He also earned the homage any reflective opinion writer should pursue: Fair.

I met Father O’Hare while I was The Ram’s editor in 1984 and he was transitioning into a new career. We were both outsiders. I was billed as the first commuter to become editor. He came to academia from a stint as editor of America, an opinion magazine for which he wrote the column “Of Many Things.”

“I was engaged in telling the world how to behave,” he liked to say.

I wasn’t big on opinion back then, and through much of my journalism career I stood firmly on the facts side of the newsroom wall. These days I facilitate public opinion and write editorials and a column named “Look at it this Way,” a nod to the importance of alternate perspectives.

A few days after his inauguration that fall, Father O’Hare sat for a lengthy interview we published in a special section of The Ram. Executive Editor Dan Vincelette and I weren’t sure what to expect, but Father O’Hare played host like we were members of a secret journalism club. He even shared gossip about legendary advice columnist Ann Landers pursuing him as a possible consultant to help her answer letters.

He put us so at ease that we showed a little hubris in opening the Q-and-A by asking, “Why does Joe O’Hare deserve an inauguration when no other president in the last 50 years has had one?”

While researching his background, we learned he was tagged at America with the nickname “Joe Cool.” We learned why during the interview. No query caused him to flinch, even when we challenged him about divesting holdings from South Africa or about the university declining to recognize the student group Fordham Lesbians and Gays. (He pledged to combat discrimination, but hedged at official approval. Today, Fordham hosts two student groups, the Pride Alliance and the Rainbow Alliance, as well as the Rainbow Rams alumni chapter).

He invited us to gaze into his crystal ball, citing a need to invest in the Rose Hill library (“We really have to do something about it”). It was a promise fulfilled with the debut of the William D. Walsh Family Library 13 years later, a fitting legacy for this man of words.

The conversation continued after the notebooks closed, but Father O’Hare took over asking the questions. An outdoor modern art installation on campus faced hostility from students, and he invited our opinion. He expressed appreciation for our insights. I appreciated being heard.

Lessons that day—and in ones to follow—linger as a master class in the art of rhetoric, of candor, of transparency.

Father O’Hare told us he hoped to be at the helm for at least seven years. He stayed for 19, the longest tenure in the university’s 179 years.

“The trick is to make Fordham [be] perceived as a national institution but keep the character that is distinctly New York,” he said in framing his vision.

He pulled off the trick. That’s not just an opinion.

—John Breunig, FCRH ’85, is the editorial page editor and a columnist for The Stamford Advocate and Greenwich Time.

Father O’Hare succeeded James C. Finlay, S.J., on July 1, 1984, to become the 31st president of Fordham University. He held that position for 19 years, making him the longest-serving president in Fordham’s history when he stepped down on June 30, 2003. His tenure marked a period of dramatic growth for Fordham: Applications soared in number; the student body grew academically stronger and more diverse; residential and academic space expanded; and the University exceeded the goal of its first comprehensive fundraising campaign, the crowning achievement of which was the creation of the William D. Walsh Family Library on the Rose Hill campus.

“Having served as Fordham’s president for some time—though not as long as Father O’Hare—I have some insight into, and a deep appreciation for, how gifted he was as a leader, a communicator, and a pastor,” said Joseph M. McShane, S.J., who succeeded Father O’Hare as president of Fordham. “He placed all of his considerable intellect, integrity, and vision in service of the University, and in doing so transformed Fordham into a powerhouse of Jesuit education. We will miss his wisdom, steady counsel, and warm wit.”

Robert D. Daleo, GABELLI ’72, chair of the University’s Board of Trustees, said the Fordham community owes Father O’Hare “a debt of gratitude for his long and singular service.”

“Father O’Hare led the University for 19 years, and despite some tough financial times, began Fordham’s rebirth as a national university,” he said.

Bronx Roots

A bit of an outsider to academia, Father O’Hare was working as the editor in chief of America, the Jesuit journal of opinion, when he was recruited for the presidency by Fordham’s Board of Trustees.

But the son of first-generation Irish Americans was hardly an outsider to Fordham, the Bronx, or to Catholic education. He was born on February 12, 1931, to Joseph, a New York City mounted police officer, and Marie, a schoolteacher, who raised their family in the close-knit Irish community of Tremont, just two miles from the Rose Hill campus. He attended Regis High School in Manhattan.

In a video tribute to Father O’Hare when he received the Fordham Founder’s Award in 2003, friends, teachers, and siblings recalled the young Joe O’Hare as a well-loved classmate with an easy demeanor, a straight-A student, and a natural storyteller.  Although his exploratory forays into theater and basketball at Regis met with success, it was the priesthood that ultimately called to him: Upon graduating from high school in 1948, he joined the Society of Jesus.

Jesuit Formation

That decision, Father O’Hare told The New York Times, was largely inspired by the work of John Corridan, S.J., and the labor priests of the 1940s New York waterfront. “It’s not an otherworldly kind of spirituality,” Father O’Hare said of the Jesuits’ active faith. “It’s the kind very geared to involvement in the present time.”

The young Jesuit-in-training was sent to the Philippines, where he earned his bachelor’s and master’s degrees at Berchmans College in Cebu City. From 1955 to 1958 and again from 1967 to 1972, he served on the faculty at Ateneo de Manila University.

Edmundo Martinez, S.J., recalled being a student of Father O’Hare’s in the 1950s.

‘Those were heady days of youth’s idealism for the search of truth, and goodness, and beauty—ideals that rubbed off on us principally, for myself at least, from Joe O’Hare,” said Father Martinez, co-founder, chaplain, and teacher at the Ingenium School in the Philippines. “Like Socrates and his friends, we would sit around in class and discuss such topics as the medieval universities, with Joe leading us on to ever deeper levels and ever wider ranges of meaning.”

Between teaching posts, Father O’Hare returned to the United States, earning licentiate degrees in philosophy and theology in the early 1960s from Woodstock College in Maryland and a doctorate in philosophy from Fordham in 1968. He was ordained a Roman Catholic priest in 1961 in the Fordham University Church.

Fordham Presidency

Sixteen years after his doctoral studies, he left his post at America and was back at Fordham—this time in the Office of the President.

“He made the transition seamlessly,” said Leo O’Donovan, S.J., president emeritus of Georgetown University. “At a time of major discussion between the Vatican and American Catholic universities on the mission of Catholic education,” he said, “he was one of the foremost advocates of fidelity to both true Catholicity and true university freedom of thought and research.”

His presidency took shape just as the Bronx itself was undergoing an economic and cultural comeback from its worst period of blight. Under Father O’Hare’s leadership, Fordham experienced a comeback too. In two decades, the school’s growth exceeded national trends, moving from a school largely attended by commuters to a university with a vibrant campus life and an increasingly national and diverse student body. The number of undergraduate applicants tripled.

