“Dr. C,” as students and colleagues knew him, served as a professor of economics, the University’s first faculty senate president, and an executive vice president during his 60-year-plus tenure.

“Joe was the beating heart of Fordham. He was supremely competent, tough-minded, and unfailingly kind and generous. He cared for the Fordham community deeply and was intensely loyal to the institution and its faculty, students, and staff,” said Joseph M. McShane, S.J., president of Fordham.

“Until the end, he was deeply involved in University life, and kept in touch with us as much as possible in his gentle but forceful way. We will all miss his sage advice and goodwill.”

Over many years and many leadership roles, Cammarosano contributed to major changes in the University’s finances, governance, and physical expansion.

He enrolled at Fordham as a freshman in 1941 and used to joke that he “only missed the first 100 years” of the University’s history. In 1975, on the occasion of his stepping down as executive vice president to return to teaching, James Finlay, S.J., then the University’s president, said, “If Fordham is alive and flourishing today, it is due to no one more than to Joe.”

Cammarosano was born on March 12, 1923, and raised in Mount Vernon, New York. Although he enrolled at Fordham in 1941, World War II interrupted his studies, and he served as a member of the Army Signal Corps until 1945, when he returned to Fordham. He graduated from Fordham College at Rose Hill in 1947 with a degree in economics and went to work as a U.S. customs inspector. After getting a master’s degree at NYU, he returned to Fordham, where he began teaching economics in 1955. He earned a doctorate from the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences in the subject in 1956.

Leadership During Turbulent Years

In 1961, he joined the Kennedy administration as an economist in the U.S. Bureau of the Budget, then moved on to the New York State Department of Taxation and Finance. When he returned to Fordham a few years later, he was elected as the first president of the newly formed faculty senate in 1965.

In 1968—a period of financial turmoil for the University—he was named executive vice president. He was one of the key figures in bringing Fordham back from the brink of bankruptcy. That year, the University was operating at $2 million deficit; by 1970, it had been transformed into a $2 million surplus, thanks in part to the advent of Bundy Aid (support for private colleges from New York state), the opening of what became Fordham College at Lincoln Center, and Cammarosano’s fiscal discipline.

Roger Wines, Ph.D., FCRH ’54, a professor emeritus of history at Fordham, served on Cammarosano’s budget committee at the time and worked with him as a member of the faculty senate.

“His committee … was told to cut the University budget 20% in three weeks,” Wines said at a 2015 dinner celebrating the 50th anniversary of the Faculty Senate. “He succeeded in meeting that goal, freezing salaries and hiring, slashing administrative costs and a number of positions. Not one classroom teacher was fired. Financial crisis was averted.”

Wines said Cammarosano also played a central role in helping the University make the difficult transition from Jesuit oversight to governance by a board of trustees with several lay members.

“Joe played an effective central role, because he gained the trust of the faculty, of the Jesuit community, and the lay adviser members of the Board of Trustees,” he said.

“That trust was vital in guiding the University through the tumultuous years 1968 to 70, years when the University faced financial bankruptcy, student unrest, religious reform currents relating to the Vatican II Council, and protests against the Vietnam War.”

In an interview with Fordham Magazine in 2015, Cammarosano recalled how his office was occupied by students several times in 1969 and 1970 as protests against the Vietnam War roiled the country.

“The students took over the switchboard at one point, and when someone called for me, they said, ‘No, he’s no longer with us, we fired him.’ I almost wished they had fired me!” he said, laughing.

Monsignor Thomas J. Shelley, Ph.D., professor emeritus of theology and the author of Fordham: A History of the Jesuit University of New York: 1841–2003 (Fordham University Press, 2016), noted that Father Finlay was not engaging in hyperbole when he told the Jesuits’ Superior General, Father Pedro Arrupe, S.J., in 1975 that Cammarosano was “the person mainly responsible for the survival of the University.”

“At a time when we had so much trouble with finances and campus demonstrations, he was a rock of strength,” he said.

