Walcott, who currently serves as president and CEO of the Queens Library, addressed more than 3,000 members of the Class of 2018 on May 19 at Fordham University’s 173rd Commencement, held on the Rose Hill campus.

“You are the generation that will lead us to a far more perfect union,” said Walcott, a New York City native and 1980 alumnus of Fordham’s Graduate School of Social Service (GSS). “You are the generation that will get us out of this hole. You are the ones who will say enough is enough. If each of you does something to move us toward a more civil society, we will all get there together.”

Speaking in the Lombardi Center during the ceremony, which was moved indoors due to the rain, Walcott noted that millennials will outnumber Baby Boomers in 2019 as the nation’s largest generation. And he pointedly told graduates that with this imminent shift comes great responsibility.

“As members of a community that strives to educate its students to recognize the whole person, to work to achieve social justice, and to serve others, you are well positioned to make sure that we listen,” he said, noting that the graduates have already begun creating positive change. He cited examples from their Fordham careers, from leadership opportunities in clubs and organizations that improve the lives of others to stewarding $1 million of the University’s endowment in the Student Managed Investment Fund. “I would even go so far as to say that in light of the privileges which Fordham has endowed you,” he said, “it is your obligation to get us there.”

Walcott, who received the President’s Medal from Joseph M. McShane, S.J., president of Fordham, shared his memories of taking late-night courses at GSS in the ’70s after working all day. He recalled waiting on the outdoor platform in the dead of winter for the No. 7 train at Queensborough Plaza. During moments like this, he’d often ponder his future. After recognizing that someone might be going through a more difficult time and could one day benefit from the knowledge he was gaining, he was further determined to succeed.

“The same holds true for every one of you graduating today,” he said. “Fordham has educated you to be people for others and people who lead lives of service to others. As you continue to learn, work, and grow, you will be changing people’s lives and shaping our world for the better. No matter what career you decide to choose, we are counting on you.”

‘Sidelines No Longer Exist’

Father McShane, whom Walcott commended for his leadership in an era of “unprecedented tension and distrust,” described commencement as a golden day for the Class of 2018. He urged them to be active participants in our history.

“Through it all, you have come to understand that no one can any longer stand on the sidelines of history as a disinterested observer,” he said. “Sidelines no longer exist. The raw, immediate flow, force, and power of history ‎engulf all of us and challenge us to us try to make sense of things, and to respond to all that is unfolding around us.”

Father McShane also encouraged graduates to the use the lessons they’ve learned at home and Fordham as their compass.

“If you are attentive, compassionate, and passionate citizens of the world eager to do the world a world of good, if you are men and women for others, you will truly be every day what you are called to be,” he said. “If you do all of this, the history you will make will be a history that is marked by justice, by equality, by love and by great, great commitment.”

Fordham conferred honorary doctorates on nine other notable figures: Emanuel (Manny) Chirico, GABELLI ’79, chairman and CEO of PVH Corp.; actress Patricia Clarkson, FCLC ’82; Sherrilyn Ifill, president and director-counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund; Marianne Kraft, principal of St. Athanasius School; Louise Mirrer, Ph.D., president and CEO of the New-York Historical Society; William S. Stavropoulos, Ph.D., PHA ’61, board chairman emeritus of the Dow Chemical Company; Cardinal Joseph W. Tobin, C.Ss.R., archbishop of Newark, New Jersey; Peter B. Vaughan, Ph.D., dean emeritus of the Graduate School of Social Service; and Anne Williams-Isom, FCLC ’86, CEO of the Harlem Children’s Zone.

A Day of Celebration 

Despite the steady rain and cloudy skies, graduates found special ways to celebrate their accomplishment across campus.  Some graduates danced playfully in the rain as they waited for the start of the procession.

Others graduates like Manny Linares, a groundskeeper at Fordham’s Rose Hill campus, celebrated the end of their academic road and the start of a new journey with their families cheering them on.

“It’s a little surreal,” said Linares, who received a bachelor’s degree in organizational leadership from the School of Professional and Continuing Studies. “It has yet to really hit me, but it’s a long time coming.”

As a working student with a three-year-old daughter, Linares said his professors and advisers played a role in helping him to acomplish this feat.

“I always wanted to get a degree, but I didn’t think it was something that was within reach until I arrived at Fordham,” said Linares, a first-generation graduate, who was recently admitted in the Masters of Science program in health administration.

