“What we’re talking about today is not simply acts of interpersonal racism, which are based on prejudgment bias and result in discrimination on an individual basis, but also institutional racism that has policies and practices that benefit white Americans to the detriment of people of color, whether they’re intentional or inadvertent. That, combined, creates what we have in America, which is structural racism—a history and current reality of that institutional racism,” Kulkarni said.

Kulkarni is executive director of the AAPI Equity Alliance, a coalition of community-based organizations that advocates for the Asian American and Pacific Islander community in Los Angeles County and beyond. She is also a co-founder of Stop AAPI Hate, a nonprofit that tracks and responds to hate incidents against Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders across the country. In 2014, she received the White House’s Champions of Change award for her efforts in improving health care access for the AAPI community. Last year, she testified before Congress on the issue of anti-Asian hate. 

Kulkarni, who was born in India and raised in the U.S., recalled an incident that inspired her career. She said that when her mother interviewed for a position at an American hospital, a panel of white male physicians asked her, “Why do you foreigners come to the United States and take all of our jobs?” 

“She and my father, who is also a doctor, chose to bring a class action lawsuit with the help of an attorney … to fight not only the discrimination she experienced, but practices and policies in the state of Alabama that prohibited non-European immigrant doctors from practicing and being part of a residency program,” Kulkarni said. “They happened to get a successful settlement in that case. And it was because of that … I saw that the law could be used as a tool for redress.”

A Crime with a Community-Based Solution

Kulkarni is now using the law to help the AAPI community. In response to the rise of anti-Asian hate at the beginning of the pandemic, Kulkarni co-founded Stop AAPI Hate. Since the nonprofit was founded in March 2020, it has received more than 10,000 reports of discrimination across the country, said Kulkarni. Many incidents involved women who were verbally harassed in public parks and streets. However, most of them are not technically categorized as a crime, said Kulkarni.  

“A majority of the incidents reported to us, upwards of 90%, actually do not involve a crime or do not rise to the level of a crime. That’s particularly true with physical assault,” Kulkarni said, including throwing bottles at someone or shoving a person in a manner that doesn’t result in significant physical harm. 

But although the incidents don’t warrant legal punishment, they negatively impact their victims. Kulkarni said that in a Stop AAPI Hate survey conducted with the Asian American Psychological Association, they found a 155% increase in depression among Asian Americans.

“In that same survey I mentioned, 72% said that they were more concerned about COVID-19 related hate as opposed to the virus itself and its impact,” Kulkarni said. 

She encouraged the audience to report anti-Asian hate crimes they have witnessed or experienced, share resources and safety tips, and advocate for policy changes. She also noted that Stop AAPI Hate co-sponsored two bills that were recently introduced to the California legislature to address street harassment and public safety issues. 

‘The Best Place to Begin to Become an Advocate’ 

In a Q&A, a student pointed out that in mainstream media, the ethnicity of perpetrators of anti-Asian hate crimes is often highlighted, leading to resentment against the Black and Latinx communities. But there are recent studies that reveal the majority of perpetrators are not people of color, said Kulkarni. She added that reports from Stop AAPI Hate support these findings, too.  

“We know from the descriptions that have been offered by individuals on the [Stop AAPI Hate] reporting form that African Americans are not the leading perpetrators. This is really important information, and I think the studies that have been done also by the two professors show that and can really, I think, as we begin to spread that information, help to combat some of the anti-Blackness,” Kulkarni said.  

When asked about how to handle discriminatory comments from professors, which has been seen in other law schools across the country, Kulkarni advised students to reach out to University student organizations, like Fordham’s Asian Pacific American Law Students Association, as well as the law school’s diversity, equity, and inclusion officers. 

“You know your campus. You know your community. This is the best place to begin to become an advocate—on issues that impact you directly,” Kulkarni said. 

Kulkarni’s lecture was part of the Feerick Center Speaker Series, which invites scholars to speak about timely social justice issues. The event was co-sponsored by more than 20 organizations.

The Next Step provides NYCDOE with a policy roadmap and calls for three substantial reforms that can be implemented in this moment and provide building blocks for a more equitable future.

• First, a permanent end to middle school screens.
• Second, a requirement that high schools “opt-in” to screening together with mandatory equitable admissions priorities.
• Third, significantly enhanced supports for students and families—with dedicated funding—for the admissions process.

Read the full story on Fordham Law News.

Panelists included Shara Abraham, supervising attorney at Legal Services of the Hudson Valley’s Newburgh Office; Pete Kempner, legal director & Elderly Project director at Volunteers of Legal Service; Erica Ludwick, managing attorney at the Legal Aid Society of Northeastern New York; Melissa Molfetas, former supervising attorney at the Veteran Advocacy Project; and Kelly O’Sullivan, managing program director of the Jericho Project, a nonprofit organization dedicated to serving New York’s homeless population.

Read the full story in Fordham Law News.

