But like AI, the technology has raised ethical concerns. If used improperly, it could cause harm or violate a patient’s privacy.

Fordham researcher Laura Specker Sullivan, Ph.D., was awarded a $400,000 grant from the National Science Foundation in August to assess the usefulness of ethics guidelines currently geared toward neurotechnology researchers.

“Neurotechnology is this really rapidly growing area of science and technology. There’s a lot of interest in it, and there’s a lot of money in it, so it’s not surprising that there are a lot of ethicists thinking about how we should do it and what direction it should go in,” said Specker Sullivan, an associate professor of philosophy who helped to write some of the guidelines herself. Her research project involves bringing researchers and ethicists together to see how they’re being used.

“Unless we connect ethicists with the people doing that scientific and technological advancement, it’s not going to have any effect. And we are going to have a technological future that we don’t have control over.” 

Titled “Principles to Practice: Ethical Guidance for Neurotechnology Researchers,” Specker Sullivan’s three-year project will be conducted with Anna Wexler, Ph.D. assistant professor of medical ethics and health policy at the University of Pennslyvania.

A Growing Field

The field of neurotechnology–which involves creating and using technology that impacts the brain and generates data from it—is expanding rapidly. According to the Harvard Business Review, the global market for neurotech is growing at an annual rate of 12% and is expected to reach $21 billion by 2026. 

The technology being developed varies from things like a computer interface that can detect (and potentially even prevent) a potential seizure to implants that stimulate parts of the brain to affect mood and cognition.

Over the past few years, Specker Sullivan and Wexler helped create some of the first guidelines for researchers, but Specker Sullivan realized that there was no meaningful follow-up to see if researchers working in neurotechnology were aware of them, reading them, or finding them useful.

Connecting Ethicists with Researchers

As part of the research, they’ll be attending neurotechnology conferences and hosting roundtables that bring ethicists and neurotechnology researchers together”.

“If we find out that researchers are not using ethics guidance for X, Y, and Z reasons, we really want ethicists to know about those reasons,” she said. “We want other researchers to reflect on that and hopefully work to decrease that gap.”

Potential Pitfalls

Privacy is one of the project’s biggest concerns.

“Companies are already getting profiles of what we’re looking at on the internet. Imagine if they could do that with the actual electrical impulses that are coming from your brain. There are going to be intimate things that you would maybe never say to anyone,” she said.

Safety is another concern. The brain is so complex that if a treatment targets one specific symptom, it’s possible that there can be a cascade of effects that are not always anticipated. 

Specker Sullivan cited deep brain stimulation, which is being used to treat Parkinson’s Disease, as a good example. The goal is to reduce tremors and allow patients to perform motor tasks. The treatment, however, can also lead to personality and mood changes.

Specker Sullivan is optimistic that ethics guidelines can be useful for researchers in determining whether neurotechnology is good for people.

“If we’re just focusing on physical benefit, we might be thinking about one kind of definition of “good,” but what about other definitions of well-being?” she said.

“Philosophers bring the ability to ask incisive questions, but also an understanding of the broad range of possibilities for how we define ethical concepts, like good or bad or right or wrong.”

That’s the question driving the summer research of Jackson Saunders, a rising senior at Fordham College at Rose Hill. In a Fordham lab, he’s building chambers to split and direct the flow of sound, pursuing research that could impact not only acoustics but also bulletproofing, rocket design, and more.

Innovative Acoustics

Saunders, a physics and philosophy double major, is working under the guidance of Camelia Prodan, Ph.D., the Kim B. and Stephen E. Bepler Professor of Physics at Fordham. Supported by a summer fellowship from Fordham’s Campion Institute, Saunders is building on Prodan’s research into acoustic techniques inspired by topological materials.

First discovered around 1980, these materials intrigue scientists because of their internal configurations, or topology, that guide electricity into precise streams separated by gaps that block current. A topological insulator, for instance, can channel electricity along its surface but keep it from passing through to the other side.

Since then, scientists have found that such segmented flows can be seen beyond electricity.

Prodan published research in January showing that acoustic materials can be designed to guide the flow of sound in a similar way.

Building Sound Chambers in the Lab

Based on that research, Saunders is building a series of sound chambers that mimic the internal symmetries of topological materials, perfecting a design that will split sound in the same way that topological materials direct electricity into discrete streams.

It’s a project that showcases physics that dates back to Isaac Newton, Saunders said, with the behavior of atoms and electrons being recreated in larger objects like the sound chambers he’s making with a 3D printer.

“We’re taking a very well-studied quantum mechanical effect and realizing it” with classical physics, he said. “What’s novel about what we’re doing is we’re showing that we can create specific applications … using this classical mechanical approach.”

Through the project, he’s helping to build knowledge that could have many uses, from making better soundproofing materials to reducing urban noise pollution to designing rooms that contain all the sound generated within them—even if one side is open.

From Better Bulletproofing to Quantum Computing

Studies of topology-based sound flows could have implications for other innovative materials as well, he said. These could include bulletproof vests that dissipate a bullet’s impact along their surface or a rocket built to channel vibrations along its surface during takeoff without rattling the electronics within.

Topological materials could also be applied in the development of quantum computers that have vastly greater processing power. “Any field that has computation, quantum computing will benefit,” so it’s exciting to be working on questions related to that, no matter how tangentially, Saunders said.

In his research, he has an eye on the past as well as the future. “I’m doing work that is at the leading edge of a 400-year legacy of scientists, and that’s motivating,” he said. “You want to be part of that.”