Emilio Alvarez, Ph.D., said he is excited to be a source of encouragement to those who face struggles similar to his own. After becoming an emancipated minor at 15 years old and receiving his GED in his early 20s, he received his doctorate in religious education today from the Graduate School of Religion and Religious Education. He’s serving as a chaplain at a federal detention facility in Batavia, New York.

“I’m grateful,” said Alvarez, whose family donned t-shirts with the words, “From GED to Ph.D.” on them. “As much as I understand that this is an accomplishment, I hope to look beyond that and see it as an inspiration to others.”

Photos by Bruce Gilbert, Chris Gosier, Dana Maxson, Matthew Septimus, Chris Taggart, and Gina Vergel. Video by Tom Stoelker and Jeff Coltin.

“I am very pleased that Mr. Walcott has accepted Fordham’s invitation to be our commencement speaker,” said Father McShane. “His integrity, his commitment to teaching and learning, and his longstanding service to the diverse communities of New York City are in the best traditions of Jesuit education. I am pleased he will have the opportunity to speak to some of the most important issues facing our educational system, our city, and our nation.”

Walcott served as chancellor of the city’s public schools under Mayor Michael Bloomberg from 2011 to 2013; he joined the Bloomberg administration in 2002 as a deputy mayor. In these roles, he helped usher in reforms that significantly transformed the school system, dramatically improving graduation rates and cutting dropout rates. As chancellor, he led a $13 million-expansion of after-school programs as well as a new effort to help black and Latino students succeed academically. Walcott served as chancellor until the end of the Bloomberg administration.

Before he took the helm at the Queens Library in 2016, Walcott served as the New York state-appointed monitor of the East Ramapo School District in Rockland County, initiating a series of reforms to ensure the equitable delivery of service and opportunity to the district’s students.

Prior to his work in city government, Walcott was president and CEO of the New York Urban League, where he spent 12 years working to expand the organization’s educational and after-school programs. He began his career as a kindergarten teacher in his home borough of Queens.

Walcott is a New York City native and an alumnus of Fordham’s Graduate School of Social Service, where he has served as an instructor in the Master of Science in Nonprofit Leadership program. Fordham awarded him an honorary doctorate of humane letters at the University’s 2015 commencement ceremony. The previous year, the University of the West Indies named him a distinguished fellow.

In 2011, while addressing a group of school administrators on Fordham’s Lincoln Center campus, Walcott spoke of his days as a Master of Social Work student.

“I vividly remember taking a night class, and then going home to Queens at 10:30 and standing on the [platform of the]  No. 7 line at Queensborough Plaza in December, with the wind cutting through my body, and asking [myself], ‘Is this all worth it?’” he recalled.

“What you’re doing is all worth it. The struggles that you face are all worth it. They’re worth it because we’re committed to the cause of making sure our children are educated and are able to contribute to society.”

Nine Notables to Receive Honorary Degrees

Nine other notable figures will receive honorary degrees from Fordham this May.

At the University commencement, Fordham will present an honorary doctorate of humane letters to actress Patricia Clarkson, FCLC ’82; Marianne Kraft, principal of St. Athanasius School; Louise Mirrer, Ph.D., president and CEO of the New-York Historical Society; William S. Stavropoulos, Ph.D., PHA ’61, board chairman emeritus of the Dow Chemical Company; and Peter B. Vaughan, Ph.D., dean emeritus of the Graduate School of Social Service.

At the Baccalaureate Mass on May 18, His Eminence Joseph William Cardinal Tobin, C.Ss.R., archbishop of Newark, New Jersey, was set to receive an honorary doctorate of divinity. Sherrilyn Ifill, president and director-counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, will receive an honorary doctorate of laws at the Law School diploma ceremony on May 22. Emanuel (Manny) Chirico, GABELLI ’79, chairman and CEO of PVH Corp., will receive an honorary doctorate of humane letters at the Gabelli School of Business master’s diploma ceremony on May 22. And at the Graduate School of Social Service diploma ceremony on May 23, Anne Williams-Isom, FCLC ’86, CEO of the Harlem Children’s Zone, will receive an honorary doctorate of humane letters.

Emanuel (Manny) Chirico, GABELLI ’79, is chairman and CEO of PVH Corp., one of the largest apparel companies in the world. He has expanded the company far beyond North America and engineered the acquisition of iconic brands, including Tommy Hilfiger and Calvin Klein. Chirico, a former Fordham trustee, has also made PVH a leader in social responsibility, promoting fair labor conditions throughout its supply chain.