Although many of Reilly’s tours include visitors from around the world, the Fordham group skews local, with most attendees hailing from the tri-state area. The person who has traveled the farthest for the occasion is Marjorie Taylor, who says she drove from Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, the previous day and stayed overnight in her daughter’s McMahon Hall dorm room on Fordham’s Lincoln Center campus.

Once introductions are made, Reilly leads the group to the museum’s fourth floor, which he says “tells the story of the evolution of vertebrates.” There, they stop in the Hall of Saurischian Dinosaurs, one of the museum’s most popular rooms and home to the skeletons of both the Tyrannosaurus rex and the huge Apatosaurus, the herbivore often incorrectly referred to as the Brontosaurus.

“Fred Flintstone was actually eating an Apatosaurus,” Reilly jokes, referring to the 1960s cartoon character and the so-called Brontosaurus burgers that were a staple of his diet.

Reilly describes various dinosaur extinction theories that scientists have posited over the years, including the widely accepted one—that an asteroid crashed into what is today Mexico’s Yucatán Peninsula and caused massive climate disruption—as well as the disproven claim that pollen caused them to sneeze themselves out of existence.

Next, he leads the way to the Akeley Hall of African Mammals. The hall, decorated with green marble and Art Deco flourishes, represents “the apex of taxidermy,” Reilly says. It is filled with lifelike recreations of lions, giraffes, gazelles, and other mammals in dioramas depicting scenes of the wildlife eating, drinking, and hunting in their natural habitats. Recreated from field scientists’ observations of specific locations in the early 20th century, as well as from the sketches and photographs of the artists who accompanied them, the dioramas consist not only of taxidermy but also meticulously crafted plant models and painted backgrounds.

Reilly dispenses several bits of trivia about Akeley Hall. The live versions of the African elephants that form the room’s centerpiece have 50,000 muscles in their trunks, he says; the mountain gorilla diorama depicts the supposed gravesite of the hall’s namesake and conceiver, Carl Akeley, who is considered the father of modern taxidermy; and each of the 28 dioramas in the hall would cost $1 million to create today.

From there, it’s off to the Birds of the World exhibit hall, where Reilly, standing in front of a diorama of king penguins in South Georgia, surprises the group by telling them that the largest bird population in New York City is not, as several of them guess, the pigeon. In fact, it’s that nemesis of beachgoers, the seagull.

Reilly leads the way to the Hall of North American Forests, which he later says has become one of his favorite rooms in the museum.

“In recent times, the most interesting to me is the Hall of North American Forests,” he says, noting that he tries to get across to museumgoers the importance of forests and trees to the Earth. Plus, he says, “The beauty of every individual tree makes just walking down the street a treat no matter where you are.”

Finding Common Ground Between Social and Environmental Justice

Reilly began his undergraduate career at Fordham as a biology major, and although he switched to political science, earned a Fordham Law degree, and spent more than three decades as an administrator at Fordham Law School, he has always been deeply interested in environmental science.

When asked to explain the connections between his career—especially at Fordham Law’s Feerick Center for Social Justice, where he was engaged with social justice issues from a legal and academic perspective—and his role as tour guide who encourages stewardship of the natural world, Reilly points to the link between the Jesuit values he lived at Fordham and the specific topic of environmental justice.

“The Hall of Biodiversity is really completely devoted to environmental issues,” he says. “About 1,000 species go extinct every day of the year, 365 days a year, and that’s because of activities that our species is doing. What does that mean for us? What does that mean for our children? What does that mean for our grandchildren?

“Pope Francis recently had an encyclical about environmental issues and about our respect for the Earth and our understanding of our relationship to all other living things. Those elements all sort of tie together … in understanding social justice.”

Upon leaving the Hall of North American Forests, Reilly encourages everyone in the group to go home, choose a tree that they could observe over time, and become intimately familiar with it. “Every tree is a perfect tree,” he says.

The next stop is the ever-popular Milstein Family Hall of Ocean Life, with its 94-foot-long model of a blue whale suspended from the ceiling. Reilly, noting that this model is not taxidermy because its skin is artificial, tells the group that for the first 100 days of their lives, blue whales put on 100 pounds a day.

Finally, Reilly leads everyone to Theodore Roosevelt Memorial Hall. There, he provides some history of the 26th president of the United States, a conservationist and champion of the National Park System. As part of New York state’s official memorial to Roosevelt, the hall is a fitting place for the group of mostly tri-state residents to reflect on the important lessons the museum—and Reilly—had taught them about the natural world.

Fordham and AMNH: A Deep History with Enduring Connections

Fordham’s connections to the American Museum of Natural History go beyond Reilly. Not only do several graduates currently work at the museum—in departments ranging from youth initiatives to genomics operations—but one of the key figures in the institution’s modern history was an alumnus.