The school’s endowment rose from $36.5 million to $271.6 million, enabling the addition of approximately 1.1 million square feet of academic and residential space, and the renovation of more than 1 million square feet of existing space on the Lincoln Center and Rose Hill campuses. Four new residence halls were built at Rose Hill, including Millennium Hall, opened in 2000 and later renamed O’Hare Hall. The Lincoln Center campus saw the addition of its first residence—the 20-story McMahon Hall—in 1993.

In 1991, the University’s sesquicentennial year, Father O’Hare announced the launch of a $150 million fundraising campaign—the largest of its kind at the time for a Jesuit university.  Nearly one-quarter of all alumni contributed, and more than two-thirds of funds raised came from individuals, many of whom had no previous connection to the University. The campaign helped to create 170 endowed scholarships as well as several new faculty chairs. Fordham surpassed its goal by $5.6 million.

One of the campaign’s many successes—and one of Father O’Hare’s outstanding legacies—was the construction of the Walsh Family Library, a world-class facility that opened in 1997 at Rose Hill and was subsequently ranked No. 6 in the country in the Princeton Review.

Robert Campbell, GABELLI ’55, former vice chairman of Johnson & Johnson who served as Fordham’s board chair during much of the 1990s, said that as a leader, Father O’Hare showed a “willingness to take risks.” He recalled Father O’Hare telling him that Fordham had been talking about building a new library for 50 years.

“He went to the board with it and they went along,” he said. “It was very symbolic, because it was tied to a major campaign and because it said Fordham’s on the move. New York was a tough place, and we were there to compete with anyone.”

Campbell said Father O’Hare’s determination was complemented by “his sincerity and his sense of humor that always came through.”

As a native New Yorker and a Jesuit committed to social justice, Father O’Hare saw great potential in a stronger unification of Fordham’s two New York City campuses, which he helped achieve through the restructuring of faculty and adoption of a shared core curriculum. He felt that each location had much to teach students.

“Fordham men and women have found in the city rich cultural resources, but also daunting moral and social challenges, soaring celebrations of the human spirit here at Lincoln Center, but also a summons to service in the neighborhoods of the Bronx. These different faces of the city engage the classical Renaissance humanism of Jesuit education, but also the new Jesuit humanism that adds to this classic ideal the urgency of education for justice,” he said at Fordham’s 160th Anniversary Dinner at the New York State Theater in 2002.

Influence and Reach

Father O’Hare’s influence extended far beyond Fordham and New York City in many ways, not least of which are the accomplishments of those who worked for him.

“In his 19 years as president, he helped mentor many Fordham colleagues into their own presidencies, including me,” said Fordham Trustee Donna Carroll, Ph.D., University secretary under Father O’Hare and current president of Dominican University in Chicago. “He said something to me once that guides me still: ‘You choose to see the limits or the possibility in Catholic higher education. What you choose determines how you lead.’”

Demonstrating a commitment to Fordham’s many Catholic traditions, Father O’Hare helped establish Fordham’s Center for American Catholic Studies, the Institute of International Humanitarian Affairs, and the Laurence J. McGinley Chair in Religion and Society, for which he recruited Avery Dulles, S.J. (before he was elevated to cardinal). He made many international trips in service to Fordham and the Jesuits, traveling to 26 countries during his presidency.

Principled Civic Leadership

Father O’Hare devoted equal time to forging Fordham’s relationships with New York City. In 1988, Mayor Edward I. Koch made him the founding chair of the New York City Campaign Finance Board, one of the nation’s groundbreaking models for campaign finance reform. So ethical was Father O’Hare’s leadership, said Mayor Koch, that the board even fined his mayoral staff for errors made in campaign contribution reporting. Father O’Hare held the position for 15 years. In late 1993, Mayor David N. Dinkins refused to reappoint Father O’Hare after the board fined the Dinkins campaign $320,000. But Mayor Rudolph Giuliani reappointed him when he took office in 1994.

“It could’ve been a nothing job if it didn’t have a superb leader willing to take on every person in politics,” said Mayor Koch. “He made the job.”

U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor worked with Father O’Hare as one of the Campaign Finance Board’s founding appointees.

“Father O’Hare is one of my heroes,” said Sotomayor, a Bronx native who has remained close to Fordham, receiving an honorary degree at 2014’s commencement and attending many University events. “Brilliant, witty, kind, gentle but firm, he lived his life caring and giving to so many. The nation, the city of New York, and the Bronx have lost a great man.  I have lost a friend I greatly admired but whose principles continue to guide my life.”

Former Mayor Michael Bloomberg praised Father O’Hare for his integrity.

“Father O’Hare not only began a renaissance at Fordham, he helped clean up corruption in city politics as the founding chair of the Campaign Finance Board,” Bloomberg said. “Appointing him to that post was one of Mayor Koch’s best decisions. He was scrupulously honest, fiercely independent, and never afraid to speak his mind, even when it rubbed elected officials the wrong way. Thanks to him, the city’s public matching funds program, which I was glad to expand, became a national model. In a city of legendary Irish pols, one of the very best never ran for office—but he left a mark on politics like no other.”

Mayor Koch joined several celebrities, religious leaders, and alumni to pay tribute to Father O’Hare when he received the 2003 Fordham Founder’s Award. Present were Cardinal Edward Egan; Cardinal Dulles; best-selling author and Fordham alumna Mary Higgins Clark; CBS newsman and Fordham alumnus Charles Osgood; and Fordham’s incoming 32nd president, Father McShane.

Accepting the award, Father O’Hare—a proud Irishman and humorist—characterized the ceremony.

“It’s something like an Irish wake,” he joked. “Everybody should have one before they die.”

Fordham’s Pastor

Father O’Hare was more than the University president; he was Fordham’s chief pastor and storyteller. During his tenure, he celebrated more than 7,000 Masses, including a Mass of Remembrance and Hope following the attacks on September 11, 2001, which killed three Fordham students and 36 alumni. He performed countless nuptials, burials, and baptisms for members of the Fordham community. He awarded more than 60,000 diplomas and cheered at more than 900 athletics events.

John Feerick, dean emeritus of Fordham Law, recalled Father O’Hare’s pastoral and professional support.

“Father O’Hare meant everything to me when I served as dean of the Law School. He supported me in difficult moments and was always a wise counselor on academic issues and public service undertakings. We owe much to him for the success the school enjoys today,” Feerick said.

“More personally, I will always remember that he was on the altar when my parents died and 10 years later when my brother Donald died.  And how can I forget the many times we walked alongside each other in St. Patrick’s Day parades? I watched people wave and call out to him as he waved back with a smile, all while maintaining his quick stride. In everything he was insightful and brought to every occasion a wonderful sense of humor. I will greatly miss him as I had no other friend like him.”

After he stepped down as president in 2003, Father O’Hare served for one year as president of Regis High School, his alma mater. He then returned to the staff of America as associate editor, retiring in 2009. In 2015, with Fordham as a co-sponsor, the magazine established the Joseph A. O’Hare, S.J., Postgraduate Media Fellowship in his honor.