Patricia Clarkson, FCLC ’82, is an award-winning actress whose work has ranged from critically acclaimed turns in indie movies like The Station Agent; to parts in Hollywood films, like The Green Mile; to classic stage roles, like Blanche DuBois in A Streetcar Named Desire; to a wide range of work on television, including her Emmy-winning performance as Aunt Sarah on HBO’s Six Feet Under and her portrayal of the enigmatic Jane Davis on Netflix’s House of Cards. Clarkson is a graduate of the Fordham Theatre program.

Sherrilyn Ifill has served as president and director-counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund since 2013. Today she is a leading national voice on civil rights, fighting against voter suppression and advocating for policing reforms. In 1993, she joined the law faculty at the University of Maryland and investigated lynchings on Maryland’s Eastern Shore, leading to her critically acclaimed book, On the Courthouse Lawn: Confronting the Legacy of Lynching in the 21st Century.

Marianne Kraft, principal of St. Athanasius School in the South Bronx, was once described by The New York Times as “both grounded in urban reality and guided by a higher calling.” She began teaching at the school in 1972 and became principal in 1989. Under her steady leadership, the school has been a source of stability for students facing issues such as extreme poverty, homelessness, or the fear of having a parent deported. She plans to retire this year.

Louise Mirrer, Ph.D., has been president and CEO of the New-York Historical Society since 2004. During her tenure she has led a capital campaign that raised $100 million, launched renovations that made the space brighter, and presided over two major milestones for the society: the openings of its DiMenna Children’s History Museum in 2011 and its Center for Women’s History in 2017. The holder of a double Ph.D. in Spanish and humanities from Stanford, Mirrer was a professor of Spanish and comparative literature at Fordham.

William S. Stavropoulos, Ph.D., PHA ’61, is former chairman and CEO of the Dow Chemical Company and a former Fordham trustee. He joined Dow as a pharmaceutical research chemist in 1967 and served for 39 years with the company, primarily in marketing and management roles. Institutional Investor magazine named him one of America’s best CEOs three times. After retiring as board chairman emeritus in 2006, Stavropoulos established the Michigan Baseball Foundation, which supports youth organizations and brought minor-league baseball to Midland, Michigan, home of Dow’s headquarters.

Cardinal Joseph W. Tobin, C.Ss.R., archbishop of Newark, New Jersey, often introduces himself simply as “Cardinal Joe.” He joined the Redemptorist order before being ordained in 1978, and was first assigned to his home parish in Detroit, where he helped establish an agency for refugees seeking asylum. Pope Francis elevated him to cardinal in 2016, and he is known to strive for tolerant dialogue around contentious issues, such as the role of women in the church. Last year he welcomed a group of LGBTQ Catholics to Newark’s Cathedral Basilica of the Sacred Heart.

Peter B. Vaughan, Ph.D., is dean emeritus of the Graduate School of Social Service. He served as dean from 2000 to 2013, enhancing the school’s offerings with a new online MSW program and robust international programs. Vaughan has been an advocate for civil and human rights for more than 50 years. A decorated Vietnam War veteran, he co-chaired the Fordham Veterans Initiative, helping post-9/11 veterans acclimate to college life. He returned to Fordham to lead the University’s Task Force on Diversity in 2016.

Anne Williams-Isom, FCLC ’86, is CEO of the Harlem Children’s Zone, a nonprofit that provides comprehensive cradle-to-college services to thousands of children and families and is seen as a national model for addressing poverty. Prior to this role, she spent 13 years at the New York City Administration for Children’s Services, where she helped to reform the child welfare system. In 2016, New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio appointed her to the advisory board of his Children’s Cabinet, which helps city agencies protect children.

But on Dec. 7, he delivered a talk to the larger Fordham community.

Walcott, perhaps best known as the former chancellor of the New York City Department of Education, spoke on how to manage nonprofits, including managing an agency’s public face.

The day after his nomination for public schools chancellor was announced, and with most of New York City’s media watching, Walcott walked his grandson to school at one of his other alma maters, PS 36 in Queens.

“I still get comments about that,” said Walcott.

The instance was one of many examples of using media-savvy messaging, he said, but one that must be backed up with planning, substance, and integrity. He said that no matter the distractions, the message must always remain focused on an organization’s mission.

“One thing you can’t do is lose the perspective of why we’re in this business,” he said. “Whether you’re on the government or nonprofit side, you must maintain your moral compass, because that’s how you will relate to people.”