“It’s really gratifying to see how many of the projects lean into our identity as a Jesuit institution,” said Ann Gaylin, dean of GSAS, “and strive to advance knowledge in the service of the greater good.”

Students displayed posters on topics that ranged from biology to theology to economics to psychology.

Nina Naghshineh, Ph.D. in Biological Sciences

Topic: The Role of Bacteria in Protecting Salamanders

How would you describe your research?
I study the salamander skin microbiome and how features of bacterial communities provide protection against a fungal pathogen that is decimating amphibian populations globally.

Why does this interest you?
I’m really interested in how microbes interact and function. My study system is this adorable amphibian, but the whole topic is so interesting because microbial communities are so complex and really hard to study. So the field provides many avenues for exploration. These types of associations are present in our guts and on our skin. I’m interested in going into human microbiome work after I graduate, so I have a lot of options available to me because of this research.

Nicholas McIntosh, Ph.D. in Philosophy

Topic: Using AI to Help Scholars Distill Information from a Vast Body of Texts

How would you describe your project?
It’s a digital humanities project that uses natural language processing to help read and understand many texts at once. There’s this vision we have of a really great humanities scholar who is able to know a text so well that they could almost quote it from memory. That is really difficult for us to do right now in the same way we might have when there were only a couple of touchstone classical texts.

What do you hope this will accomplish?
Scholars are scanning texts either for our classes or for our own research. So this would help us figure out, number one, how can you look at a text and be able to recognize— is this text useful for me? Number two, what are the most important concepts that we should be tracking in a text? And number three, what is the text as data telling us that maybe scholarship is overlooking or overemphasizing given traditional readings?

I would also like to show that those of us who do philosophy don’t have to be afraid of these technologies.

Angel Villamar, Siphesihle Sitole, and Virginia Scherer, M.A. in International Political and Economic Development (IPED)

Project name: Climate Mitigation: The Role of a People’s Organization in the Philippines

What were you investigating with this research?
We looked at the role of the grassroots organization Tulungan sa Kabuhayan ng Calawis in dealing with climate mitigation. It was formed after Typhoon Ketsana hit in 2009. There is an area right outside of Manila that, over the years, has been deforested, so this organization organized to help incentivize reforestation. The farmers in the area, who are mostly women, develop the seedlings, do the land preparation, and plant the trees.

What do you hope people learn from this project?
We want to think about reforestation not as a one-time thing but as a long-term sustainable way. What incentives do you need so that you can keep doing this? We are showing that you can involve ordinary individuals at the grassroots level in something that is much bigger than them.

The 2024 presidential election is likely to be the first time since 1892 that an incumbent president is running against another former president. And with early primaries having such an outsized influence, the slate could be a virtual lock before Super Tuesday even rolls around—even though most Americans don’t want a Biden-Trump rematch.

John Davenport, Ph.D., professor of philosophy at Fordham and former director of Peace and Justice Studies, said there are three main problems with the uniquely American presidential primary system that have contributed to this likely matchup: the scheduling of the primaries, the way the delegates are determined, and a lack of uniformity in who can vote in each primary.

‘Glaringly Unfair Tradition’

The Constitution doesn’t say anything about how political parties or their nomination processes should work, because the authors didn’t foresee the power of parties, which now set their own primaries, Davenport said. One result is that just a few states keep holding the earliest primaries.

Davenport called it a “glaringly unfair tradition” that four states have cornered the market.

“Early primaries bring huge profits to businesses in early states and give them more influence. Iowa rescheduled its chaotic caucus to just a week after New Year’s Day in 2024, and New Hampshire’s Republican primary election was eight days later, followed soon by Nevada and South Carolina.” 

While outcomes in Iowa and New Hampshire are not always decisive, their small populations, combined with South Carolina’s, have enjoyed enormously disproportionate influence that can eliminate candidates who might have remained viable if the first primaries were held in more populous states, he said.

“Thus they can cut nine out of 10 American voters out of the process, especially when early frontrunners gain big leads,” he said, adding that “no other advanced democratic nation” allows this.

Lack of State Uniformity

Inconsistency in how delegates are awarded also affects who ultimately wins the party nominations.

Because the Republican primaries in Iowa and New Hampshire operate somewhat proportionally, Nikki Haley won 17 delegates to Trump’s 33 by garnering about 40% of the combined vote in those two states. But in South Carolina’s Republican primary this month, the majority winner in each district will take all of its delegates—meaning that Haley could get 38 to 40% of the votes but gain zero delegates out of the state’s 50-delegate total, That would make it much harder for her to raise funds for the races in Michigan and on Super Tuesday in early March. Davenport said. In still other Republican primaries, a candidate finishing first gets all or most of the state’s delegates.

By contrast, in Democratic primaries in all states, each candidate gets a number of delegates that is loosely proportional to their percentage of the popular vote. 

Who Gets to Vote?

Equally inconsistent is whether a state’s primaries are open to independent voters or just those in the party holding the primary.

New Hampshire’s Republican primary was open, and many independents voted, boosting Haley’s numbers. Nevada, which this year held both a Republican primary and caucus, closed those races to independents. 

What’s the Solution?

“Congress has the authority to change the primary election calendar, rotating the chance to hold early primaries among five or six regions of the U.S., so that every state gets a fair opportunity over five or six presidential election cycles to hold high-impact primaries,” said Davenport.

