“In the Harry Potter books, magic is a broad metaphor for human agency,” said Jones, an associate professor of philosophy who believes the series’ popularity reflects the mood at end of the 20^th and beginning of the 21st centuries.

“It’s not an accident that the books tap into an affirmation of our humanity when it’s not clear what the future of humanity looks like in politics, science, and economics—it’s not even clear that we are agents at all,” she said.

Jones said the course’s cross-disciplinary nature mimics that of the alchemists of history (think Sir Isaac Newton), whose interests blurred the lines between religion and science.

“Alchemists looked toward science as well as religion as ways to meaningfully participate in the world,” said Jones.

According to Jones, the very title of Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone (aka The Sorcerer’s Stone in the United States) suggests the alchemists’ attempts to produce an object—the Stone—that would yield immortality as well as turn base metals into gold.

“They did a lot of chemical experimentation, out of which grew in part [the field of] chemistry,” she said. This exercise in “transforming materials” went hand-in-hand with remaking oneself spiritually.

“In psychological terms, it was an attempt to overcome the ego,” she said.

In the postmodern period, however, people have become used to keeping science and spirituality separate, as the philosopher Descartes modeled them, Jones said. But Jones fundamentally believes that the compartmentalization of knowledge is not best for humanity.

“At the human level, we need the integration of these and other disciplines,” she said.

For students, the Harry Potter course has helped to reintegrate far-flung fields of thinking.

“My thoughts on Harry Potter as a work of literature have been subject to plenty of expansion,” said Fordham College at Rose Hill rising senior Sebastian Ullman. “I’ve also found that my thoughts on fantasy as a genre, and philosophy in general, have been deeply enriched.

“But the excursions planned by Dr. Jones have been far and away the most incredible part of my trip,” he said.

Seeing the sights has been equally exciting for Jones; though she had been to Scotland, she’d never visited England before.

“At some of the places we visit, I find myself with my jaw gaping open—and in genuine awe,” she said.

It was 1859 when the first Marrin graduated from what was then known as St. John’s College. Four more generations of the Marrin family would follow him through the Fordham gates, many of them going on to study law or making their mark in other ways, like contributing to the Fordham football tradition celebrated this past weekend.

That’s what Richard Marrin Sr., FCRH ’67, LAW ’70, did, playing under Head Coach Jim Lansing during a pivotal time for Fordham football. His son Richard Marrin Jr., FCRH ’91, LAW ’96, also played for the Rams. He fondly recalls when he and his teammates looked past their own setbacks during the late 1980s to envision the kind of resurgent program Fordham has built in recent years. The Rams achieved a 32-8 record during the past three seasons—fourth best among NCAA FCS teams—and overcame the Penn Quakers, 31-17, on Saturday.

“We knew at the time that our losses, our sacrifices, were a steppingstone,” said Marrin, an attorney who practices in the United Arab Emirates. “We wanted to win, we were used to winning, but we accepted that losing is part of winning, and that someday future Fordham football players would win at the next level. And here we are,” he said.

A Family Legacy Spanning Five Generations

That ethos of striving after a larger—even heroic—ambition is one aspect of Fordham that he thinks has kept his family members coming back to the University over the years. He and his five siblings all graduated from Fordham: Matthew, James, and Peter Marrin, classes of 1996, 1998, and 2000, respectively; Jennifer Marrin Cullinan, Class of 1993; and Margaret Marrin Spencer, Class of 1990, who, like Richard, also graduated from Fordham Law School, in 1993.

Over the years, many members of the Marrin family have been drawn to legal careers, starting with Joseph Marrin, Class of 1859, who apprenticed in the law and worked as an attorney for Fordham in the days before the University even had a law school. His son Wilfrid graduated from Fordham in 1890—after having been a three-year letter winner on the football team—and apprenticed in law before studying engineering at Columbia University and serving as borough engineer for the Bronx.

Wilfrid’s son, Wilfrid Marrin II, Class of 1931, was the first Marrin to graduate from Fordham Law School. He practiced admiralty law in New York, and his two sons, Wilfrid III and Richard Sr., graduated from both Fordham College at Rose Hill and Fordham Law. Richard Marrin Sr.—who died in 2010—first attended the University on a scholarship to play tennis and squash, but he later moved on to football. He was inducted into the Fordham Athletics Hall of Fame in 2002 and would go on to become the namesake of the team’s Rich Marrin Most Valuable Player Award.