Thomas Nicholson, Ph.D., GSE ’53, ’61, a self-described “sailor-turned-astronomer-turned museum director,” helped the museum navigate tough fiscal issues in the early 1970s and emerge stronger. He got his start at the museum’s Hayden Planetarium in 1952 while earning a doctorate in science education at Fordham. He rose to the museum’s top spot in 1969 and served as director until 1989, during which time the museum’s research staff was doubled and attendance increased from 2.1 million to 3.1 million visitors per year. Today, the museum draws around 5 million visitors per year, as pointed out in a new history of the museum—The American Museum of Natural History and How It Got That Way, by Colin Davey with Thomas A. Lesser—published last year by Fordham University Press.

The museum’s growth is easy to understand when witnessing the enthusiasm of the Fordham group after their tour’s completion. One couple enjoyed the tour so much that they plan to become members of the museum, while another attendee went even further, emailing Reilly to tell him that he was inspired to apply to become a volunteer tour guide himself.

Perhaps the most surprising response to the tour came from Carolyn Pagani, GSS ’91, a native New Yorker who revealed that the Fordham tour was her first time ever visiting the museum.

“I’m embarrassed to say [it]!” she joked. “I loved it. I’m definitely going back.”

While not every tour group gives him the chance to expose a lifelong New Yorker to the museum’s magic, Reilly, who also leads occasional group tours of the Church of St. Paul the Apostle and Fordham’s Rose Hill and Lincoln Center campuses, gets plenty of joy from witnessing attendees’ reactions to the exhibitions.

“To see their faces as they get excited about something, that’s a wonderful thing,” he says.

As he leaves the group, he reminds them that the things they learned on the tour are invitations to further discoveries.

“Finishing a visit to the American Museum of Natural History is not the end of a journey,” Reilly says. “It’s the beginning of one.”

The tour of the American Museum of Natural History was one of many cultural events regularly held in the New York area and around the country by Fordham’s Office of Alumni Relations. Upcoming events include concerts, theater performances, and more.

When Vazquez found out she’d be receiving the inaugural Trailblazer Award, presented to a graduate from the past 10 years who has demonstrated outstanding dedication to Fordham and whose leadership has inspired fellow alumni, she said she was “totally shocked.” In fact, she’s involved in so many Fordham activities that she initially thought she was getting a phone call about her work on the commencement committee.

“Fordham is a huge part of my life, as anyone who talks to me knows,” she said, “so I’m excited, humbled, and honored.”

Kenny, a 1957 Fordham College at Rose Hill grad and 1961 Fordham Law alumnus who has been named Ram of the Year, joked that he was originally worried he’d have to dress as Ramses the Ram at the reception. When he was told that the award honors a graduate who has enhanced the reputation of the University through their professional achievements, personal accomplishments, and loyal service to Fordham, he simply said: “I feel truly unworthy.”

A Pipeline to Success

Both grads have a long history of supporting Fordham.

Vazquez, a vice president of campus strategy and pipeline development at BNY Mellon, has been an active member of the Staten Island Alumni Chapter and the Young Alumni Committee since graduation. She’s also a member of the Fordham Mentoring Program, which she says dovetails with her work in recruitment and retention for BNY Mellon.

“It’s a question of how you can help people keep developing in the right way,” she said. “It sounds cliché, but Fordham helped shape the person that I am today. So it’s exciting to see how I can support current students both in and beyond the program.”

Vazquez, who received a full scholarship to Fordham from JPMorgan Chase and interned at the company throughout her college career as part of their Smart Start program, says she wants to help others have the same great experience she did in college and beyond.

“One of my main goals is to be a leader and show people what’s possible,” she said. “I have been lucky enough to have some fantastic people and opportunities in my life that have helped me figure things out, pushed me, and challenged me. I want to be that for other people and help them find success. So it’s amazing to be recognized for that and be able to continue spreading the message of Fordham.”  

An Alumni Advocate

Kenny, a dayhop from White Plains who had to pay his own way, said he feels similarly.

“I’m so glad I did what I did, and I owe so much to Fordham because it was through them that I got to where I am,” he said. “So I always felt I had to pay it back.”

And he certainly has. He’s been a member of the Law School Alumni Association for 40 years, he helped plan his 50th Jubilee in 2007, and he currently supports Fordham’s Fashion Law Institute and mentors students at the Law School—particularly international and L.M. students, helping place them in jobs and on the alumni association board. He’s received several honors from the Law School for his professional and volunteer work, including the Richard J. Bennett Memorial Award in 1999, The Fordham International Law Journal’s Amicus Fidelis Award in 2006, and the Fordham Law Lifetime Achievement Award in 2011.

He’s also been actively involved with the Feerick Center for Social Justice since its founding in 2006 by his friend John Feerick, FCRH ’58, LAW ’61, longtime Fordham Law professor and former dean of the school.

“When I was at the Fordham Law Review, in my final year of law school, John was the editor in chief. I tell everybody that John was the editor and I was his gopher,” he laughed. “We’ve been friends ever since.”

Motivated by the Mission

Kenny, who retired after more than 30 years at Transamerica Leasing, said his Jesuit education played a big part in his professional success. “They really train you how to think,” he said. “And if you can do that, you can succeed in just about anything.”

He feels the Feerick Center is a particularly good example of the Jesuit mission that motivates him.