Walcott started his career as a teacher, where he was one of very few African-American men teaching kindergarten at the time. He later founded the Frederick Douglass Brother-to-Brother mentoring program to focus on kindergarten and grade school-age boys.

Walcott said that in order to to get press coverage for his new organization. He contacted a reporter from the Daily News. The reporter wrote a full-page article. Walcott also asked the director of community affairs at Channel 5 WNYW to place a public service announcement on Saturday morning before Soul Train. The response was overwhelming—too overwhelming.

“It was too much publicity too soon,” he said. “I didn’t know what I was doing when it came to raising funds, or how to set up an organization.”

It was Walcott’s first real brush with nonprofit management and rapid growth, he said—a theme he returned to repeatedly in his talk. He said that nonprofits should be strategic in the way they raise funds, combining both government grants with private dollars.

“You need to know when to say ‘no,’” he said. “If you’re totally dependent on government grants, then you’re setting yourself up for failure. That’s how a lot of agencies collapse.”

He said that in order to accept performance-based grants, agencies must have the infrastructure to deliver results. But these are not lessons learned easily, he said, recalling difficulties he had when he was the president of the New York Urban League.

“You have to anticipate that bullish times don’t last and you’re going to have to deal with a recession at some point,” he said. “You should operate from a very lean point of view and make sure you’re able to carry out the purpose of each grant.”

Walcott served with the New York City Board of Education in the David Dinkins administration, and later served as deputy mayor under the Bloomberg administration. Under Bloomberg’s leadership, he helped dismantle the Board of Education to create the New York City Department of Education, which became far more accountable to the mayor. Then he was promoted to chancellor.

“That was a definitely the game changer, getting immersed in New York City’s complexities and getting involved in the decisions you want to make and sometimes don’t want to make,” he said.

With money being a perennial distraction for governments and nonprofits alike, one must not lose sight of the common goal of both institutions—to serve the people.

“Fordham’s field of social work brings that humanized discussion back to the conversation,” Walcott said.

His appearance at the Lincoln Center Campus was part of the second week of the Council of School Administrators Education Leaders Institute, and the chancellor told those in attendance to challenge him if they ever feel that he is not dedicating all his energy toward the 1.1 million students in the New York City School system.

“I never really plan out my next job, but I’ve always said I’ve always wanted to be a principal. I’ve always wanted to be a principal in one of the toughest schools, where students are not engaged at all, where student learning may not be what we would like it to be,” he said.

“That’s where the rubber meets the road, in everything that you guys do on a day-to day basis. It’s what life is about. It’s how you set the tone for what happens in your building and your community.”

In keeping with that, Walcott noted that like most people, he remembers the teachers he had as a child, but not the principals.

“I remember my third grade teacher Mrs. Long, because she worked with me with reading, and made sure I was reading at grade level, but when I reflect back, I can’t remember the name of my principal in elementary school,” he said.

“Take that charge, and say, ‘I want these students to remember my name. I want them to carry forward that message that they remember he was a very dynamic principal. He was in my life, he knew about my life, he was committed to make sure I was college and career ready, and ready for the next grade.’”

Noting that he likely only has two and half years to make an impression—“What, you think there’s going to be a fourth term?” he cracked, prompting laughter— Walcott promised that he was going to push the envelope on innovation.
As they face a $5 billion dollar deficit the next fiscal year, and he said there would be real challenges that they would have to face together.

“It’s going to be a very challenging two and half years, because I’m not some sort of Polyannish person whose saying you guys have an easier job. Your budgets are small, across the board an average 2.3 percent less,” he said.  “I understand there are challenges, and we’re going to work through those challenges.”

He vowed to continue to visit schools around the system, a practice he began nine years ago as deputy mayor that has resulted in 400 to 500 visits.

“I’m going to listen to what you say, and I’m going to try to respond, and I know there are going to be times when we agree, there are times when we’re going to disagree, there are times when we are going to vehemently disagree.  But you will always have a person who will listen to what you say and try to factor it in one way or another to make the system better.”
It was fitting to speak at Fordham, where he received a master’s degree in social work in 1980.

“I remember vividly taking a night class, and then going home to Queens at 10:30 at night, and standing on the number 7 line at Queensborough Plaza in December, with the wind cutting through your body and, and asking, ‘Is this it all worth it?’” he said.

“What you’re doing is all worth it. The struggles that you face are all worth it. It’s worth it because we’re committed to the cause or making sure our children are educated and are able to contribute to society.”