Federal law could also solve the delegate problem by mandating that political parties use one method to award convention delegates in all state primaries. And by mandating open primaries in all states, federal law could help moderate candidates continue longer in tight races, he said.

“These are just a few examples of sensible and non-partisan reforms,” said Davenport.

John Davenport has taught in undergraduate and graduate programs at Fordham since 1998. He is the author of several articles and books, including 2023’s The Democracy Amendments, which attempts to synthesize two decades of creative ideas to fix the federal system into a comprehensive program.

“It turned out to be the happiest accident of my graduate school career,” said Hahn, a doctoral student in philosophy at the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. 

The conference was organized last fall by the Institute for Hungarian Research‘s Research Center for the History of Ideas and Fordham philosophy professor Gyula Klima, Ph.D., who serves as director of the center. The event took place in Budapest, Hungary, where Klima gathered with scholars from institutions worldwide to deconstruct the concept of the Eucharist—or, as the conference website calls it, “the most mind-boggling sacrament of the Christian faith.” 

“We were all united around a very specific thing—the metaphysics and theology of the Eucharist, which is the most niche thing you can think of,” said Hahn. “If you look at it from an ordinary American secular perspective, the Eucharist is extremely weird. You have food, which is supposed to be the body and blood of a Palestinian Jew who lived 2,000 years ago. He’s supposed to be here, physically, and have an effect on people who join together in his mystical body, or the Church. That is an extremely weird idea, but it’s also extremely interesting. And it’s something that was the life of a continent for centuries.” 

Beginning in the 14th century, some scholars started reinterpreting the possibility of this “supernatural change” that is said to take place during Roman Catholic Mass. However, this caused huge conceptual tensions within the theological and metaphysical system, said Klima. Essentially, there was a battle between the “old” and “new” ways of doing philosophy, logic, science, and theology, he said. 

“These ideas caused incremental changes—tiny, almost invisible conceptual changes—that eventually led to different belief systems and religious wars,” said Klima, adding that these clashes also paved the way for modern philosophy and science. 

Klima said their meeting in Budapest was so successful that he decided to establish an organization that would continue their dialogue every year. Toward the end of the conference, he founded the Society for the European History of Ideas (SEHI, pronounced “see-high”), an international network of scholars who study the European history of ideas—both within and outside Europe. 

“The essence of European thought is taking Greek forms of thinking and philosophical structures and combining them with Judeo-Christian content,” Hahn explained. 

Late Night Conversations About Life and Beyond

There are currently 43 members, including scholars from Harvard University, University of Notre Dame, the University of Oxford, University of California, Los Angeles, and many other academic institutions around the world, said Klima. Membership is open to faculty and graduate students from all academic institutions, as well as other scholars who are interested in their work. 

“We are interested in the spirit of the times and the ways people live, and how these change each other over time. We are focusing on Europe because of the role of European culture in starting modernity on a global scale,” said Klima, who also founded the Society for Medieval Logic and Metaphysics in 2000. “European culture has had an enormous role on the world stage, especially in American culture. However, Europe also needs to be understood in tandem with other cultures and continents.” 

The Society for the European History of Ideas meets once a year to discuss each member’s individual research on a specific topic related to theology and metaphysics, as well as other fields like art, technology, and the sciences. They present their findings, exchange ideas, and compile a volume of their collective work on the annual theme. 

Hahn said that he loved the support and sincerity shared by the scholars at the first conference, especially their late night debates.  

“I stayed up late at night, having conversations with people I barely knew until the conference. We shared wine and cigarettes and talked about things like the classic question—if God exists, why is there evil in the world—and the politics within the countries where we live,” said Hahn, whose presentation focused on how Lutherans interpret the Eucharist. 

Studying ‘What It Means to Be Human’ 

The next meeting will be held this summer in Lisbon, Portugal, where the society will consider the classic chicken and egg question in relation to metaphysics and theology. What drives large-scale conceptual changes: changing metaphysical intuitions or the reinterpretation of theological principles?

Fordham student Matthew Glaser, GSAS ’24, said he hopes to participate in the next conference. His interest in philosophy stems from the same curiosity that many of his colleagues share. 

“I became interested in philosophy through a lot of conversations with high school friends around campfires, talking about politics, society, social issues, and these big-picture, abstract questions about how we should live and how to solve these problems. Through that, I found my way into philosophy and an interest in questions about human nature—about what it means to be human,” said Glaser, a Ph.D. student in philosophy who recently joined the society. 

He said he joined SEHI because it informs our understanding of who we are today. 

“One big part of American history is European history, especially the cultural and intellectual movements in Europe that led to the Reformation and the Enlightenment, and had a real big impact on our founding fathers and on the formation of the United States,” Glaser said. “If we want to understand our identity as Americans or people in Western culture today, I think it’s important for us to understand the history of our culture, particularly the intellectual history—to see where our modern ideas of freedom, individuality, democracy, and society come from, and on the flip side of that, to see how that’s changed over time.”

“Marsh was a tireless advocate and activist for civil rights, rights for workers, worker-owned cooperatives, and social justice,” said John Davenport, Ph.D., a former director of Fordham’s Peace and Justice Studies program, which Marsh helped found. Davenport noted that Marsh was known for his defense of “critical modernism”—a form of critical theory that addresses postmodernist arguments by philosophers such as Jacques Derrida and Paul-Michel Foucault.

Born in Polson, Montana, Marsh earned his undergraduate and master’s degrees at Gonzaga University in Spokane, Washington. He entered the Jesuit community there but left the order to pursue a Ph.D. at Northwestern University, which he earned in 1971.