“The most important thing the Catholic Church can do in this day and age is support social justice,” Kenny said. “That’s why I do so much of what I do in my life.”

Fordham’s Jesuit values made a huge impact on Vazquez too, particularly the tenet of cura personalis, or care for the whole person.

“Fordham encourages you to grow your own faith, your own individuality, regardless of what that is. Fordham embraces differences and diversity, and that helped shape me as an individual,” she said.

This year marks the first time the FUAA is hosting the Alumni Recognition Reception, which will be held biennially from now on. The reception celebrates all alumni volunteers. This year’s two honorees were nominated by their alumni peers and selected by the FUAA Advisory Board members. Vazquez will be the first to receive the Trailblazer Award. Kenny will be the latest to receive the Ram of the Year Award. Past recipients include Bob Campbell, Bill Burke, Vin Scully, and Mary Higgins Clark.

Congress was referring to the strides the country has made over the last half century in welcoming immigrants from all over the world, as well as the threats to this progress that are making headlines daily. The paradoxical topic was the focus of the conference, “A Nation of Immigrants? 50 Years of the New Immigration,” which brought experts together to discuss a timely issue that has pivoted to the forefront of national debate.

Passed in 1965 and enacted in 1968, the Immigration and Nationality Act, also called the Hart-Celler Act and the Family Reunification Act, abolished the quota system established in the 1920s that discriminated against non-northern Europeans and set a historical new precedent for immigration in the United States.

‘Changing the Face of the United States’

“For 45 years, there was very little immigration from places other than northern Europe,” said Rafael Zapata, Fordham’s chief diversity officer. “The Hart-Cellar Act changed the face of the United States.”

Keynote speaker Van Tran, Ph.D., a sociologist from Columbia University who has written extensively on the topic, agreed that the act has transformed American society, something he said President Lyndon Johnson and members of Congress didn’t foresee when it was signed. “The president said that the bill was not revolutionary,” he said. “The consensus was this will only open the door a little, maybe we could expect 5,000 people from Asia, a few hundred from Mexico, and a few hundred from Nigeria. Little did they know, it would open the door to roughly one million people a year.”

He said that at the time, there were also concerns about how immigrants would assimilate into American life. “Despite that, prior research shows clear evidence of social mobility and increased integration into American society among post-1965 immigrants and their children,” he said, noting that immigrants over the last 50 years have enriched American society with tremendous cultural, social, educational, and economic contributions.

Act at Center of Current National Immigration Debate

Tran and other scholars who presented at the conference noted the rise in anti-immigrant sentiment across the country since the last presidential election. Further, they said, as undocumented migrants continue to be separated and detained at U.S. borders, the Hart-Celler Act is at center stage in a heated national debate.

“I could speak for 10 hours about the host of policies and practices the Trump Administration has adopted that contravene the spirit and principle of family reunification,” said Dora Galacatos, executive director of the Feerick Center for Social Justice at Fordham Law School, at the panel discussion following the lecture.

“However, this is not the first. The Trump administration has built on the foundation that was started, sadly and tragically, by the Obama administration,” she said, referring to mass deportation and family detention as well as other “objectionable practices” that occurred during President Barack Obama’s tenure.

Anxiety and Mental Health Needs

Since 2016, Galacatos and a team of volunteers, including Fordham Law students, have made several visits to Dilley, Texas, home of the largest of three detention centers in the country, to assist asylum seekers and prepare them for interviews.

“We have seen extensive violations of federal law,” she said, sharing the story of one mother who was separated from her 9-year-old daughter upon entry and detained for weeks, at times handcuffed in solitary confinement and deprived of food and water.

“She was told she would never see her daughter again, and that she would be adopted,” Galacatos said. “That is torture. We need to stand up and say that this is un-American and it is not right.”

Panelist Shirley Leyro, Ph.D., assistant professor of criminal justice at Manhattan Community College—CUNY, shared her experience of the immigration crisis at the local level, and particularly immigrants’ fear of deportation and resulting mental health issues. Panelist Maria Lizardo, executive director of the Manhattan Improvement Corporation, said she and her staff also started seeing heightened anxiety among their clients following the 2016 election.

“We are doing a lot of ‘know-your-rights workshops’ and emergency planning for folks with families that have mixed statuses,” she said, adding that her organization runs four settlement houses and provides housing, legal services, and public benefits advocacy to 14,000 people in Manhattan and the Bronx.

“They are worried about who will take care of their children if they get deported. This is the first time we’ve had to do this kind of work at the community level and have these tough conversations.”

All of the speakers agreed that the Hart-Celler Act is being challenged in ways it never has before, but that it may likely provide the catalyst for much-needed change. Tran sees a ray of hope in New York City, a place that he says can serve as a model for successful immigrant integration across the country. With immigrants comprising more than half of the city’s population of 8 million, and a “long history of immigration and cultural diversity, it is a particularly inclusive environment,” he said.