Father O’Hare was the recipient of 11 honorary degrees, including one from Fordham. He served as chairman of both the Association of Catholic Colleges and Universities and the Association of Jesuit Colleges and Universities, a trustee of the Asia Society, and a member of the Charter Revision Commission of the City of New York, among other appointments. For his contributions to the city, he received the 1992 Civil Leadership Award from the Citizens Union of New York. Legendary New York Post columnist Jack Newfield called Father O’Hare “the conscience of campaign finance reform and walking gravitas,” ranking him 44th on a list of “New York’s 50 Most Powerful People” in 1997.

A few years before he left his post as president, Father O’Hare spoke to radio listeners about St. Ignatius Loyola, founder of the Jesuits: “I have always preferred the image of Ignatius the Pilgrim to Ignatius the Soldier,” he said on WFUV’s Fordham Focus on July 30, 2000. “Ignatius the Pilgrim undertook a journey to seek the will of God, searching to discern what the greater glory of God demanded of him and his companions. Such a search, of course, will always challenge the status quo. What has been and what is can never exhaust the vision of what could be and what should be.”

Father O’Hare was preceded in death by his parents; his brother, Gerard O’Hare; and his sister, Marie Scesney. He is survived by nine nieces and nephews and several great-nieces and nephews. A private burial will be held in Jesuit Cemetery, Auriesville, New York. Once the present health crisis has passed, a memorial Mass for Father O’Hare will be celebrated in the University Church. Contributions in his honor may be made to the Joseph A. O’Hare Endowed Scholarship Fund at Fordham. Notes of condolence may be mailed to his niece Claire Scesney Lundahl at 247 East 77 Street, Apt. 5C, New York, NY 10075.

Additional Tributes to Father O’Hare

The Rev. Edward A. “Monk” Molloy, C.S.C., President Emeritus, Notre Dame
Joe O’Hare was a multifaceted leader—as priest, editor, writer, and teacher.  Blessed with a great sense of humor, he was a person of vision with a strong international perspective and a deep commitment to Gospel values and human rights. He and I had some wonderful adventures together. He will be deeply missed.

The Rev. John Cecero, S.J., Provincial of the Jesuits’ USA Northeast Province
Father O’Hare was president of Fordham when I began my tenure as an assistant professor of psychology at the University. I had only known him previously through his work as editor in chief of America magazine, and despite his lofty pedigree as a widely respected intellectual, institutional chief executive, and civic leader in New York City campaign reform, he humbly and graciously welcomed me as a new Fordham Jesuit to meet with him to discuss my preliminary research interests and even to solicit some funding to support them! Joe led with insight, wit, and uncompromising loyalty to the Society of Jesus and our mission in higher education, and I will always be grateful for the inspiration that he imparted to me and to so many other Jesuits and lay colleagues at Fordham University.

Paul Guenther, FCRH ’62, Former President of Paine Webber, Former Chairman of the New York Philharmonic, and Former Chair of Fordham’s Board of Trustees
Whenever Joe O’Hare was present, there was an aura which everyone felt. He was an iconic New Yorker, a pastor, and a friend.

Tom Kane, GABELLI ’61, Retired Investment Banker, Former Fordham Board Chair
My long friendship with Father Joe O’Hare began when I joined the Fordham board as a trustee in 1986. We kept a friendly banter going between our two alma maters, Regis and Xavier high schools, throughout our time together.

In 1986, after joining the board, my wife, Judy, and I traveled to Manila for a reception hosted by a fellow trustee, Jose Fernandez, who at the time was minister of finance for the Philippines. The high point of the visit was an audience with the new president, Cory Aquino. Father Joe had been ordained at the Ateneo de Manila and so was friendly with her.  (Yes, after the meeting, we did get a Cook’s tour of the shoe collection of Imelda Marcos.)

During the visit, Father O’Hare issued an invitation for President Aquino to visit Fordham while in New York for the opening of the U.N. in September. She graciously accepted.

With the ascension of Mrs. Aquino to the presidency, Philippine nationalism in the world became renowned. On September 22, 1986, Fordham held a special convocation in honor of President Aquino’s visit to Rose Hill. She was presented with an honorary doctorate.

Edwards Parade was packed with Filipinos and Filipino Americans numbering in the thousands and bedecked with yellow ribbons and scarves. The press estimated the crowd at 5,000. When they spotted President Aquino, they went wild with celebration and chanted her name—Cory, Cory! The air was electric.

Gathering himself for a few moments, Father O’Hare then began his remarks in fluent Tagalog, and spoke for over five minutes before switching over to English. To say the crowd went wild with emotion at Joe’s linguistic gesture would be a massive understatement.

Jeffrey Gray, Fordham’s Senior Vice President for Student Affairs

Tall with broad shoulders and a gray mane, regal and striking in appearance, Father O’Hare was a towering figure on campus, in the world of New York City politics, and in the Society of Jesus globally. Anyone who met Joe O’Hare was left with the impression that he could carry the world on his shoulders.  A man of unmatched intellect, and personal and professional substance and depth, he was a confident, independent, deep-thinking, and fearless leader who never backed down from a challenge or a challenger. He was a proud New Yorker and man of great loyalty, with a mischievous streak and well developed, wry sense of humor.

Brian Byrne, Former Vice President for Fordham’s Lincoln Center Campus

Father O’Hare grew in his role as University president over his long tenure and in turn grew those who worked closely with him. He had an astonishingly flexible intellect, mastering not only the nuances of the academic world but also the game of politics in his tenure as the first chair of the New York City Campaign Finance Board and president of the Commission of Independent Colleges and Universities.

As a Jesuit priest, however, he always kept his priorities in order. I remember a critical visit to the Albany power brokers with other university presidents which was delayed because Father O’Hare had promised to say Mass in a local parish. He was a student of the ironic in life, frequently noting his tendency to tell the world how it should behave yet remaining firm in his commitment to advance fairness and civility.

Bruno M. Santonocito, Former Fordham Vice President for Development and University Relations

Father O’Hare’s 19-year presidency set in motion some of the foundational steps that have led to the extraordinary success Fordham University enjoys today. He revitalized and reengaged the alumni community’s commitment to Fordham. He spent numerous hours with alumni either individually or at small gatherings or when giving his state of the University message to the various alumni chapters around the country and abroad. Through these activities, Father was able to recruit an active and involved Board of Trustees who were critical to the successful completion of the Fordham University Campaign in our sesquicentennial year.

He loved rubbing shoulders with our graduates who talked about him affectionately as “the priest from central casting.” And when he was with our alumni what was always on display was his charm and graciousness, his warmth, quick wit, sense of humor and mastery of the good joke and the good story. Father had style, delivery, and timing!

Finally, he had loyalty to and affection for all his vice presidents. In spite of that, he could not resist telling alumni that like a herd of elephants or a gaggle of geese, he had a “confusion” of vice presidents.