From 1970 to 1985, he taught philosophy at St. Louis University. In 1980, he spent a year at Fordham as a visiting professor; five years later, he joined Fordham’s philosophy department full time. On his 20th anniversary in 2005, he was lauded with a Bene Merenti Medal, and was cited for thought that “fuses Marxist critical theory, phenomenology, process metaphysics and transcendental Thomism in critically constructive ways that counter the canon of modern secularism while issuing a sustained, sophisticated argument for social justice.” A year later, he retired from Fordham, his nephew T.J. Campbell said, and was named professor emeritus.

Over the course of his career, Marsh authored and co-edited nine books, including Post-Cartesian Meditations, (Fordham University Press, 1988); Critique, Action and Liberation (SUNY Press, 1994); Process, Praxis, and Transcendence (SUNY Press, 1999), and Unjust Legality: A Critique of Habermas’s Philosophy of Law, (Rowan and Littlefield, 2001). He was involved in numerous professional associations such as the American Catholic Philosophical Association, for which he served as president from 2004 to 2005.

Davenport said that when Marsh joined the Fordham philosophy faculty, he was part of a new generation of lay philosophers, along with Dominic Balestra, Ph.D., and Merold Westphal, Ph.D., to join what had been a department made up primarily of Jesuits.

“Marsh was seen as a new kind of thinker in the critical thinking tradition, but someone who respected transcendental Thomism, and therefore fit with into the department,” he said.

“What he called critical modernism was his own development of critical theory, which is a tradition of thought that goes back to the Frankfurt School in Germany just after World War II. It attempts to find new ways defending universal or objective standards.”

Davenport, who was on the faculty with Marsh from 1998 to 2006, said Marsh’s critiques of the German philosopher Jürgen Habermas had a big influence on him and his colleagues. A child of the Civil Rights era who was influenced by Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr., Marsh was more open to theological themes and inspirations than Habermas. Marsh’s gift, said Davenport, was that he wielded those themes in ways that even non-believers could appreciate. He was also unfailingly polite to those who disagreed with him, he said.

“I think it’s fair to say he was a Marxist,” he said. “He wasn’t an activist professor though. I heard him say on more than one occasion that it was very important that students of all political persuasion felt free to debate openly. He really bent over backward to accommodate students of different political persuasions.”

Robin Andersen, Ph.D., a professor emerita of communications and former head of Peace and Justice Studies, hosted both Marsh and Berrigan for dinners at her home in New Rochelle. Because neither of them drove, she and her husband, Fordham lecturer of biology Guy Robinson, Ph.D., often found themselves in discussions with them on drives back to Manhattan.

“He was very committed in the classroom and the way that he would integrate his pedagogy in his teaching with the philosophy of aligning yourself to the poor. He would give the students a theoretical and analytical perspective about inequalities and global injustices, imbued with a philosophy about the nature of human lives, and how we all need to live with dignity,” she said.

Marsh was a dedicated pacifist and used The Trial of the Catonsville Nine (Fordham University Press, 2004), in his classes. The book, which details Berrigan’s trial for civil disobedience at the height of the Vietnam War, features afterward by Marsh and Andersen.

Andersen said she’ll miss Marsh’s thoughtfulness and the ease with which he engaged in conversation.

“Some very thoughtful people can be kind of intense, and Jim didn’t have that intensity about him,” she said.

“Both Dan [Berrigan] and Jim were very much into creating community around them. They had a real commitment to bringing young people into a world that is not easy to find in our culture, one filled with thought, compassion, and deep contemplation about what we’re doing in our fast-paced professional world,” she said.

Campbell said that he and his sister Elizabeth Campbell, Ph.D., benefited tremendously from time spent with their uncle, especially through holiday visits to Colorado, where Elizabeth lives and teaches at the University of Denver. Their education began with books on artists he bought them when they were children and continued through the years.

“Jim had an enormous influence on Elizabeth and me from a young age, particularly in terms of our appreciation for modern art and dance and theater,” he said noting that he exposed them to Twyla Tharp’s In The Upper Room, which combined several forms of art, including music by Philip Glass, one of Marsh’s favorite musicians.

Marsh was a devoted fan of the UConn women’s basketball team and subscribed to the Hartford Courant newspaper so he could keep up with them, Campbell said. He also devoted two hours a day to centering prayer, a form of meditation where one focuses on a single word such as light or love.

During one of their last visits to Colorado for Thanksgiving, Campbell said that Marsh confided to him that being a bachelor was also an important part of his identity. Despite a penchant for living alone, Marsh nonetheless drew others to him, he said, with a keen intellect, deep insights into modern culture, and a big booming baritone voice.

“His students loved him, and his friends and colleagues loved him as well. When we were at museums, he would comment on a painting, and people gathered around to listen to his commentary like he was a docent,” he said.

“He was so knowledgeable about the artists and how the paintings were constructed, that people would follow along with us.”

In addition to T.J. and Elizabeth Campbell, Marsh is survived by his sister Mary Ann Courtney and grand-nephews Ryan and Grant Karlsgodt. A funeral Mass will be held for him at St. Francis Xavier Church, 46 W. 16th Street, on Friday, Sep. 24, at 10:30 a.m. All are welcome.