—Claire Curry

In a ceremony held at the Lincoln Center campus, the group presented Feerick Center founder and director Professor John D. Feerick and executive director Dora Galacatos, LAW ’96, with a check for $100,000. The center will use the funds to expand its involvement with the Dilley Pro Bono Project in its efforts to assist asylum-seeking women with children detained in the South Texas Family Residential Center, a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility in Dilley, Texas.

Since March 2016, the Feerick Center has partnered with the student-run group Immigration Advocacy Project to send 58 law student volunteers on 7 trips to Dilley, where they have provided legal representation to families seeking asylum in the United States.  An additional 20 other volunteers (including Fordham Law School alumni and staff) have served on 4 other trips. 

A large number of the clients are women and children fleeing countries with extremely high murder rates, such as Honduras, El Salvador, and Guatemala. Volunteers explain the process of applying for asylum, listen to clients’ stories, and help them prepare for interviews with asylum officers.

Galacatos said the need for resources has never been higher. With 2,400 beds, the Dilley facility is the largest immigration detention center in the country, and a recent census revealed that it’s nearly full, with 2,200 residents currently detained there.

“I’ve been doing this for two years, and I’ve never seen it that high. There just aren’t enough people going down there to make sure every client who asks for help it gets it,” she said.

She and her partners with the Dilley Pro Bono Project plan to use the funds to hire expert consultants and some time-limited grant-funded staff and to purchase training materials and webinars. She said she’s grateful for the support of the American College of Trial Lawyers, which promotes the importance of fair administration of justice.

Galacatos said the Dilley Pro Bono Project (previously called the CARA Pro Bono Project) has been devoted to this idea since its founding and that it is an ideal example of it in action. When the first family detention center opened in 2014 in Artesia, Mexico, there were no lawyers there to assist detainees and only 46 percent of asylum seekers were determined by officers to have credible fears of being in harm’s way in the country they were fleeing. By contrast, the vast majority of Dilly project clients are successful—well over 96%.

“My job as a lawyer, and our responsibility as officers of the court, is to promote due process, and make sure everyone has a fair opportunity to make their claims,” she said.

The event included a prerecorded interview of former Senator George J. Mitchell, who chaired the peace negotiations as United States special envoy for Northern Ireland under President Bill Clinton. Irish Consul General Ciaran Madden spoke at the beginning of the program, and Fordham Law professors Martin Flaherty and Michael W. Martin presented on the past and future in Northern Ireland.

The landmark political development of April 10, 1998, helped resolve longstanding strife between the nationalists, who seek reunification with the Republic of Ireland and are mostly Catholic, and the unionists, who are generally Protestant and whose loyalties are with the United Kingdom. The agreement led to the region’s legislative devolution from the United Kingdom.

“This event was right there as one of the most important events in the history of the world, or what was accomplished by this incredible agreement signed twenty years ago this day,” said Robert J. Reilly LAW ’75, assistant dean of the Feerick Center for Social Justice, during his introductory remarks. Reilly also thanked the program’s sponsors: the Feerick Center, the Ireland Summer Program, the Leitner Center for International Law & Justice, the Irish Law Students Association, the Fordham Law Review, the Fordham International Law Journal, and the Conflict Resolution and ADR Program.

Consul General Madden stressed the importance of Northern Ireland’s ongoing commitment to remembrance and reconciliation. Desegregation, he said, remains a necessary act of all the region’s people.

“It’s the work of everyone in Northern Ireland and many outside it,” he said. “It’s not easy work. It’s slow work, but it’s so, so important.” Madden also stressed the viability of this work by quoting from the late Seamus Heaney’s poem “The Cure at Troy,” which encourages hope for justice and healing.

Illuminating the history that necessitated such healing, Flaherty described the last 400 years of Ireland’s long chronicle of suffering. After recounting some of the older history—including the migration of English and Scottish Presbyterian dissenters to Ulster in the 17th century, and the Irish Parliament’s voting itself out of existence in the late 18th century because it failed to take the rights of minorities into account—Flaherty discussed the violent conflicts between Protestants and Catholics in the last century. For a long time, violence reigned and mistrust thwarted resolution. Flaherty addressed the need to hold governments accountable for the violation of their laws.

“What we need today still is to keep this kind of scrutiny, this kind of pressure, on all parties to live up to the Good Friday Agreement because there still remains much, much work to be done before we can have true reconciliation, true peace, and true adherence to the human rights that everyone in that community on both sides deserves to enjoy,” said Flaherty.

Program attendees then watched a prerecorded interview of Senator Mitchell, the man who played a pivotal role in shepherding the agreement to approval. Mitchell received Fordham Law’s prestigious Stein Prize six months after the agreement’s approval in recognition of his work in Northern Ireland.

During the interview, adjunct professor John Rogan LAW ’14 asked Mitchell a series of questions about challenges and expectations both during the peace negotiations and after the agreement’s passing.