Simply put, Father O’Hare was the right man at the right time for Fordham and I feel privileged to have shared a good part of his tenure at his side.

Dorothy Marinucci, Associate Vice President for Presidential Operations

There was a brilliant Jesuit, Father John Donohue, S.J., who worked for many years as an associate editor at America magazine.  He was a good friend of Father O’Hare.  Whenever you visited Father Donohue as you were leaving he would say, “safe home.”  I know Father O’Hare particularly liked this phrase.  I know no more fitting tribute than to quote Father Donohue and say, “Safe home, JO’H.”

Nicole A. Gordon, Faculty Director of the CUNY Baruch College Executive M.P.A. program and Distinguished Lecturer of Public Affairs; Founding Executive Director of New York City’s Campaign Finance Board

Father O’Hare was the inspired choice of Mayor Ed Koch to be the founding chair of the pioneer New York City Campaign Finance Board in 1988.

The public record truly speaks for itself, including the many times when our board chair had to face off against powerful interests. Each time, Father O’Hare challenged efforts to intimidate and undermine the board, and in each instance, he prevailed. These occasions included attempts by elected officials to replace him as chair, to move the board’s offices to uninhabitable quarters, to stop valid matching funds checks to candidates, and to stack the board with a new member in the midst of public hearings on apparent (and, later, confirmed) substantial violations of the campaign finance law.

One wonderful exchange–among many on TV–was aired when a candidate’s spokesperson described how he had hired the most prominent law firm in the City to fight the CFB. Father O’Hare responded, “So, sue me!”.

Working closely with him, as I was privileged to do for some 15 years, was an experience next to none. As a leader of troops, Father O’Hare’s sharp intelligence, political acumen, crushing wit, unquestionable loyalty, and (literally) priestly status gave us daily lessons on how to operate in public and in private, especially when the job is to be independent and fair in a volatile arena and without natural allies.

Would that we had him with us now.

***

If Rip Van Winkle had fallen asleep at Rose Hill or Lincoln Center one peaceful July evening in 1984, and suddenly rose from his slumber this summer, he’d wake to find a Fordham University transformed in powerful and lasting ways. But unlike the Washington Irving character (who actually slept a full 20 years), this modern-day Rip would not find his house “gone to decay.” Instead, he would find a University physically expanded, academically and spiritually renewed, and, more than ever before, a prominent player in shaping the destiny of the global city it calls home.

A New Landscape: Lincoln Center, Rose Hill, Marymount

Since 1984, under Father O’Hare’s leadership, Fordham has been engaged in an expansive building program that has seen the addition of approximately 1.1 million square feet of new academic and residential space, and the renovation of more than 1 million square feet of existing facilities. To put those statistics in historical perspective: the University added approximately 102,500 square feet of new construction from 1974 to 1983. Not since the tenure of the Rev. Laurence J. McGinley, S.J. (1949-63), when Fordham acquired the seven-acre plot that became the Lincoln Center campus, has the University achieved such profound growth.

The crowning achievement during this recent period of growth was the construction of the William D. Walsh Family Library, which opened in 1997. Ever since Father McGinley took office in 1949, Fordham presidents had hoped to build a world-class university library. Father O’Hare was determined to move those hopes into the realm of action. With tremendous support from trustees, administrators and benefactors, he built something more than a major academic facility. Walsh Library is a neo-Gothic symbol of the University’s commitment to academic excellence, its reverence for the past and its faith in the future.

“Father O’Hare leaves behind a record of expansion and building that any of his predecessors might envy,” said Msgr. Thomas Shelley, associate chair of the Department of Theology and co-editor of The Encyclopedia of American Catholic History. “The opening of the Walsh Family Library fulfilled a dream of generations of Fordham students and faculty and gave us one of the most sophisticated university libraries in the country.”

Students, it seems, agree with Msgr. Shelley. In the 2003 edition of The Best 345 Colleges, the Princeton Review ranked Walsh Library number six in the country based on student assessments of library facilities. In addition to being the highest-ranked Jesuit university, Fordham placed ahead of Yale, Columbia and Harvard.

But Walsh Library is by no means the only legacy of the last 19 years.

More than a decade before the opening of the library, Father O’Hare began reshaping the face of the University in ways that facilitated growth. The construction of four residence halls at Rose Hill—Tierney Hall (1986), Alumni Court North and Alumni Court South (1987), and Millennium Hall (2000)—and the completion of McMahon Hall, the 20-story residence on the Lincoln Center campus (1993), enhanced the undergraduate experience, transforming the University from one largely attended by commuters in 1984 to a dynamic residential community of 3,756 students in 2002-2003. Millennium Hall, the newest residence, opened its doors to more than 400 students in August 2000. Not simply a dormitory, it features meeting spaces and study lounges that enhance the interconnectedness of academic, residential, spiritual and social life at Fordham. It is most fitting, then, that Millennium has been renamed O’Hare Hall, and will be dedicated as such at a Homecoming ceremony this September.

As a result of Fordham’s transformation from a commuter school to a predominantly residential community, the University has been able to attract an increasingly national and diverse student body. In 1984, students hailed from 26 states and only a handful of foreign countries; today, they come from 48 states and 48 foreign countries.

Applications for admission to the University’s undergraduate programs, which totaled 4,064 in 1984, have nearly tripled. There were some rough patches—in the early 1990s, applications dropped so precipitously that enrollment fell by 20 percent—but since 1991, with the help and hard work of the admission team, Father O’Hare led a complete turnaround. Fordham’s growth has exceeded national trends. In 1998, the New York Times wrote: “Faculty members say that the growing popularity of New York City as a college destination and Father O’Hare’s insistence on academic excellence are the major reasons why the number of applications to the school is double what it was in 1991.”

This year, the Office of Undergraduate Admission received more than 12,800 applications from potential members of the Class of 2007—an increase of 1,500 from last year’s total. Approximately 52 percent of the applicants were admitted, bringing the University’s acceptance rate down 3 percent from last year.

As the applicant pool has grown in the last decade, the academic profile of each class has also steadily improved. For example, on average, the SAT scores of incoming freshmen have improved by approximately 100 points in the last decade. This trend was highlighted by the Wall Street Journal in a March 30, 2001, article about college admissions. The Journal called Fordham a “hard-charging institution,” one that is increasingly selective and competitive, and predicted that the University’s acceptance rate (which was 65 percent in 1984) would drop to 50 percent in five years. Based on the latest statistics, Fordham is outpacing that prediction.

In addition to building residential facilities at Lincoln Center and Rose Hill and working to increase enrollment, Father O’Hare added a third campus, expanding the University’s undergraduate opportunities to include a women’s liberal arts college in the Catholic tradition.