“I think it’s true that was the worst financial crisis the University ever experienced. It was a time when the South Bronx was burning, and it had made it up to Fordham Road, so that was another factor.”

A Dynamic Teacher with Boundless Energy

In 1976, Cammarosano was honored at the University’s faculty convocation as an “exacting taskmaster” who earned his students’ appreciation by preparing “meticulously” and lecturing “dynamically.” Cammarosano served as executive vice president twice; the second time was to assist the newly appointed president of the University, Joseph A. O’Hare, S.J., who took office in 1984. But he returned to teaching once again.

E. Gerald Corrigan, GSAS ’65, ’71, a managing director of Goldman Sachs and a former president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, studied with Cammarosano during the 1960s, helping him produce economic studies of the Bronx and the Brooklyn Navy Yard.

“He’s a dynamo,” Corrigan told Fordham Magazine, recalling how his mentor would deliver “two-hour lectures nonstop at a fevered pitch.”

In 2017, when Cammarosano—then in his 62nd year as a member of the faculty—received an honorary degree at the University’s 172nd Commencement, his citation noted “the personal attention that he gives his students in the classical Jesuit model of cura personalis.”

Dominick Salvatore, Ph.D., a distinguished professor of economics who first met Cammarosano when he joined the economics faculty in 1971, remembered him as a gentleman, scholar, and all-around wonderful human being.

“The greatest compliment that students could pay to me was for them to tell me I reminded them of Joe Cammarosano,” he said.

“The students loved him and he was a rigorous teacher. He demanded things but was always jovial. I’m no young spring chicken myself, but very often I had to remind myself that I was talking to an over-90-year-old person because it was so easy to assume he was 65 or 70,” he said.

Mary Burke, Ph.D., a senior lecturer of economics, said that when one spoke to Cammarosano, he was so full of life and energy, one could be forgiven for assuming he’d be around forever.

“His office is next to mine, and every day he had classes, his office door would be open. He would be there until 5, 6, or 7 p.m. As long as there was a student who wanted to ask a question or just talk, he would be there for them,” she said, noting that conversations related to the Yankees could go on especially long.

“I met Dr. Cammarosano when I was a student. Now, I have known him as a mentor, advisor, and a dear friend.”

Cammarosano continued to teach well after many peers had retired, most recently in the fall of 2018. He submitted his formal letter of retirement in February. Matthew McCrane, GABELLI ’19, took Introduction to Macroeconomics with him, and recalled the boundless energy that belied his age.

“It was a privilege to have been taught by someone who has taught so many alumni before me. It was like I was experiencing a staple part of Fordham. In a way, it’s like I can connect with much older alumni as a result of having had him in class,” he said.

Making a Mark as an Administrator

Stephie Mukherjee, assistant dean and director of Fordham’s Higher Education Opportunity Program at Rose Hill (HEOP), called Cammarosano a “giant” and “Father of Fordham” for his outsized influence on the University. He was responsible for bringing HEOP to Fordham when the state program was created in 1969, and on numerous occasions, he stepped in to save it when funding was threatened, she said.

“He believed in the students, he believed in the underprivileged, he believed in people, and I’m grateful that he believed in me. He knew that this job is my passion, it’s not just a job,” she said.

“He was such a kindhearted, warm, wonderful person. He touched so many people’s lives.”

Sheldon Marcus, Ed.D., professor of educational leadership at the Graduate School of Education (GSE), recalls trying to get funds approved by Cammarosano in the 1970s to reimburse an administrator for weekend hours spent working. The paperwork for the request came back with Cammarosano’s bold script: “Rejected.”

When he went to see Cammarosano in his office, Marcus was greeted with more colorful language that seemed to indicate his case was lost. But then Cammarosano asked for the papers back, scratched out “rejected,” and added, “approved.”

Marcus said he started to leave, “happy to walk out of his office with my head still on.” But Cammarosano said, “Wait a minute.” He put his arm around Marcus and said, “Shelly, you’ve been working too hard, go home this weekend and don’t do another thing; get some rest.”