“It was less an expectation than hope,” said Mitchell, who recounted the stressful few weeks before the vote. The two sides’ mistrust of one another and their initial unwillingness to hear each other’s perspectives led to unproductive and even disastrous meetings. Nonetheless, the parties managed to reach a consensus after Mitchell set a deadline for ending the talks. “It was an enormous relief, a sense of great exaltation and exhaustion combined,” said Mitchell.

Mitchell observed how, although the agreement is a historical landmark, it does not itself guarantee peace; rather, it makes peace possible. “Peace is not a guarantee in any society, especially not in those with a history of violence,” said Mitchell. When that history of violence has included thousands of deaths and punishment beatings, which resulted in permanent maiming, the challenge is steep. Mitchell stressed how people need to be vigilant of violence’s ongoing threat, especially in the face of Brexit.

Nonetheless, the country has come a long way from where it had been. When Rogan asked Mitchell about how he feels looking back at his role in the peace process, Mitchell beamed with pride. “It was for me a labor of love,” he said. “Personally it changed my life.” He recounted how his involvement led him to connect with his Irish ancestry. “The experience filled in a void that I didn’t know even existed,” he said.

For the final portion of the program, Martin, who has led the summer program for Fordham Law students in Northern Ireland for the last 15 years, discussed the future of the region. Martin addressed current issues, including the restoration of a devolved government, the question of direct rule and the role of the Republic of Ireland, the implications of Brexit and a hard border, and the management of a still deeply polarized society.

“There are more walls today than there were in 1998,” said Martin, referring to the physical barriers that divide the Catholic and Protestant communities in Northern Ireland. “That just gives you an idea of a society that is divided, a society that is learning to trust but is not there yet.”

Despite the difficult issues, Martin noted how much progress has occurred since the agreement, including an improving economy and citizens’ increasing feelings of safety.

Martin also spoke over Skype with Niall Murphy, a human rights lawyer in Northern Ireland. Together, Martin and Murphy addressed the importance of remembering the past in order to forge a more peaceful future.

The event was the latest chapter in Fordham Law’s ties to Northern Ireland and the peace process. Former Dean John D. Feerick ’61 was part of President Clinton’s trip to Northern Ireland in 1995 that helped lay the groundwork for the peace talks. Dean Feerick also created a conflict resolution program for community leaders from the region and started Fordham Law’s Belfast/Dublin Summer Program. Additionally, alumnus John Connorton ’71, who was at the anniversary event, helped call attention to the conflict in the years leading up to the agreement by bringing political leaders from Northern Ireland to address U.S. audiences.

Northern Ireland’s peaceful future, according to Reilly at the program’s conclusion, can be sought by all of us. “Everyone, even from right here, from 3,000 miles away, can have a role in this peace process in the years to come,” he said.

—Lindsey Pelucacci

The archive includes personal correspondence and other materials from John Feerick, who helped draft the 25th Amendment as a 27-year-old lawyer fresh out of Fordham Law School while working as an associate at Skadden Arps. Feerick went on to serve as dean of Fordham Law from 1982 to 2002 and currently holds the school’s Sidney C. Norris Chair of Law in Public Service. He and members of the Feerick Center for Social Justice at Fordham Law collaborated with The Maloney Library to develop this online resource for use by scholars, journalists, and citizens.

The archive offers an interactive timeline of the history and events that prompted Congress to create the amendment, which provides legal mechanisms for handling presidential inabilities and filling vice presidential vacancies. In addition, the archive provides access to the legal and scholarly discourse on the 25th Amendment since its ratification on February 10, 1967.

Materials also include law review and scholarly articles, books, congressional reports, executive branch documents, conference and symposium videos, photographs, and think-tank reports. All items in the archive may be viewed or downloaded. The repository will continue to grow in size and scope as additional materials are added.

As of August 9, 2017, materials from the archive have been downloaded approximately 42,127 times by users from 134 countries.

Feerick received the ABA Medal on August 12 at the 2017 ABA Annual Meeting in New York. The medal is the highest honor awarded by the American Bar Association.

On September 27, in conjunction with Feerick, Fordham Law School will present a symposium on the 25th Amendment. Learn more about Feerick and Fordham Law’s history with the 25th Amendment via Fordham Lawyer magazine.

Brendan McGuinness, facilities mechanic at the Lincoln Center campus

Brendan McGuinness grew up in the Bronx, and along with his four siblings, attended Our Lady of Mercy grammar school, just across Webster Avenue from the Rose Hill campus. He served as an altar boy at the church there, and although he doesn’t attend church as often as he used to, he says he still believes in God and goes to church on holidays. McGuinness said he hopes Pope Francis’ visit will be a blessing for New York City.

“He took over at a rough time in the church. He’s a humble man and says he wants to still live the humble life he’s lived. He’s not looking for everybody to cater to him because he’s the high priest. He still wants to put on his own shoes. That resonates with me, because it tells me that even in his position, he’s a normal person. Normal people don’t turn around and feel that they’re higher up than somebody, because we’re all on the same page and the same level. We’re all children of God.”