Since the 1970s, the Marymount College campus in Tarrytown, N.Y., had hosted some of Fordham’s graduate-level classes in social service, education and business administration. Building on that relationship, Marymount College consolidated with Fordham on July 1, 2002, to become the University’s 11th school and fifth undergraduate college. Founded in 1907 by the Religious of the Sacred Heart of Mary, Marymount College of Fordham University, as it is now known, is situated on a hill overlooking the Hudson River (not far, incidentally, from the fictional village in the Catskills where Rip Van Winkle took his famous nap).

When the consolidation agreement was announced in December 2000, Father O’Hare asked Mary Ann Quaranta, D.S.W., who had recently retired after serving for 25 years as dean of Fordham’s Graduate School of Social Service, to become Marymount’s provost and to assist with the union.

“The recent consolidation of Marymount College with Fordham University provides Marymount students with the best of two educational worlds,” Quaranta wrote last December in Women’s News. “They are able to partake of the academic and administrative resources available at a major university while at the same time studying among only women at a small, largely residential, liberal arts college.”

This “experiment in Catholic higher education,” as Father O’Hare has called it, has attracted positive attention. In a June 6 article titled “Merging Without Overpowering,” The Chronicle of Higher Education described the Fordham-Marymount experience as a potential model for future college mergers, lending support to the hope that smaller schools “don’t have to give up all that makes them unique in exchange for survival.” Like nearly all women’s colleges in recent years, Marymount had been struggling to recover from financial troubles caused by a decline in enrollment. Since the merger, the college has enjoyed a steady increase in enrollment while retaining much of its identity. Applications for the Class of 2007 surpassed 1,600, nearly twice the number the college received two years ago.

Renewing Undergraduate Education, Pursuing Academic Excellence

In the spring of 1994, Father O’Hare led a major initiative to strengthen undergraduate education at Fordham. He urged the Board of Trustees and the faculty to help ensure that students could take full advantage of the complementary strengths and distinct opportunities available to them on both the Lincoln Center and Rose Hill campuses. At the time, he wrote, “To put the issue in the shorthand of advertising: Should our admissions literature speak, as it has in the past, of Fordham: Rose Hill or Lincoln Center? Could we not, instead, invite students to experience Fordham: Rose Hill and Lincoln Center?”

After 18 months of discussions, the faculty brought together Lincoln Center and Rose Hill as never before. The liberal arts faculties were restructured and unified, and a common core curriculum was established at the two campuses. This has made undergraduate education at Fordham a richer and more consistent experience. Previously, the undergraduate liberal arts colleges had separate requirements. Now, the common core makes it easier for students to use both campuses. It also more strongly reflects the University’s Jesuit identity, with an emphasis on critical thinking, personal attention, service to others and ethical leadership. In addition to taking courses in a broad range of subject areas, all students in their senior year take an interdisciplinary seminar in values and moral choices.

During Father O’Hare’s tenure, student-faculty collaboration was at the heart of the Fordham experience. In the last decade especially, the University has been placing greater emphasis on preparing students to apply for highly competitive post-graduate fellowships and scholarships. Faculty and administrators work one-on-one with students, challenging them to achieve a standard of excellence they may not know they can reach. Father O’Hare’s successor as president, the Rev. Joseph M. McShane, S.J., was especially involved in this cultivation process when he was dean of Fordham College at Rose Hill and professor of theology from 1992 to 1998. Under the direction of the Office of Prestigious Fellowships, more than 80 undergraduate and graduate students have received prestigious awards in the last eight years.

Fordham’s commitment to scientific education and research is reflected in the 1993 renovation of the Louis Calder Center Biological Field Station, a 114-acre site in Armonk, N.Y., and in the more recent renovations of the biology, physics and chemistry labs on the Rose Hill campus. At the Calder Center, graduate and undergraduate students in field biology have the opportunity to conduct hands-on research with Fordham scientists. The Research Science Fellows Program, which was launched 10 years ago, also encourages student-faculty collaborations and promotes awareness of career opportunities in research.

Unlike many universities, Fordham requires its undergraduate science majors to conduct laboratory research with faculty members. This type of partnership, which bolsters the student’s resume and supports the valuable work of the faculty, has yielded significant benefits. For example, in December 2000, a team of Fordham researchers identified the cause of familial dysautonomia, a genetic disorder that affects one in 30 individuals of Ashkenazi Jewish descent. The Fordham team, which consisted of two senior scientists, four molecular biology graduate students and one undergraduate student, published its findings in the American Journal of Human Genetics in 2001.

Another hallmark of Father O’Hare’s presidency has been his dedication to the creation of scholarship opportunities. Even as the University has become more academically selective, it has aimed to remain economically accessible to gifted and deserving students. Since 1984, more than 225 scholarships have been established (bringing the total to more than 400), and though they are as varied as their generous donors, they all share a common goal: to provide financial opportunity for students who might not otherwise be able to attend Fordham. Not coincidentally, this was also one of the top priorities of the Fordham University Campaign, the most successful fundraising initiative in the University’s history to date.

Keeping Faith with the Future: The Fordham University Campaign

When the William D. Walsh Family Library was dedicated on Oct. 17, 1997, CBS News veteran Charles Osgood (FCO ’54) spoke about the component parts used to create the 240,000-square-foot building: “Brick and mortar, a lot of stone, metal and glass,” he said. “But there are other elements—faith in this university and what it stands for, hope reinforced by prayer, dedication and love. It took a lot of love to make this building…and money, which wouldn’t have come without love.”

Little more than a month later—appropriately enough, on the night before Thanksgiving—the Fordham University Campaign exceeded its $150 million goal by $5.6 million.

When it was formally announced in 1991, the University’s sesquicentennial year, the campaign was the largest of its kind for a Jesuit university. The previous summer, during his Jubilee address to alumni in the McGinley Center Ballroom, Father O’Hare set the tone for the campaign.

“The theme we are picking for our 150th anniversary,” he said, “is Fordham: Keeping Faith with the Future. The idea of that is to look in the traditions of the past to try to find the creative response to the challenges of the future. My assumption is you can betray your faith, religious faith, personal faith, academic faith…by trying to hold on to some frozen moment of the past. You have to keep your faith alive by bringing it forward into the future.”

Nearly one quarter of all alumni showed their faith in Fordham by participating in the campaign. More than two-thirds of the $155.6 million raised came from individuals—undergraduate and graduate alumni, parents and friends—many of whom had not had a previous connection to the University. They helped to create 170 new endowed scholarships for undergraduate study as well as the study of law, graduate education, business, and the arts and sciences. Faculty chairs were established in several areas, including law, religion and social service. Through their gifts, alumni and friends produced a groundswell of enthusiasm for the University’s promise.

Of the campaign’s many successes, two particular achievements will continue to have a profound impact on generations of Fordham students and faculty in the 21st century: the stellar growth of the University’s pooled and long-term investments, which surpassed $200 million by the end of 1997; and, of course, the William D. Walsh Family Library, the signature building of the Fordham future. The library cost $54 million to build. It was financed in part by a $9 million grant from New York State and $17 million donated by Fordham alumni and friends, including a $10 million gift from William D. Walsh (FCO ’51).