“He was just the most humane guy behind that tough rough exterior,” said Marcus. “It has been a pleasure to be at Fordham because of people like him; he just made it family.”

Family Above All

Cammarosano’s daughter Nancy Hartzband, FCRH ’77, LAW ’83, said her father was very connected to his own family, including his five grandchildren.

“I think it was such a good relationship because he dealt with young people his whole life, which he loved. He knew them one on one, he guided them, he was a very important figure in each of their lives,” she said.

“He set the bar really high for all of us in terms of morals. Whenever I’m in doubt, I ask, ‘What would my dad do?”

She too marveled at his stamina, noting that two years ago he published An Overview of the Development of Economic Thought (Lexington Books, 2018), the last of his three books about the ideas of economist John Maynard Kenyes.

“I mean, who does that? At that age, I’ll be happy to be sitting in my rocking chair,” she said laughing.

“But that was him. He always wanted to learn, he always wanted to do something new.”

Cammarosano still had an apartment in his native Mount Vernon, she said, but had recently moved in with his son in Island Park, New York.

She said her father was a devout Catholic who maintained his connection to Fordham for eight decades because he believed strongly in its Jesuit mission.

“We always knew we were very special because of the person he was at the University,” she said.

“He was just an incredible presence in our lives. He was almost larger than life.”

Cammarosano is survived by Hartzband and her three children as well as his son, Joseph R. Cammarosano, FCRH ’78, LAW ’81, Joseph’s wife, Mary, and their two children. Two of his grandchildren are alumni as well: Danielle Cammarosano, GABELLI ’19, and Alex Hartzband, LAW ’15. Cammarosano’s wife, Rosalie, died in 1991 and his son Louis T. Cammarosano, FCRH ’74, LAW ’78, died in 2014.

He was interred at the Gate of Heaven Cemetery in Hawthorne, New York, after a private funeral service. The University will also hold a memorial mass in his honor at a date in the future.

To hear Cammarosano talk about working and living in the Bronx over the years, listen to his interview with the Bronx Italian American History Initiative.

—Tom Stoeker contributed reporting.

“An economy that fails to serve a majority of its citizens is a failed economy. In that sense, ours is a failed economy,” Stiglitz said to a standing room only crowd at the Rose Hill campus.

“The median income of a full-time male worker is lower than it was 40 years ago,” he continued. “We’ve been telling people every generation gets better. It’s not true.”

His talk, “Restoring Equitable and Sustainable Economic Growth in the United States,” was part of the Department of Economic’s Nobel lecture series and was also a reunion. Fordham economics professor Dominick Salvatore, PhD, noted in his introduction it was almost 10 years to the day that the Columbia University professor last spoke at the University.

Stiglitz recounted several ways to measure how the U.S. economy is failing. The true unemployment rate, which is officially 4.9 percent, is more likely twice that—a fact that has contributed to virtually zero wage growth over the last year.

Medium household income, meanwhile, is less than 1 percent higher than it was in 1989, he said. And even though the United States has recovered from the financial crisis of 2008, 91 percent of income growth over the last few years has gone to the top 1 percent.

Not only is income inequality a moral problem, it’s also bad economics, he said.

The reason inequality is a problem is that, although those at the top spend a much higher percentage of their income than those at the bottom, there are not enough of them.

“So if you move money from the bottom of the pyramid to the top like we’ve been doing, aggregate demand goes down,” he said. “And the recession has made things even worse.”

He also made the case that markets are not a good mechanism for managing structural transformations like the one the country is in the middle of now, as it moves from a manufacturing economy to less capital-intensive industries. The last transformation happened in the wake of World War II, when the country abandoned its agrarian roots.

The transformation was helped along by government programs that encouraged more spending, such as the G.I. Bill, he said. Even though the country was much poorer than it is now, it was much more generous.

“Seventy years ago, we said we could afford four years, eight years at the most expensive schools in our country, for anybody. When President Obama proposed two years of college education for our poorest, many people said ‘We can’t afford it.’

“I think the answer is, we can’t afford not to do it now,” he said.