Angela Belsole, grants administrator, Graduate School of Social Service

Angela Belsole calls herself a “cradle Catholic.” Raised in a strongly religious family, she attended Catholic school all through her formative years in Long Island, and graduated from Thomas More College of Fordham University in 1973. She will be seeing the Pope in Central Park next week.

“It is wonderful that the Pope is coming to the U.S. and I think it will have a positive effect not only on Catholics, but on everyone. Pope Francis has an infectious spirit of joy that is hard not to catch. His simple, joyful demeanor, his emphasis on God’s mercy, and his commitment to social justice are all attributes that are so needed in today’s world. Young people, especially, are excited by the obvious delight he takes in living a deep faith in the freedom of God’s love. I hope his visit will inspire these future leaders of our Church and the world to live and share the gospel of Jesus in the same way.”

“Much like Pope John XXIII, when he came in and started Vatican II, and the church renewed itself, I feel like with Pope Francis that is going to happen too. With his emphasis on mercy and love and care for the earth and for one another, I think we will see that renewal again.”

Chastity Lopez, facilities coordinator at Lincoln Center

Chastity Lopez was baptized Catholic but grew up Lutheran, as her father worked as a custodian for the Trinity Lutheran Church in Sunset Park. Even though she grew up outside of the Catholic faith, Lopez is a big believer in the power of faith, and is eager to hear more about Pope Francis’ thoughts on the environment.

“After 9/11, we were all united in one cause, just trying to help everyone. And as that passed on, it changed. It’s like everyone went back to not caring about anything. I’m looking forward to seeing if him coming here can bring some kind of change among the people of New York, to bring back that common goal.

“I feel like New Yorkers, we’re so self involved in our own running to work, then running home, then running for dinner, running to pick up kids. Some of us don’t even have time for church anymore, and we need to clear our minds and focus on one thing, just to know there is some kind of hope, and something to look forward to.”

Anne Marie Kirmse, OP, PhD, research associate for the McGinley Chair

A few years ago, when the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith began an investigation of the U.S.-based Leadership Conference of Women Religious, the sisters were given the option to meet with investigators individually. Sister Kirmse chose to meet with them privately when they came to her religious congregation.

After her meeting was completed, her congregation as well as many other groups of American women religious protested the Vatican’s decision to keep the investigation results and details private.

“In America we’re not like that,” she said. “You can’t have this big study and then have it only go to certain groups in Rome. You have to tell us. Good or bad, whatever the results are, we need to know.”

Eventually the sisters got the published report. This spring, the report was put to rest and several months later the pope from Argentina offered effusive praise for the work of the nuns.

“Pope Francis said, ‘I love the American sisters,’” Sister Kirmse said. “And I thought to myself, ‘Well the investigation is now over.’”

“This pope was ratifying the work that we do. And since he is so involved with social justice work himself, and because he comes from a developing nation, he understands that we sisters are in the forefront of the ecological movement, in prisons, in social work, in education. And that’s God’s work.”

Juan Keller Sarmiento, sophomore at Fordham College at Lincoln Center

Sarmiento was born and raised in Buenos Aires, Argentina, like Pope Francis. Although he never attended Catholic school in Argentina, he was heavily influenced by Catholicism, thanks to his deeply religious family. His parents were very fond of Jesuit education. That fondness, plus a love of New York City, brought Sarmiento 5,000 miles from home to Fordham. With the Pope’s arrival to New York City, Sarmiento’s worlds seem to be coming together.

“I have immense pride because the Pope is Argentine. I’m sure Fordham feels the same pride. Going to a Jesuit school and being Argentine, I feel that we have a lot in common and I have a connection to him. I think he’s a good head of the Church because he’s humble and his actions show what he preaches. He is helping us adapt to changing times, and I can’t wait for the Pope to come to New York City.”

Olga Jaime, executive secretary, Development and University Relations

For Jaime, who has a master’s in religious education and is a catechist, the pope is Jesus’ representative here on Earth, and as such, he is a traveling teacher—just as Jesus was.

“The pope is doing exactly the same thing with his visit. He’s walking around and teaching,” she said. “Even the person who is farthest away from him will be affected.”

She cited a biblical passage of a woman in a large crowd who touched the mere fringe of Jesus’s cloak. He perceived her touch and her faith and then cured her illness.

“I know that I won’t be close. But that light that comes with the pope represents Jesus. A look from the pope, it is through the light of Christ,” she said. “So it doesn’t matter where you are because knowing that he’s nearby is enough.”

Clare Deck, senior at Fordham College at Rose Hill and an intern at Spiritual Retreat Ministry

Deck remembers the excitement on campus when Francis was named pope. She said Father Phil Florio made sure that students understood they were part of the Jesuit family and that the pope’s election was a big deal for them.

“He was right, it’s done so much for us and it’s done so much for the way the people look at the church,” she said.

“I’ve never been so interested in the pope as a figure,” she said. “But now he’s someone that I’m actively seeking articles about and looking for news about.”

The primary change that Pope Francis has brought to the church, she says, is “perception.”