“Father Koterski was a model Jesuit, an exemplary priest, a companion both in the Society of Jesus and in our mission, and a dear friend,” said Joseph M. McShane, S.J., president of Fordham. “Wonderfully, he had the kind of death every priest prays for: He died while he was speaking from the heart of the Lord whom he loved and served all his life. He is now at home with that same Lord.”

In 1992, Father Koterski joined Fordham’s philosophy department. Over the next three decades, he held many positions, including chair of the philosophy department, director of the master’s program in philosophical resources, and secretary of the Faculty Senate. He taught more than 20 undergraduate and graduate courses in metaphysics, ethics, and the history of medieval philosophy, including two specialized courses for the honors program. He was awarded several honors himself, including a summer faculty fellowship and an undergraduate teaching award. 

“Father McShane would sometimes comment, ‘Koterski never sleeps.’ You just wonder where he got all the time to do all that he’s doing: teaching his classes, living and working at Queen’s Court, and all that he does for his students,” said Thomas Scirghi, S.J., associate professor of theology.  

At the time of his death, Father Koterski served as associate professor of philosophy and editor in chief of International Philosophical Quarterly, a Fordham peer-reviewed philosophy journal. He was also the master of Queen’s Court Residential College, where he served as an academic adviser and counselor for first-year students over the past two decades. 

For as much as he taught his students, he learned much from them as well. Twice a year, he hosted a formal student debate at Queen’s Court. Four nights a week, he hosted “Knight Court,” where students presented any subject of their choice for 10 minutes. One student taught him the rules of rugby; another taught him how to calculate wind chill factor. A third student introduced him to Bollywood and performed a song in a male and falsetto voice. He also accompanied students on Broadway trips, including “Phantom of the Opera” and “How to Succeed In Business Without Really Trying.” 

“We have oodles of fun together. But the [main]idea is integrating their studies and social life,” Father Koterski said in a 2012 “Jesuits in Conversation” video. 

Father Koterski was an Ohio native who grew up in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He graduated summa cum laude with a bachelor of arts degree in classical languages from Xavier University. He earned three advanced degrees—a master’s in philosophy, a doctor of philosophy, and a master of divinity—from Saint Louis University and the Weston School of Theology, now known as the Boston College School of Theology and Ministry. In 1984, he entered the Society of Jesus at age 30. Eight years later, he was ordained a priest. 

“I think of myself as part of the late bloomers’ club,” Father Koterski said in 2012, “and I’d love to encourage anybody else to join the club.” 

In phone interviews, his colleagues described him as a fun-loving fellow with a deeply resonant voice that could have belonged to a radio announcer. He was a reticent man who avoided small talk, said Father Scirghi, but once he started talking about academia or societal issues, conversation easily flowed. He combined faith and fun in his teaching, including one Halloween where students gathered at the Jesuit cemetery on the Rose Hill campus and learned about the holiday’s religious significance while sipping hot apple cider, said Father Scirghi. But what stood out about Father Koterski, said those who knew him, was his generosity. 

“He had an office a few doors down from me. He would be in there for long hours, meeting with students during office hours and outside of office hours, giving spiritual direction to people over the phone or on Zoom,” said Stephen Grimm, Ph.D., professor of philosophy. “He was always willing to help when there were any problems to deal with.” 

In addition, he stayed in touch with prior students and continued to guide them, said an alumnus.  

“A few years after I graduated, I took a more serious approach to my faith, and Father Koterski made himself available. He was willing to talk through difficult issues and approach things with intellectual rigor, but more importantly, a gentle spirit,” said Jared Woodard, GSAS ’13. 

Outside of Fordham, Father Koterski lived a rich academic life that spanned the U.S. and several continents. He traveled to California, Texas, Missouri, Hong Kong, England, and Guam to teach courses on subjects he cared deeply about. He regularly went to Haiti for missionary work, and he often worked with groups of nuns around New York, where he presided at Mass or led retreats. He served in leadership positions for many religious and academic organizations, including a two-term presidency of the Fellowship of Catholic Scholars. His sixty-page curriculum vitae is a testament to the hundreds of books, articles, homilies, lectures, and conferences that encompassed his life.

“While an outstanding scholar and teacher, Father Joe Koterski was above all else a Jesuit priest. In Psalm 85(86), David prays, ‘Domine…simplex fac cor meum’ (O Lord…make my heart simple): a line that sums up Father Koterski’s life,” his longtime friend John Kezel, retired director of the Campion Institute, wrote in an email. “He was simply always there when you needed him—for advice, for companionship, for prayer. In all my years of friendship, I never heard Father Joseph Koterski say ‘no’ to anyone.”

In a 2015 interview with America Magazine, a reporter asked Father Koterski what he wanted people to take away from his life and work. 

“A greater love for God, a greater desire for union with Jesus Christ, a greater respect for the teachings of the church and a greater ability to reason in a sound way as a grateful response to God’s gift to us of the power of reasoning,” he said. 

Father Koterski’s wake will be held on Tuesday, August 17, from 9:30 to 11 a.m. at the University Church, located at 2691 Southern Blvd, Bronx, N.Y., 10458. The funeral will begin at 11 a.m. at the same location. Proof of vaccination must be provided for admittance to campus. Per Fordham University policy, masks must be worn while in the University Church. If driving, please enter through the gate on Southern Boulevard, across from the New York Botanical Garden.

—Chris Gosier contributed reporting to this story.

According to Anthony Annett, Ph.D., a climate change and sustainable development adviser at Columbia University’s Earth Institute, that kind of paradox is just one sign that the way we think about the economy is broken.