In an interview during his first days as president, Father O’Hare expressed two concerns about his role as a fundraiser: “One, that I won’t like it,” he said. “Perhaps even more serious, [I fear] that I’ll like it too much.”

The evidence suggests that such worries were unfounded; he somehow managed to strike the right balance. During the recent Faculty Senate dinner honoring Father O’Hare, Berish Rubin, Ph.D., professor of biology, praised Fordham’s 31st president for placing ultimate value on the University community and the people who make up that community.

“He insisted that compassion, not cash flow, serve as the rudder for this institution,” said Rubin, who served with Father O’Hare on the audit and finance subcommittee of the Board of Trustees. “He counseled the Board that they needed to understand that what was best for higher education, and not necessarily for the bottom line, was often most important. Father O’Hare knows the importance of community, collegiality and compassion in an institution born of such a distinguished tradition.”

Still, Father O’Hare’s record as a fundraiser is impressive by any standard. By May 2002, when he announced his intention to retire, the University’s endowment had grown from $36.5 million to $271.6 million and annual giving had risen from $5 million to $40 million.

“As a result,” said Paul B. Guenther, chair of the Board of Trustees, “Fordham stands on a much higher threshold for the next stage of its development.”

New York City’s Jesuit University

One of the ways Fordham will continue to “keep faith with the future” as it enters the next stage of its development will be through its relationship with New York City.

For more than 160 years, the histories of New York City and Fordham University have intersected in many interesting ways. John Hughes, for example, founded St. John’s College in the village of Fordham in 1841 and later became the first archbishop of New York. John McCloskey, the first president of what was to become Fordham University, also served as archbishop of New York; he later became the first American cardinal. Although Father O’Hare has not held or sought ecclesial office (despite the fact that The New York Times recently referred to him as a “Jesuit prelate”), he has been an indispensable voice in Catholic higher education and a much respected civic leader.

In his inaugural address on Sept. 30, 1984, Father O’Hare sounded the keynote for his administration: Fordham, New York City’s Jesuit University. He issued a challenge to faculty, students and administrators, urging them to become more fully engaged with the life of New York City.

“The city, pulsing with the dilemmas of everyday existence, an arena for competing ambitions and inarticulate dreams, reminds the university that the pursuit of knowledge and truth cannot be merely a private pleasure,” he said. “The university, on the other hand, guardian of the wisdom of the past and seeking the shape of tomorrow, must be both the critical conscience and the creative consciousness of the city.”

During the last 19 years, the University’s interactions and partnerships with New York City—its businesses, schools, government agencies and community organizations—have grown in various ways. The city continues to provide rich resources for learning as well as unparalleled internship and employment opportunities. Through the Office of Career Planning and Placement, for example, more than 600 hundred employers visit Fordham each year to recruit potential employees.

In addition, the University has launched and expanded a number of initiatives that reflect a steadfast commitment to serve the city’s less fortunate. Since 1991, the National Center for Schools and Communities has been bringing together social workers and educators to improve the lives of at-risk students in elementary and middle schools. Students at the Law School volunteer more than 70,000 hours of pro-bono work every year. Through the school’s nationally recognized Public Interest Resource Center, these future lawyers participate in such projects as advocacy for victims of domestic violence, death penalty defense, and housing and immigration advocacy.

Undergraduates have also responded to the call to service. In 1985, the Office of Government and Urban Relations created the Community Service Program, which has been both a catalyst and a clearinghouse for community service opportunities. Each year, more than 700 students participate in the program, volunteering their time and skills to mentor and tutor schoolchildren, deliver food and clothing to the homeless in the Bronx and Manhattan, and work in local soup kitchens, to cite a few examples. Expanding on this tradition, the University recently launched the Service Learning Program, which gives students the opportunity to receive additional credit for completing 40 hours of community service in an area related to their classroom studies and for writing reflection papers chronicling their work. Another example of Fordham’s commitment to serving its neighbors is the University Neighborhood Housing Program (UNHP), which helps to create, preserve and finance affordable housing for lower- and middle-income families in the northwest Bronx. In 2001, the Building Just Communities campaign of the U.S. Jesuit Conference honored UNHP as a model program.

Father O’Hare’s own civic involvement helped to set the tone for this renewed emphasis on strengthening the University’s commitment to the city. He has served on the boards of several institutions and on a number of city commissions. But he is perhaps best known for his work as the founding chair of the New York City Campaign Finance Board, an agency that has been hailed as a national model for campaign finance reform.

“He made the job,” said former Mayor Edward I. Koch, who first appointed Father O’Hare to the position in 1988. “It could’ve been a nothing job if it didn’t have a superb leader willing to take on every single person in politics. … I’ve learned that the occupant of the job defines the job. The job doesn’t define the occupant.”

Like the Rev. John Corridan, S.J., the labor priest who served as the model for Karl Malden’s character in the classic film On the Waterfront (see story on page 6), Father O’Hare quickly gained a reputation in New York City politics as a principled advocate for social justice. In 1992, he received the annual Civil Leadership Award from the Citizens Union of New York, and two years later the Conference on Government and Election Reform honored him for distinguished achievement in the regulation of government ethics. New York Post columnist Jack Newfield called Father O’Hare “the conscience of campaign finance reform and walking gravitas,” ranking him 44th on a list of “New York’s 50 Most Powerful People” in 1997 (two notches behind hip-hop mogul P. Diddy, but two ahead of Yankees owner George Steinbrenner).

One year later, during his 50th year as a Jesuit, Father O’Hare told The New York Times that he decided to enter the Society of Jesus largely because he was inspired by the active faith of Father Corridan and the labor priests. “It’s not an otherworldly kind of spirituality,” Father O’Hare explained. “It’s the kind very geared to involvement in the present time.”

Last February and March, in honor of Father O’Hare’s 19 years of dynamic leadership, the University hosted the Fordham and the City lecture series. During two evenings of lectures in the Law School’s McNally Amphitheater, historians and authors examined the links between the histories of New York City and the University, and they also acknowledged Father O’Hare’s major contributions to the latest chapters in both historical narratives.

In a March 16 lecture titled “Fordham and the Rise of Gotham: City of God and City of Man,” Peter A. Quinn, Ph.D. (GAS ’75), explored the distinct yet related histories of three New Yorkers. Quinn, author of Banished Children of Eve: A Novel of Civil War New York, told the stories of Archbishop Hughes, Edgar Allen Poe and Irish immigrant Michael Manning—all members of the village of Fordham during the University’s formative decade. While Hughes was poised to lead the Catholic Church in New York during a time of riots and disease, Poe was seeking fame by writing about caverns of human nature that had long gone unexplored. Manning, who outlived both Poe and Hughes, was simply a poor immigrant from Ireland who made money by cobbling the shoes of the Fordham Jesuits.