He laid out several proposals toward a better economy, including imposing a carbon tax to fight climate change, more investment in infrastructure, increasing some tax rates, and an end to de facto austerity.

He reiterated that income inequality and stagnant wage growth is due to politics, not sound economics. With trickle down economics policies in place since the 1980s, “we were told we were all going to be better off, and then when that didn’t happen, what were told was we just have to do more,” he said.

“We’ve now had a third of a century,” he said. “I think we can conclude that that experiment failed.”

Amartya Sen, Ph.D. Photo by Dana Maxson

Amartya Sen, Ph.D., the Nobel Prize winning economist and Harvard professor, arrived at Fordham’s Rose Hill campus after students had begun to leave for Easter break.

Even so, the turnout for his April 16 lecture at the Walsh Library saw dozens sitting on the floor and dozens more standing in the back of the Flom Auditorium.

Sen is perhaps best known as an economist, but his appearance attracted students of philosophy, music, business, as well as students from other area universities. His work on poverty, gender inequality, Indian history, and philosophy all played a role in his talk, “Why Do We Tolerate Poverty in a Rich World?”

Sen said he first encountered poverty as a child when the Bengal Famine of 1943 filled the region’s streets with the starving. Of the many horrors he witnessed, none struck him more than when he gave a banana to an “extremely emaciated woman with a severely skinny child on her lap.” The woman instinctively put the banana in her mouth, before spitting it out, bursting into a piercing cry, and then giving the banana to her child.

“We’re no longer human beings,” she told Sen. “Our instincts are worse than animals.”

Sen said the instinctual inhumanity on the part of the starving is mirrored by an inhumanity within middle and upper classes capable of ignoring the situation.

“How do so many secure people come to terms with the gruesomeness surrounding them?” he asked.

He said that ignorance certainly helps alleviate responsibility for some. But there are others who believe that humans are  “basically self-centered creatures” and that those hoping for change are “hopelessly romantic.”

Those who accept the “hypothesis of intractability” should be reminded that massive-scale poverty was brought under control in Europe, Asia, the United States, and more recently in Latin America, he said.

India’s average income today is about five times what it was under the British Raj, but the poverty is far more intense, he said. Despite the fact that 300 million people make up a thriving middle class, the country still lags in terms of providing education and healthcare to its citizens.

“There is very little understating how out-of-line India is compared to other developing nations,” he said.

Many blame the country’s ancient caste system for the intractable poverty. But such a conclusion would be an oversimplification of a complex problem, he said. He noted that the Indian state of Kerala had an unusually strong caste system that was upended after protests spurred changes. The state now has some of the best benefits in education and healthcare in the country.

Sen addressed an overflow crowd at the Flom Auditorium.

Rather, the “variance” of the caste system has muddied the focus of public reasoning—to which he laid a lion’s share of the blame on the mainstream national media.

“The silence of the media on the persistence of deprivation has been deafening,” he said. “It has played a gigantic role in keeping India grossly uninformed.”

He said that with India being the world’s largest democracy, media coverage of the problem is key to solving the problem. But coverage has been “distorted” as newspapers grumble about handouts and include angry reproaches on “fiscal irresponsibility.” Sen’s own economic analysis concludes that more subsidies go toward the rich than to the poor.

“As media denounces the subsidies to the poor, the country has missed out on the lessons of the so-called Asian experiences,” he said. “India is falling behind in living conditions even as it overtakes its competition in growth.”

He noted that Japan and South Korea made skillful use of advancements in education and healthcare to bring economic growth to their countries. And China can address issues like healthcare with breathtaking speed using a totalitarian approach, he said. As a democracy, India can and should make the case for change to its millions of voters.

“There is nothing authoritarian about providing healthcare, and it’s the practice of democracy that will allow us analyze it,” he said. “India is a democracy. When the problems are harder to understand they needs to be focused on by the media, and that’s critical.”

The Department of Economics and Distinguished Professor Dominick Salvatore, Ph.D., sponsored Sen’s visit as part of the Nobel Lecture Series.