This spring, he’s teamed up with lauded economist Jeffrey Sachs, Ph.D., University Professor and director of the Center for Sustainable Development at Columbia, to address the problem in a new course.

At the invitation of Gabelli School of Business professor Michael Pirson, Ph.D., Annett and Sachs are teaching Modern Economics for a Sustainable and Inclusive Planet to a select group of Fordham students. The course, which is open to all undergraduate honors students, focuses on perspectives in economics that promote well-being for all on a healthy planet. Annett said the idea is to learn the philosophical, religious, and modern scientific basis of sustainable development.

It’s part of a larger rethinking of core curriculum at Jesuit business schools that is anchored in principles of Catholic social teaching and humanistic values, he said, noting that theories such as Homo Economicus and Rational-Economic Man that have influenced past generations of economists are being retired.

Having worked as a speechwriter for two managing directors of the International Monetary Fund, Annett had a front-row seat to the ways those ideas foundered, most spectacularly during the Great Recession of 2008.

“I changed tracks after the global economic crisis when I realized this was a crisis of ethics as much as a technical crisis of finance and economics. I started to get much more interested in Catholic social teaching and some of the alternative paradigms out there,” he said.

He and Sachs, a co-recipient of the 2015 Blue Planet Prize for environmental leadership who has twice made Time magazine’s list of 100 most influential world leaders, are publishing a textbook based on the class. It was planned in 2020, but the pandemic has made it feel particularly prescient. The notion that markets will self-correct is not accurate, Annett said, and it isn’t even the first time this has happened.

“After the Great Depression, people realized that laissez-faire economics did not necessarily work in the sense of being self-correcting. You can have dislocations that can last a long time and really hurt people, and that means you need the active intervention of government,” he said.

“We put a lot of emphasis on the role of government. What should government do, what are theories of government from various different thinkers? We pretty much reject the idea of libertarianism, which has influenced how economics has been developed over the past century or so, this idea that the government just needs to step aside and let the market work its magic.”

One of the course’s required readings is Annett’s Cathonomics: How the Catholic Tradition Can Create a More Just Economy, which will be published by Georgetown Press this fall. Annett joked that he’s cited teachings from Pope Francis—who addressed the topic in Let Us Dream: The Path to a Better Future, (Simon & Schuster, 2020)—so often, that he’s practically a guest speaker.

Sachs also said the pope’s encyclicals Laudato Si’ and Fratelli Tutti, which focus on sustainability and global ethics, are on his mind as he transcribes his lectures for the textbook.

“We need a new way to teach economics that addresses the core economic challenge facing society: achieving a prosperous, fair, and sustainable world economy,” said Sachs, who is the former director of Columbia’s Earth Institute.

“I’m learning an enormous amount every week, often by reading old texts that I had never read before or considering historical analogies that are relevant for our time. I’m also learning that we really can—and should—present economic issues in a new way.”

Alexios Avgerinos, a senior at Fordham College at Lincoln Center, said the class was exactly what he was looking for when he moved from Berlin to New York to attend college. He’s writing a thesis on how to structure a firm so that’s it’s not just a profit-maximizing vehicle and will be interning after graduation at a consulting firm dedicated to sustainability. With dual majors in economics and philosophy, he was intrigued by an economics course that featured Aristotle in its syllabus.

“I believe that firms hold so much power these days. Economically speaking, they’re larger than governments, so I think they can have the biggest impact to improve well-being for all people in the world.”

“When you open the Principles of Economics textbook, you are presented with all of these concepts such as utility maximization, and there are so many underlying philosophical assumptions there. You would think they don’t really matter, but they actually change the outcome in the real world.”

Annett concurred.

“In microeconomics, the standard assumption has always been that your goal, as a rational economic agent, is to maximize your preferences, which means you need to get as much stuff on the market that you like, based on your own tastes and preferences,” he said.

“We’re saying, “That’s not really in accord with what a good human being is all about. It should be about making economic choices that are good for you as a human being and good for human society as a whole.”

This more numbers-focused branch of the field, along with an interest in how resources, capital, and labor moved throughout the world economy, led Woodard to spend more time analyzing markets and investments.

“One of the ways that I found my way into finance was through curiosity about political philosophy and issues around global justice,” Woodard says. “One of the things that you talk about if you’re talking about John Rawls or Karl Marx or other political philosophers is questions of justice and distribution. And so I got more and more interested in learning macroeconomics and learning about how global markets worked.”

Woodard, who earned a master’s degree in theology from the University of Edinburgh in Scotland before enrolling at Fordham, believes that the breadth and plurality of Fordham’s philosophy department made this kind of shift in focus possible, noting that its emphasis on history and interdisciplinary thought made it unique among doctoral programs.

“I think they were one of the relatively few philosophy departments that still had their students take comprehensive exams covering the whole history of philosophy, from the ancients all the way through to the modern time,” Woodard recalls. “The requirement to be familiar with ancient philosophy and medieval philosophy, as well as modern and contemporary periods, meant that we were able to understand the common threads and through lines that have driven human inquiry throughout the ages,” a skill that plays out in his analysis of market trends and their context.

Building a Career, Finding Optimism

While pursuing his doctorate and with his growing interest in global markets, Woodard founded both Condor Options, a firm where he tested investment strategies on large data sets, as well as the publication Expiring Monthly, where he wrote about research into options and volatility trading strategies. This experience led him to post-Ph.D. jobs as a senior equity derivatives strategist at BGC Partners and a global investment strategist at Bank of America Merrill Lynch. His current role, which he began in October 2019, is as head of the research investment committee at Bank of America.