“Today, we are at where Poe, Hughes and Manning once were,” said Quinn. “We are suspended between the human city and the holy one, pondering our place, asking the same questions they asked: Whose city is it? Who belongs and who doesn’t? What does God have to do with it? Fordham University is now an intrinsic part of those questions and of this city—physically, psychically and spiritually. It is interwoven into the fabric of New York.”

Fordham’s Jesuit tradition of values-based education, Quinn said, offers a unique perspective from which to ponder the big questions and “create a world in which the possibilities for beauty, knowledge, hope, faith and love belong to the poor and the outsider as much as to the comfortable and the privileged.”

For the Rev. Raymond Schroth, S.J. (FCO ’55), author of Fordham: A History and Memoir, New York’s greatest gift to Fordham has been its impact on the University’s imagination.

“Fordham and the city have often, if not always, accomplished exactly what a liberal arts education is designed to do: They have made it very difficult for us to think small,” he said, echoing the call of Father O’Hare’s inaugural address. “We have been challenged to think like New York.”

A Catholic University for the Capital of the World

In his Fordham and the City lecture titled “From St. John’s College to Fordham: A Catholic University for the Capital of the World,” Msgr. Thomas J. Shelley, associate chair of the Theology Department at Fordham, praised Father O’Hare’s contributions to Catholic higher education.

“For the past 10 years,” Msgr. Shelley said, “Father O’Hare has played a major leadership role in the ongoing dialogue between the Holy See and the American bishops in defining the nature of the Catholic university.”

Throughout his career, in fact, Father O’Hare has been an active voice in Catholic higher education. He is the only person to have served as chairman of both the Association of Catholic Colleges and Universities (ACCU) and the Association of Jesuit Colleges and Universities. In April 1989, Father O’Hare was part of the 18-member ACCU delegation to the Vatican Congress on Catholic higher education. When the conference concluded, he was elected to a 15-person international committee of bishops and university presidents that returned to Rome that September to review the documents that would be submitted to Pope John Paul II and eventually published under the title Ex Corde Ecclesiae (From the Heart of the Church) in 1990.

Demonstrating his commitment to Fordham’s Catholic intellectual tradition, Father O’Hare fostered several centers devoted to religious dialogue, including the Archbishop Hughes Institute on Religion and Culture, the Office of the University Chaplain and, most recently, the Center for American Catholic Studies (which will occupy the old Duane Library when renovations are completed). In 1988, he established the Laurence J. McGinley Chair in Religion and Society and recruited the Rev. Avery Dulles, S.J., to become its first occupant. In February 2001, nearly 200 members of the Fordham family traveled to Rome, where Dulles became the first American theologian to be elevated to the College of Cardinals. Cardinal Dulles maintains a prodigious speaking schedule in between teaching a graduate theology class and writing and delivering the biannual McGinley lecture. Last spring, he spoke about “True and False Reform in the Catholic Church.”

For four years, students in the Graduate School of Religion and Religious Education have explored the link between faith and healing through the Pastoral Counseling and Spiritual Care program. Three years ago, the School of Law created the Institute on Religion, Law and Lawyer’s Work as a forum for considering the relationship between religious faith and the legal profession. Working in collaboration with the University’s Stein Center for Law and Ethics, the institute provides faith-based resources and connections within the law community. In October 2000, the Graduate School of Social Service’s Bertram M. Beck Institute on Religion and Poverty held its inaugural event, a debate on the issues of welfare reform.

Under Father O’Hare’s leadership, the University has also strengthened its international presence in ways that highlight a commitment to social justice and ethics. The Joseph R. Crowley Program in International Human Rights, established in 1997, raises awareness of human rights problems around the world, and gives students and alumni the opportunity to engage directly in human rights lawyering. More recently, in December 2001, Father O’Hare announced the creation of the International Institute of Humanitarian Affairs, through which the University trains humanitarian aid workers for service in countries in crisis.

Moment of Transition

Fordham has come a long way since the fall of 1984, when Father O’Hare challenged the University community to join “the dialogue with genius and passion that goes on every day in New York City.” As a builder, educator, civic leader and priest, he has been a defining influence on the University these last 19 years. But even as he has reshaped the face of Fordham, transforming it from a good regional commuter school to a “hard-charging institution,” he has kept faith with the University’s defining characteristics—its Catholic identity and Jesuit tradition of education.

“Looking back and looking forward,” Father O’Hare once wrote, “becomes a habit in an institution like a university, which preserves the wisdom of the past and yet is renewed each year by the explosive energy of a new entering class.”

In the coming months, Father O’Hare will return to America magazine, where he served as editor-in-chief from 1975 to 1984, and the University community—faculty, students, administrators and alumni—will prepare for the official inauguration of the Rev. Joseph M. McShane, S.J., the 32nd President of Fordham University.

This moment of transition is a time for reflection and celebration. The accomplishments sketched in these pages—the physical transformation of both the Lincoln Center and Rose Hill campuses, the dramatic increase in the applicant pool, the significant reform of undergraduate education, the completion of the most successful fundraising campaign in University history, the renewed commitment to performing service and promoting justice—are sure signs of vitality. Together, they suggest a vision for the future of Fordham that is even bolder than could have been imagined two decades ago.

Future historians of Fordham and higher education in general will no doubt provide a more detailed analysis of Father O’Hare’s presidency. But from the perspective of June 2003, it seems certain he will hold a prominent and secure place in those histories.

Upon receiving an honorary degree at the School of Law last May, Philippine President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo best expressed the sentiments of the entire University community.

“I pray that God will bless Father O’Hare with abundant grace and yet more years as he steps out of Fordham, not retiring mind you, but moving on to pursue other worthy endeavors,” she said. “He is a true embodiment of the Jesuit ideal of being a man for others. … Fordham will sorely miss him, but his outstanding achievements will endure and make Fordham feel that he is very much around.”

“We’ll remember [Father O’Hare] when tragedy struck as the pastor who, through his presence, words and voice, transformed suffering into an occasion for learning and grace,” said the Rev. Raymond Schroth, S.J., author of Fordham: A History and Memoir.

When the Fordham community gathered to mourn the loss of three students and 36 alumni who were killed in the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, with a Mass of Remembrance and Hope, Father O’Hare said: “We can be transformed by better realizing how fragile is the gift of life and learn to treasure it all the more. … We can respect the promise of life, in ourselves and in others more deeply, and recognize, more keenly than before, that if life is not shared, it will be squandered.”

Father O’Hare has shared his pastoral gifts in the wake of events that have forever changed the world and during moments that have deeply affected the Fordham family. Meaningfully and memorably, he spoke at an impromptu memorial Mass when 20-year-old defensive back Bill Tierney died suddenly on Coffey Field just before the Homecoming game in October 1996. To mark the loss, Sesquicentennial Hall was renamed Tierney Hall in 1998.