The Jan. 30 alumni panel was moderated by Dominick Salvatore, Ph.D., Distinguished Professor and chair, Department of Economics, and featured Sherif T. Assef, Ph.D., FCRH ’81, GSAS ’82, GSAS ’94, managing director, Duff & Phelps; 
Mary Ann C. Bartels, GSB ’85, GSAS ’92, managing director, Bank of America Merrill Lynch; and Matthieu Royer, GSAS ’94, managing director, Credit Agricole Corporate and Investment Bank.

Without mincing words, Salvatore outlined the 2008 crisis that led the nation toward the financial cliff.

“The Securities and Exchange Commission was asleep at the wheel,” he said. “Anyone who remembers seeing [Christopher] Cox, the head of the Securities and Exchange Commission, testify in front of Congress, could tell you the person was completely incompetent.”

Salvatore said the crisis began in the investment banking sector, which “was not well regulated… and those regulations that existed were not applied.” An atmosphere of “profits at all costs” pervaded, and, while much of the behavior was legal, it was unethical.

Looking at where the nation is now, Salvatore gave a grim assessment, describing the situation as being “somewhere between fiscal cliffs.” Assef concurred, adding that the situation will probably go on for quite some time.

Overall, Assef noted serious concerns as to whether a polarized U.S. government is capable of, or willing to, deal with the county’s most important long-range problem—a looming “explosion in medical costs.”

He made a distinction between current deficits, mid-term deficit outlook, and the long-term outlook of 20-30 years in the future, saying that the current and mid-term debts are largely cyclical by nature and somewhat manageable.

“It’s a problem, but I don’t think its a disaster,” he said.

Long-term, however, he predicted that medical care could wreak havoc on the economy. He said that rising Medicare costs will take away a certain amount of economic choice, and that, as has been noted by other commentators, could lead the country into becoming “an assisted living facility with an army.”

The notion of an implacable government unable to address serious issues was also a concern for Royer, who said that politics can exacerbate the problems when politicians spend most of their time concentrating on getting reelected every two years, and legislating only six months.

Regarding retirement, he said the systems in place are outmoded. Today’s young will be relying a Social Security system that was designed at a time when people started putting money into the system earlier and died soon after retirement.

Bartels said that she was concerned that the lack of good jobs and a general sense of pathos has led many young people to cast a leery eye on education as well.

“What I don’t like hearing is that people are starting to question the price of education, that our students are coming out and they can’t find jobs, so why should they get educated?” said Bartels. “I’m concerned that is going to become a trend, because I learned a long time ago the value of my education. I hope we don’t create a culture where more [young people]want to start work at Starbucks or Chipotle and don’t want to get a degree.”

Despite the aforementioned crisis, Royer said he is optimistic that college graduates will find work, provided they have the skill set employers require.

“Look at what classes you choose, are they directly usable on the day-to-day job that you will be hired for, and if the answer is no, than maybe you need to add a bit more of those and maybe a little less of art history,” he said, before adding, “unless you want to work at Southeby’s.”

To view the event’s Twitter feed, including tweets from GSAS Dean @buschnancy click here:#economicsRT

Father Egan, a native of Cape Town, was referring to the Emerging Markets program being offered by the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences’ (GSAS) economics department. It is part of two exchange programs being offered by Fordham in partnership with the University of Pretoria.

Father Egan acts as both programs’ spiritual liaison.

For undergraduates, Fordham College at Rose Hill runs the Ubuntu Program, a service-learning program designed to allow students to take credit courses while providing opportunities for public service.

The relatively quick success of the two Fordham programs bodes well for future endeavors, said Dean Nancy Busch, Ph.D., dean of GSAS and Fordham’s chief research officer. She said the University is already looking to build on new relationships across several departments and disciplines, including history, theology, biology, post-doctorate research in genetics, and agriculture sciences. In a very customized approach, individual Fordham graduate students will be matched up with Pretoria mentors, and vice versa.