“My task is to help investors think about where to allocate their investments toward different asset classes, like stocks or bonds,” Woodard explains. “And to do that, a big part of my job is to try to make sense of what’s happening in the global economy and in the global market.”

While 2020 has presented challenges, including economic volatility, in the U.S. and throughout the world, Woodard says that there is reason for optimism when it comes to financial markets.

“There are so many people who are eager to make a contribution,” he says. “And if you get help to the people who need it, if you get resources to the students who want to learn, and training to the workers who want to work, I’m incredibly optimistic about the potential of the United States as an economy and as a culture.

“One of our big themes in our department is on the shift from globalization to more local and regional forms of production,” he adds, “being more thoughtful about where we produce things and how we produce them and who produces them. And if those trends continue and you start to see this more thoughtful shift … they can have some really positive implications for markets and investments.”

Maintaining Connections and Offering Help

Woodard has stayed involved with Fordham as a member of the Dean’s Leadership Committee at the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, and he has come back to campus to speak to students about postgraduate career paths beyond academia. He has also stayed in touch with a number of his professors and friends made through the program, including Joseph Koterski, S.J., associate professor of philosophy and editor in chief of International Philosophical Quarterly.

“Whether it’s the priests on campus or the faculty, I think that there are some connections that were deep enough that I’ve been really fortunate to maintain,” Woodard says. “Current students will reach out from time to time, whether for advice or connections, and I’m always happy to help in that way when I can.”

Robert O’Brien, FCRH ’53, GSAS ‘65, associate professor of philosophy emeritus, died last month from COVID-19 complications at age 88. He left behind a life story in which Fordham touched every role, from student to teacher to husband to father.

Raised in Queens, O’Brien enrolled at Fordham in 1949 through a city scholarship and developed an interest in modern philosophy, choosing it as a major. In 1959, the young doctoral student was hired full-time to teach philosophy at Fordham’s Manhattan campus, then located at 302 Broadway. 

According to O’Brien’s daughter Carol Haagensen, FCLC ’95, a Jesuit priest played matchmaker when Fordham hired a young female adjunct professor, Astrid Marie Ritchie, the same year.

“Here was this nice, single woman, and the Jesuit thought, what the heck? My father was of marriageable age  …  so he assigned them to share a desk,” Haagensen said.

O’Brien and Ritchie both taught evening classes. When the two professors would finish teaching for the night, O’Brien, who lived in Jackson Heights, Queens, would drive Ritchie home to Staten Island.

“One of my mom’s friends told her, ‘You know, nobody drives you all the way to Staten Island unless he’s very interested in you.’ I think that gave my mom a nudge,” said Haagensen.

The couple married in 1960. According to an article in the Fordham Observer, then-University President Laurence McGinley, S.J., sent them a $100 gift. With it, they purchased a desk on which they wrote their dissertations.

The O’Briens’ teaching careers at Fordham spanned more than 50 years. Those who worked with them said they were essential figures in Fordham College at Lincoln Center’s (FCLC) philosophy department.

When they started teaching, said Dean Emeritus of FCLC Robert Grimes, S.J., philosophy was not part of a core curriculum like it is today. Students had the option of taking either one philosophy or one theology course to complete the degree requirement.

 “They had to convince students to take philosophy, and they proved their worth to students successfully for many years,” he said. 

In addition to his full teaching schedule, O’Brien also worked as an assistant dean, performing well beyond the dictates of the two positions, Father Grimes said. In the 1980s, he added, O’Brien started a student research journal “long before the idea of student research became popular everywhere.”

“The journal was so much ahead of its time. He recognized the talent in students and wanted to encourage it. He was tremendously devoted to the good of the college.”

Colleagues recall O’Brien and his wife as people of deep Catholic faith who regularly attended Mass at the Lincoln Center campus. As part of his assistant dean’s role, O’Brien had to make up the campus’s academic calendar each year, said Leonard Nissim, Ph.D., an assistant professor of mathematics who retired in 2016. Nissim recalled pointing out to O’Brien that there are 14 possible mathematical combinations for any annual calendar; why didn’t O’Brien just do the 14 and reuse them?

“And Bob looked at me and said, ‘You forgot Easter. Easter changes every year, and it’s the most important day.’ And Bob was right. Easter’s date depends on the Vernal Equinox and full moon, not a calendar.

“Bob was a trifecta. Well-liked by deans, faculty, and students,” he added.

John Davenport, Ph.D., professor of philosophy, said O’Brien encouraged him when he was struggling to find his way as a new professor with a young family. O’Brien invited Davenport to teach modern philosophy even though it was a topic he loved to teach himself. 

“His support was a great help to me in my first two years,” said Davenport. “He was a gem of a human being [and]I feel eternally grateful to him,” he said. 

Although O’Brien was a scholar of modern philosophers such as René Descartes and Baruch Spinoza, his interest included other areas of philosophy, said Haagensen. He had a fascination for 19th-century transcendentalism, particularly the works of Henry David Thoreau, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and Bronson Alcott. Haagensen recalled her father taking her on a trip to Walden Pond.

“It was home-grown American,” she said. “And it was a nice way to make you realize that there were flesh-and-blood people who came up with these ideas.”

O’Brien retired from full-time teaching in 2009, but he continued to teach in Fordham’s College at 60 program. In 2010, after 50 years of marriage, he and Astrid renewed their wedding vows in Fordham’s Lincoln Center chapel among friends and family.

