine spoke about her new book Just Us: An American Conversation with Laurie Lambert, Ph.D., Fordham associate professor of African and African American Studies. 

Through Just Us, Rankine narrates her personal experiences related to race and racism with white friends and acquaintances—and, in some cases, their own rebuttal to her stories.

“The book’s intention was to slow down these interactions so that we could live in them and see that we are just in fact interacting with another person, and that there are ways to maneuver these moments and to take them apart—to stand up for ourselves, to understand the dynamic as a repeating dynamic for many Black people, white people, Latinx people, and Asian people,” said Rankine, a Jamaica native who grew up in the Bronx. 

Rankine has authored several books, plays, and anthologies, including Citizen: An American Lyric, which won the 2016 Rebekah Johnson National Prize for Poetry. Her other awards and honors include the 2016 MacArthur Fellowship, 2014 Jackson Poetry Prize, and fellowships from the Lannan Foundation and the National Endowment of the Arts. She currently serves as a chancellor for the Academy of American Poets and a professor at Yale University. 

A Portal to Reflect on Your Own Life

At the evening event, Rankine said she wants her readers to use her as a portal to reflect on their own experiences and assess them, rather than simply live them. Reading Rankine’s stories can also serve as a restorative experience for some readers, particularly Black women, said Lambert. 

“As a reader, I felt like I was being guided through these situations by a narrator I could trust—a narrator who understood a lot of my experiences as a Black person,” Lambert said to Rankine.

Naming ‘Whiteness’

The acknowledgement of a person’s “whiteness” can be perceived as threatening because it sounds similar to white nationalism and the violence associated with it, said Rankine. But “whiteness” is a necessary term when talking about race. 

“The kind of clever thing that was done by white culture is the naming of white people as people. They are allowed to hide behind the generality of that statement. They are people and we are African Americans, Caribbean Americans, Latinx Americans, Native Americans,” Rankine said. “That’s how white people have negotiated their lives: We are just neutral people living our lives, and you all are people of color.” 

This centralization of whiteness still stands in many places today, Rankine said. She cited the example of students and other people telling her they have received recruitment calls from white people who say they have perfect jobs for them, but they’re being “forced” to hire Black people to diversify their departments. This strategy to create equity is being falsely framed as something that takes something away from white people, said Rankine, who spoke at Fordham in 2016. 

‘It Gives Me Hope’

Rankine acknowledged that it’s hard to confront covert racism. She’s had to train herself not to let things go—to stop saying she’s tired, that it will stop the conversation, that somebody else in the room should say something instead of her. It’s essential, she said, to hold people accountable because they make critical decisions with long-term effects on places like juries, boardrooms, tenure committees, and dissertation evaluation committees. 

“We have been socialized so much towards silence and stability and not speaking up. And that’s what’s so amazing about the young people now—this new generation of high school students and college students,” Rankine said. “They are speaking up before things even get said. It gives me hope.”

Listen to the full conversation here.