The two initial programs got their start in 2008 after Fikile Magubane, South Africa’s then-consul general in New York, reached out to several universities, including Fordham, in an effort to build exchanges.

“We turned out to be the most aggressive institution and immediately sent a delegation,” said Booi Themeli, Ph.D., clinical assistant professor and coordinator of both programs.

South Africa-born Themeli said that the University of Pretoria, once a “breeding ground” for apartheid leadership, now runs an internationally respected business school, the Gordon Institute of Business Science, which is attractive to Fordham for promoting student exchange.

But for all the changes, South Africa remains a country in flux. Divisions that were once racial are now economic, said Dominick Salvatore, Ph.D., Distinguished Professor of Economics, chair of the department and director of its graduate program.

Salvatore headed to Pretoria this month on an honorary professorship, and will be giving a series of lectures at the university and throughout the country. The Mapungubwe Institute for Strategic Reflection, a South African think tank comprising research and policymaking experts, has invited him to be a fellow.

“Unfortunately, not much improvement has been made since apartheid. Inequality is almost as high as it was before,” said Salvatore.

Despite a youth unemployment rate hovering at 47 percent, and an overall unemployment rate near 20 percent, South Africa has growth opportunities, said Salvatore. The economy is the most advanced in Africa and has the highest per-capita income on the continent, barring oil-rich Libya.

“South Africa faces a duality. They have a superstructure that is advanced,” Salvatore said, referencing healthy banking and business sectors and a well-developed infrastructure, “but most of the economy is not advanced.”

The problems are primarily twofold: slow growth and disenfranchised youth. He proposed a two-track solution, one that addresses growth and calls for immediate intervention to address the youth crisis.

“The society will need to grow fast, but growth is a long-term process,” he said. “However, the youth problem can’t wait. They need to do something immediately; it’s a volcano ready to explode.”

Salvatore also said that the country’s powerful unions, once major players in the struggle against apartheid, will need to make compromises with businesses if the country is to move forward.

With poverty and AIDS among the country’s seemingly intractable problems, a service-learning program like Ubuntu is a natural fit, but why study economics in Pretoria and not London or Frankfurt?

“To put it bluntly, you could study in big world financial capitals, but [by]going to South Africa you see the other side,” said Father Egan. “The great games of the global economy come at a great cost, you can see that here in stark relief, and [you can]reflect on those decisions.”

Father Egan prepares Fordham students for their journey through beginning and end-of-term retreats. He teaches a core course in the Ubuntu program, The Story of South Africa, in which students read books by J.M. Coetzee and André Brink, and watch films like Cry Freedom.

Once initiated, the Fordham students bring New York-style integration to Pretoria.
“We’re in a melting pot, so cultural diversity is already here, we know about it, and the new South Africa is in transition to what we already have,” said Themeli.

The Emerging Markets master’s program students—half from Pretoria and half from Fordham—compare data on the South African economy with other emerging and established markets. Each student writes a paper on the nation’s economic prospects.

But what at first glance appears to be a simple economics lab holds underlying lessons, said Father Egan.

“Many of the [South African] students that the Fordham students meet are from poor areas,” he said. “I hope the programs will bring out the element of justice. It’s not that they should find a simplistic solution, but that they develop a desire to find a solution.”

The nation’s 2012 economic forecast calls for about 2 percent growth, said Distinguished Professor of Economics Dominick Salvatore, Ph.D. That simply isn’t enough to put six million Americans who have lost jobs since the 2008 recession back to work, he said at an economics roundtable sponsored by the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences.

“The U.S. has done everything possible to overcome the crisis,” he said. “Interest rates are low and we have provided liquidity. In our fiscal policy, we’ve taken on incredible budget deficits in a non-war period—this is the most powerful expansionary fiscal policy since 1946.

“Still, we have not grown.”

Salvatore and a panel of Fordham alumni working in the economic sector were largely in agreement on the causes of U.S. woes: outsourcing of jobs, unsustainable deficit and public debt, too much economic uncertainty for investors, an undervalued Chinese Yuan, and a looming European debt crisis.