When Astrid passed away in 2016, said the couple’s daughter Frances O’Brien, FCLC ’86, her father was deeply moved by the University’s recognition of her. 

“Fordham was very much the center of my parents’ lives,” she said, “and a source of great pride for them both.”

Besides his two daughters, O’Brien is survived by a son, Robert J. O’Brien, and three grandchildren. A memorial service is on hold, said Frances O’Brien, due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

“When life gets back to normal, we can honor him with the kind of service he deserves,” she said.

—Janet Faller Sassi, GSAS ’10

“Herb Granath’s passing is a great loss to Fordham, and of course to his family and loved ones—and in the latter category I would include everyone who ever had the pleasure of meeting him,” said Joseph M. McShane, S.J., president of Fordham. “Herb brought to Fordham a steadiness of heart, openness of spirit, and a strong faith that there was a world of possibilities waiting over the horizon. His great gifts of heart, mind, and spirit were readily apparent whenever Fordham’s Board of Trustees convened: when he spoke, we all listened, and listened intently.”

Born and bred in Brooklyn, Granath started in the television industry as an NBC page during his college years and steadily climbed the ranks of entertainment juggernauts, moving from NBC to ABC to ESPN and the Broadway stage. He made his name in the then-nascent world of cable television, rising to become chairman of the board of ESPN (and later chairman emeritus) after ABC purchased the cable channel in 1984. He’s the recipient of two Tony Awards and six Tony nominations, an International Emmy Award for Lifetime Achievement in International TV, and a U.S. Emmy for Lifetime Achievement in Sports.

His career was a tribute to a liberal arts education. He parlayed an undergraduate education in physics to a graduate degree in communications, and spoke specifically to the value of both degrees in advancing his career.

“One of the reasons I enjoyed physics was looking into the essence of things,” he said in an interview with Fordham just before the University honored him with its Founder’s Award, adding that a course in logic was among the most influential he ever took. “It is amazing to me in American business how little a role logic plays. It has been a hallmark of the way I approach business.”

His stint working evenings as a page at NBC inspired the young Granath to pursue graduate work in communications at Fordham. What followed was a career that redefined an industry. But when he saw the page position pinned to a bulletin board at Dealy Hall, he didn’t even know what the job entailed. He simply needed the work to get through school.

He also credited financial aid with helping him get his degree. He continued to generously support Fordham throughout his life and served as an honorary co-chair of Fordham’s Excelsior | Ever Upward fundraising campaign.

“Without financial help, I never would have been able to attend Fordham. Supporting the campaign is one way for me to repay the moral grounding I received at the University, which has served me well over the years both in my business and personal lives,” said Granath, who was elected to Fordham’s board in 1993.

At ESPN, Granath backed his business savvy with a sports fan’s enthusiasm. And while his love of sports helped the network grow to become one of ABC’s single largest profit centers, his other interests also spurred networks that would become household names, including A&E, The History Channel, and Lifetime.

In its infancy, during the 1980s, A&E was truly an arts and entertainment network that featured opera from La Scala and ballet from Paris, Granath said.

“It was gorgeous stuff,” he said. “We were the darlings of the critics.”

He also helped ABC branch into theater, managing its investments in partnership with the Shubert Organization. The relationship gave the network first dibs on plays that might make good television series. Ironically, Granath told his bosses at the network that he didn’t necessarily see Broadway as a profit-making venture.

In an amusingly understated 2004 interview for the McGannon Center TV Oral History Project, Granath told Fordham communications professor Albert Auster, “We got into something very early called Cats, we got into something called Phantom of the Opera, we got into Les Miserables, we got into the things that really have over the years turned out large sums of revenue and, therefore, profits for those who invested.”

Amidst the glamour of stage and screen, Auster noted that Granath maintained a low-key demeanor in an industry filled with massive egos. When asked how he managed to remain unassuming and rise so swiftly, Granath credited Fordham.

“Everyone knows that if you’re a Fordham graduate, no matter what it says on that piece of paper, you really majored in philosophy,” he said, which allowed him to take a “bit of a different point of view” and stay focused on what matters, a trait that came in handy in the entertainment business’s notoriously meandering meetings.

“My first reputation was established, I think, when I would sit back and listen to all this babble, and then about 20 minutes or so into the meeting, I’d restate the reason for the meeting. And people would go, ‘Wow, that guy really has it together,’” he said with a chuckle. “It’s a very simple prescription for success, but I’m afraid it may be all that simple.”

Granath held a number of other leadership positions, including trustee of the American Museum of the Moving Image, president of the International Council of the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences, governor of the National Academy of Cable Programming, director of the International Radio and Television Society, and president of the Veterans’ Bedside Network. He served in the U.S. Army, assigned to Special Services as a writer/producer.

For all his success, Granath said business should always take a back seat to family.

“Business is business. It’s part of a life,” he told Auster. “The things that are the most important to me are the fact that I’ve got a wife and four young people that we brought into this world and they, in turn, now are forming their families.”

Granath is survived by his wife of 61 years, actress Ann Flood, and four children, Kevin Granath (Danielle), Brian Granath (Kathleen), Peter Granath (Elizabeth), and Karen Charlton (Michael). He also leaves behind 11 grandchildren: Nicole, Caroline, Will, Terence, Gavin, Farrell, Benjamin, Amanda, Leigh, Jane, and Nolan.