“It’s great that we have someone who’s able to change how the whole world looks at the church and at Jesuit traditions, not only for people of faith but for anybody interested in the basic values he holds.”

“This guy is showing that the church isn’t this huge scary thing. He’s humanizing it, and that’s really awesome.”

Robert Reilly, assistant dean for the Feerick Center for Social Justice, Fordham Law School

Pope Francis will be the fourth pope that Reilly has seen on American soil. Reilly was in high school when Pope Paul VI came to New York in October of 1965.

“We all stood out on the street and watched him drive by,” said Reilly, a devout Catholic and a double Fordham graduate (FCRH ’72 and LAW ’75). “Then, when John Paul II came [in 1979]—I was practicing law at the time—I went to the Mass at Shea Stadium. And when Benedict XVI was here [in 2008]I got a ticket to the going-away service held at Kennedy Airport.”

Fortunately, Reilly’s run will continue with Pope Francis, who he says “exudes joy and is a face of compassion.” He and several volunteers from the Feerick Center will attend the Mass at Madison Square Garden on Sept. 25.

“A few months ago, the Archdiocese of New York was merging several of its parishes, and we were brought in as volunteer mediators to facilitate some of the more difficult cases,” Reilly said. “In thanksgiving for our work, Timothy Cardinal Dolan invited us as his guests to the pope’s Mass.”

Father James Smith, SJ, retired professor and Murray-Weigel Hall resident

After 66 years as a Jesuit priest, 85-year-old Father Smith, a retired mathematics professor, recognizes the pope’s Jesuit qualities better than most.

“He’s countercultural actually,” said Father Smith. “The type of life we Jesuits live: this life of celibacy, and poverty of a sort, and obedience, it’s not for the generality of man.”

“The pope’s visit will have a good effect on people, especially the disenfranchised Catholics,” he said. “Take all of this stuff about divorced Catholics. Rather than give stern answers to problems, use your mind and see where people can be given a break.”

But while most Americans will be welcoming, of the pope, the more conservative Americans might not be as happy, he said.

“He doesn’t stay behind rituals and ceremonies and it’s not an act. He’s really concerned about people and their needs, and as a Jesuit he’d be open to changes. His norm is ‘What does God want me to do?’”

“He doing it all because he sees this how the Lord wants him to make his contribution to the world. And what a job! He’s not going to change principles, but he communicates them with real sense of caring. To use the a Jewish expression: He’s a real mensch!”

— Rachel Roman, Janet Sassi, Patrick Verel, Tom Stoelker, and Joanna Mercuri contributed to this story.

To those ends, a group of students and experts in immigration and family law from American Friends Service Committee, the Child Advocacy Clinic at Rutgers University School of Law—Newark, Fordham Law’s Feerick Center for Social Justice, and the Immigrant Legal Resource Center,  have developed model statutory language aimed at promoting uniformity across jurisdictions as well as the right of all Special Immigrant Juvenile Status-eligible immigrant children to access their respective state court systems. Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe LLP, offered pro bono support. The project was part of a broader effort funded with a grant of $200,000 over the course of two years.

The model state statute titled “Special Provisions for Immigrant Youth: A Model State Statute”, was prepared to help overcome jurisdictional barriers and achieve consistency across states for immigrant youth. The working group contacted specialized lawyers practicing in 10 states where immigrants have traditionally settled to help prepare the new model statute. They are New York, California, Nevada, Texas, New Jersey, Florida, Arizona, Georgia, Maryland, and Illinois.

“Special Provisions for Immigrant Youth: A Model State Statute” aspires to:

• Promote uniformity and flexibility across state systems to fully implement the intent of the federal law as well as the spirit of state child welfare laws which seek to protect vulnerable young people.

• Ensure maximum access to state courts in order to obtain the requisite factual findings so that immigrant youth can apply to the U.S. Citizenship & Immigration Service (USCIS) for Special Immigrant Juvenile Status (SIJS).

• Align state law with federal law to ensure that SIJS is available to immigrant youth up to age 21.

• Provide clarity on a number of substantive and procedural issues that typically arise in SIJS cases.

“The time is overdue for state legislative action to ensure that all children and youth who are eligible for SIJS have access to state courts,” said Dora Galacatos, Executive Director of the Feerick Center for Social Justice.

SIJS, created by Congress in 1990, seeks to protect a population of youth who have faced significant struggles from returning to situations where they will not be safe. SIJS eligibility was expanded in 2008 under the William Wilberforce Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act (TVPRA). According to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, the number of unaccompanied immigrant children entering the United States has grown dramatically in recent years, from 6,000 children in 2011 to an estimated 60,000 in 2014. Also, in 2014 approximately 25 percent of unaccompanied immigrant children were under the age of 14, and about one-third of the unaccompanied immigrant children were girls. Given the rise in numbers of arriving unaccompanied children and the expanded eligibility requirements for SIJS, states must ensure that children and youth have access to their court systems.

Access the complete statute on the Feerick Center’s Publications page.