Mary Ann Bartels, GSB ’85, GSAS ’92, managing director and head of U.S. Technical and Market Analysis Global Research at Merrill Lynch, said that the nation is undergoing a “deleveraging” process in the banking, consumer and government sectors. The financial sector is still broken from the housing bubble and will most likely take about six years to clear the supply in order to bring demand back.

“When we look at forecasting the economy at my firm, the word we use is ‘muddle through,’” she said.

Furthermore, she said, the resulting structural unemployment could have long-lasting effects on how Americans view opportunity and the hope for a better life.

“The problem of unemployment is not with the latter ages, it is with our youth who are graduating and can’t find jobs—that unemployment rate is 25 to 30 percent,” she said. “That is the part of the population you really want to get employed.”

China may be a sleeping giant with manipulated currency, but it is not attracting the foreign direct investment that the United States does, said Joseph P. Quinlan, GSAS ’84, managing director and chief market strategist for Bank of America Capital Management.

In 2011, Quinlan said, the U.S. attracted $213 billion in foreign investment—twice the amount of China—largely because the U.S. is a much more consumption-driven economy than China is and is more protective of intellectual property, among other reasons.

“I wish the president would talk about insourcing instead of outsourcing,” he said. “Bring [more]foreign companies here. It creates jobs.”

For investors, emerging markets—those where the ratio of debt to GDP is low at approximately 30 percent—will offer some long-term growth opportunity, said Thomas D. Higgins, Ph.D., GSAS ’02, global macro strategist and senior vice president of Standish BNY Mellon.

“But you have to be willing to ride the wave,” he said. “Because there will be volatility until the advanced economies have managed to get back to where they are no longer carrying unsustainable debt.” Currently, the U.S. debt exceeds 100 percent of its GDP.

Salvatore said that his family brought him to the United States when he was young for a better life. He reflected on the fate of today’s young Americans, who are facing mountains of debt, slow economic growth, and double-digit unemployment.

“For me, this was a country of opportunity, of education, and of dreams,” he said. “If young people today can’t (even) find a job, there will be crisis of hope.”

The group attended the Macy’s fireworks display as the finale of a cultural/academic experience that marked, for some, the first time they left the African continent or set foot on a plane.

“I’ve seen fireworks before,” said Peter Maibelo, a post-graduate student at UP, “but . . .  here in America on July 4, they’re something not to be missed.”

Maibelo and nine other University of Pretoria students arrived in late May to earn certificates in Fordham’s Emerging Markets and Country Risk Analysis Program and to experience American culture via New York.

The men and women, who left July 5, were co-sponsored by the consul general of South Africa. They lived on campus in Tierney Hall and, in their spare time, saw much of what the City had to offer.

“Two shows in five weeks! Broadway was amazing,” said Bridgette Layloo, a post-graduate student of economics at UP. “Back home, we don’t really go to theatre.”

“Living in the Bronx was great,” said Maibelo. “It helped us to see another side of the U.S. than what you see in the movies.”

The students also were invited to informational sessions at the city’s leading financial houses, including J.P. Morgan and Credit Suisse.

Fordham’s UP Students in Times Square on June 11.

But UP economics professor Reyno Seymore, who acted as a chaperone, singled out as the trip’s highlight a June 11 visit to the NASDAQ Times Square trading floor to kick off the 2010 FIFA World Cup, opening in their native South Africa, The students joined South African Consul General Fikile Magubane in ringing the opening bell.

“We missed the opening ceremony in South Africa,” said Bernard Mohlakwana, a UP graduate student in economics, “but we had a different kind of opening ceremony right here.”

Following the NASDAQ opening, the visiting students walked from Times Square to New York’s Paley Center for Media to watch the match.

“We were blowing on our Vuvuzellas and wearing our South African t-shirts,” said Maibelo. “Everybody was staring at us and smiling, and it made up for our not being home.”

UP student Peter Maibelo and GSAS student Oudolapo Fakeye were roomates in TIerney Hall.