He has been called upon again and again to comfort and console the Fordham family in difficult times, but also to celebrate and christen its happiest moments. “His presence made the milestones even more meaningful,” said John Buckley (GSE ’89), assistant vice president for undergraduate enrollment, reflecting on the fact that his two children were baptized by Father O’Hare.

When The World of Hibernia magazine featured Father O’Hare in a 1998 article about the “shining stars of the Irish diaspora,” he summed up the boon of his heritage: “I welcome the Irish sense of both the tragedy and comedy of life—and the Irish gift of language to deal with both.”

While president, he officiated at more than 50 alumni weddings. One particularly memorable wedding took place on Oct. 26, 1996, the same day the New York Yankees beat the Atlanta Braves to win the World Series. After celebrating the nuptial Mass for Bob Hagan (FCO ’88, GBA ’90) and his wife, Kerri, Father O’Hare joined the families for the reception at the Canyon Club in Armonk, N.Y. Midway through the festivities, however, Hagan’s parents noticed that Father O’Hare was leaving in a hurry. They alerted their son, who recently recalled what happened next.

“I literally ran to the parking lot to track him down. I said, ‘Father, is everything all right?’ ‘Robert, I am fine,’ he said. ‘The Yankees can clinch the Series tonight, and I have tickets to the game. I really have to go.’

“We still laugh about that,” said Hagan. “I love that guy.”

A Selection of Quotations from the Speeches and Writings of Father O’Hare

At a time when religion is so easily identified with fundamentalism, the Catholic idea of relating religious faith and rigorous intellectual inquiry represents a distinctive contribution to our contemporary American society. A university with a religious tradition and a special place for religious inquiry has a distinctive role to play in the whole mosaic of higher education in the United States.
—from “The Catholic Identity of Fordham,” Faculty Convocation, Oct. 23, 1988

Fordham men and women have found in the city rich cultural resources, but also daunting moral and social challenges, soaring celebrations of the human spirit here at Lincoln Center, but also a summons to service in the neighborhoods of the Bronx. These different faces of the city engage the classical Renaissance humanism of Jesuit education, but also the new Jesuit humanism that adds to this classic ideal the urgency of education for justice.
—at Fordham’s 160th Anniversary Gala at the New York State Theater, March 25, 2002

We are not simply in the business of imparting information in our classrooms. We are concerned with the transformation of the whole person, with the development of conscience as well as competence. We would consider our work to end in failure if our students graduated with high levels of technical skill but with hollow hearts and empty spirits.
—from an address to the Annual Teachers Institute of the Archdiocese of New York, Cardinal Spellman High School, March 5, 1985

There are those who have said, and who will say in the days and weeks ahead, that the Jesuits of El Salvador were not disinterested academics, that they had deliberately chosen to insert themselves into the political conflict of their nation. If they had remained within the insulated safety of the library or the classroom, their critics will charge, if they had not “meddled in politics,” their lives would not have been threatened. But such a criticism misunderstands the nature of any university, and most certainly the nature of a Catholic university. No university which identifies itself as Catholic can be indifferent to the call of the church to promote the dignity of the human person.
—from “Six Slain Jesuits,” a homily delivered Nov. 22, 1989, at the Church of St. Ignatius Loyola, New York, during a memorial Mass for the six Jesuits and two housekeepers who were murdered at Central American University in San Salvador on Nov. 16, 1989

Intercultural awareness must be an essential component of a liberal education in the last decade of the 20th century, when markets in Tokyo, New York and London are part of the same international nervous system, when decisions made in Bonn affect workers in Brazil. Education in international awareness means much more than mastering currency rates and tables of tariffs. It must begin with the realization, never to be taken for granted, that other people can feel and think, pray and love in ways that may be unfamiliar to us but are profoundly human.”
—from “Places in the Heart,” a commencement address delivered upon receiving an honorary degree from the Ateneo de Manila University, July 24, 1990

If you ask various Jesuits to sum up in a few words their image of Ignatius, I expect the answers would be various. For my part I have always preferred the image of Ignatius the Pilgrim to Ignatius the Soldier. Ignatius the Pilgrim undertook a journey to seek the will of God, searching to discern what the greater glory of God demanded of him and his companions. Such a search, of course, will always challenge the status quo. What has been and what is can never exhaust the vision of what could be and what should be. It is a spirit that carries some risks with it. The search for what is better can lead to mistakes that might not occur if one was content to settle for what is. One of the successors of Ignatius, another Basque general of the Jesuit order, the late Don Pedro Arrupe, addressed this concern a few years ago. “I do not want to defend any mistakes Jesuits might have made,” Father Arrupe said, “for the greatest mistake would be to stand in such fear of making error that we would simply stop acting.” This is Father Joseph O’Hare, of Fordham University.
—Fordham Focus, WFUV (90.7 FM), July 30, 2000

Teaching ethics is something you’d expect from courses in philosophy and theology. But ethics is an ongoing debate in every department. Beyond transcendent values, all other ethical positions are open to debate. We prepare students for that debate by focusing on applications that are specific to each profession. Perhaps even more important, we seek to engender a habit of moral responsibility to help form individual character that shapes how a person lives an ethical life. In a world of such rapid change, in which there are careers today that didn’t even exist when I was in college, a dependable ethical compass is a very valuable tool.
—as quoted in “Ethics: What’s Right, What’s Wrong in America,” Fordham Magazine, Winter 1999

Through its Jesuit tradition Fordham draws great strength from religious faith, and as a New York institution, the university reflects all of the bristling differences that make the city such an arena of conflict and creativity. With pride Fordham looks back on nearly 50 years in New York, and generations of Fordham alumni, who have served this city, not only as lawyers and executives, but also as teachers, who care for the most important resource and most sacred responsibility of this city, its children, and as social workers who have healed and nourished the city’s needy.
—upon receiving the Tree of Life Award at the National Jewish Fund Dinner, Nov. 30, 1988

You will not find narrow indoctrination at Fordham University, but you will find religious questions and moral values pursued with all the honesty and rigor they deserve.
—from “Fordham and New York,” an inaugural address, Sept. 30, 1984

Each class that leaves Fordham goes forth into a world of opportunity and challenge shaped by historical events and currents beyond control. We, the Class of 2003 (and I include myself, since I am finally graduating today after 19 years of trying to get it right), are leaving Fordham on the threshold of a new millennium, a time of accelerating changes, when familiar guideposts for our journey seem to be overturned and our personal expectations have to be aware of the ways in which violence and terror can suddenly interrupt our lives and shift our understanding of the world. It is a time that will demand creative minds and constant hearts, and I hope that you have learned something of this improbable combination during your years at Fordham.
—from a homily delivered at the Baccalaureate Mass, May 17, 2003

Over the past 19 years, I have learned that to be part of Fordham’s living tradition means recognizing the debt we owe past generations, and the commitment we must have for future generations. We are beneficiaries of a past where we did not labor and trustees of a future we will not enjoy.
—upon receiving the Fordham Founder’s Award, March 31, 2003