A few Fordham students joined the South Africans on their outings. GSAS graduate student Loren James enjoyed the chance to go backstage at Chicago, and to visit Washington D.C., where the group toured the Capitol and visited the United States Agency for International Development.

“I would never be able to do these things on my own, so this program has helped me,” said James, who in August 2009 was among the first Fordham students to attend a summer session at UP. “Being able to share Fordham with them—and especially those places they might not get to see otherwise—has been worthwhile.”

Mohlakwana said he found the coursework in risk analysis particularly relevant to his future plans. Each student had to choose a country to study, and Mohlakwana chose Tanzania, which he analyzed for its strength as an emerging developing market.

“Africa is on the verge of becoming the next big emerging market, and I want to be there and see it through,” he said. “This was my first time off the African continent, and I am taking a lot home with me.”

Oudolapo Fakeye, a GSAS student in economics who took classes with the students, agreed.

“What Fordham is doing is monumental,” he said. “It has offered a course on emerging markets and so many African markets are primed to be very big over the next few decades. South Africa is at the forefront. It shows great promise and has political stability. So an exchange between Fordham and UP students is very significant.”

Seymore said that both Fordham and UP have begun listing each institution’s economics faculty members and their areas of expertise, hoping to match up those professors with similar interests. For Seymore, it was a “thrill” to meet Dominick Salvatore, Ph.D., Distinguished Professor of Economics and the author of International Economics, the textbook that Seymore routinely uses in his UP classes.

“It’s our hope that UP and Fordham will end up with some joint research, which would be good for both institutions,” said Seymore, a specialist in environmental economics and international trade.

Dominick Salvatore has a way of getting people to listen to him. This past summer, even the Pope was willing to lend him an ear.

Salvatore is a Distinguished Professor of Economics, director of Fordham’s Graduate Program in Economics and quite possibly the University’s most prolific author. He recently returned from a sabbatical that took him to the Vatican, where he gave a presentation on “Globalization, Growth, Poverty and World Governance” and received a personal audience the following day with Pope Benedict XVI.

The Pontiff was eager to hear his ideas about globalization, one of the least understood and most contentious subjects affecting the world.

“What they were primarily interested in is really the fault of governance,” Salvatore said. “The economy of the world is globalizing, but there is no political system to make it work better. The poor nations that have globalized have grown rapidly and faster than the rich nations, thus reducing differences. It is the poor countries that did not globalize that did not grow, and became relatively poorer.”

It’s an idea that Salvatore promoted at lectures and seminars during a summer-long swing that took him through Austria, Italy, Germany, Singapore and Vancouver, Canada. His invitation to the Vatican came after he impressed Vatican officials at the United Nations in November 2006 with a lecture titled “Information Technology and Growth in LDCs.” That talk addressed the widening technological chasm that has emerged between advanced and developing countries.

“They are poor, and they’re technologically so backward that we need to do something to help them catch up,” he said.

Joining him at his May 18 audience with the Pope were three scholars with similar expertise, including a former trade minister from Germany who has studied the effects of how tariffs hold back developing countries and a Gregorian University professor who discussed how globalization has the power to destroy cultures.

Salvatore’s overriding message, which he has honed over his 35-year career at Fordham, was that institutions such as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund need to be strengthened so they can provide protection to poor nations the way that the Environmental Protection Agency keeps American companies from dumping waste in poor U.S. neighborhoods.

“The Pope said the ideas are very interesting, and a little different from the teachings of the Catholic Church, which relies primarily on helping the poor. And the feeling among some of the Cardinals is, ‘Help them, but to help them help themselves is even better,’” Salvatore said. “Globalization is important because it increases productivity; it increases efficiency; we cannot run away from it; and it is not unethical or ethical. It only looks at efficiency.”

But Salvatore, who also edited the ninth edition of his leading textbook International Economics while on sabbatical, cautioned that real change needs to come from countries such as the United States.

“The World Bank is controlled mostly by the rich countries and the IMF. So if the IMF demands certain things of developing countries, it’s because the countries that they represent are asking them to do this,” he said.