“My father was so happy to be part of Lansing’s program,” said Richard Marrin Jr., referring to Jim Lansing, FCRH ’43, a former All-American end for the Rams who would help reestablish the sport at Fordham after a 10-year hiatus. Football was only a club sport when it was brought back to the University in 1964, the year Lansing was hired as head coach. After he led the team to national club championships in 1965 and 1968, the team was elevated to varsity status in 1970, and Lansing joined the Fordham Athletics Hall of Fame in 1976.

Pushing the team on was Fordham’s legacy as a national football power during the days of Vince Lombardi, FCRH ’37, the Seven Blocks of Granite, and sold-out games at the Polo Grounds and Yankee Stadium. “It was not far from most people’s memory at the time,” Marrin said.

An Education for the Ages

His own time on the football team amplified some of the signature strengths of a Fordham education, like developing self-knowledge. “I was a less-than-stellar player, but I knew I was contributing,” he said. Through the generations, his family has consistently valued this and other aspects of Fordham’s educational philosophy, like promoting ingenuity and innovative thinking and “engaging the people around you with a loving attitude,” he said.

His undergraduate years were filled with novel experiences, like working on an on-campus archaeological dig for a class in anthropology (one of his majors) and joining his fellow student-athletes for occasional dinner and repartee with professors, including Gerard Reedy, S.J., the former Fordham dean who passed away in March.

“They were intelligent, engaging, funny people we had the honor of being invited to dine with as students,” he said. He’s seen this same welcoming attitude among alumni, “and that’s what makes Fordham special for me, that it’s a living thing,” comprising a sort of diverse, worldwide family connected by common values, ready to share some of their time and attention with one another, he said.

Marrin attended Homecoming on Saturday along with his wife, Mona; his brother Matthew and Matthew’s wife, Rachel Marrin, FCRH ’96, GABELLI ’05; his sister Jennifer and her husband, Kevin Cullinan; and his and his siblings’ children.

Richard remembers being taken to Fordham Homecoming games as a child and learning his way around the Rose Hill campus long before he enrolled at the University. Last fall, he came to a football game with his son, then 8, who “looked at the buildings, looked across Eddies Parade towards Keating Hall, and said, ‘It’s just like Hogwarts,’” the wizardry school in the Harry Potter series, Marrin said. “I told him he’s not that wrong, because there’s magic here.”

[In the photo at top, three Marrin siblings—Jennifer, Richard, and Matthew—and their spouses are shown with eight of their children. From left, they are Jimmy, Danny, Christopher, Charlotte, Olivia, Maximus, Lucy, and Sarkis.]

Twice a week, the third floor lecture hall in Keating undergoes a magical transformation.

Pencils are swapped for quills, and the Fordham maroon becomes a hue in another school’s color spectrum. By 10 a.m., the wood-paneled room comes to resemble a scene from Hogwarts castle.

But in class, students are not learning about charms and potions; they’re learning about Aristotle, Machiavelli, and Nietzsche.

This semester, associate professor of philosophy Judith Jones, Ph.D., launched “Harry Potter and Philosophy,” an undergraduate course that draws on J. K. Rowling’s popular Harry Potter series to elucidate philosophical topics.

“The books provide what you might call the ‘pool of common experience’ that the whole class draws on individually and collectively as we study a variety of philosophical treatments of ideas central to the novels,” Jones said.

Wearing a T-shirt with the symbol of the Deathly Hallows (a key motif in the seventh and final installment in the Potter series), Jones does not merely refer to the books in her teaching. She transforms the classroom into a Potteresque world.

Students wield pens adorned with colored feathers to mimic the quills used at Hogwarts (the magic school); four banners, each bearing the crest of a Hogwarts dormitory, hang from the chalk ledge; and the main lectern displays the Hogwarts coat of arms, emblazoned with the school motto, Draco Dormiens Nunquam Titillandus(or, Never Tickle a Sleeping Dragon).

“The novels are used constantly as a reservoir of examples and test cases for what the philosophies address, and sometimes students are specifically tasked to come to class having plumbed the books for examples or illustrations of certain ideas,” Jones said.

Elements of the novels are also incorporated into the course’s larger goals. On the first day, the class was “sorted” into the four Hogwarts dormitories. By being separated this way, the students encounter the topics of otherness and belonging.

On a more practical level, the four “Houses” also serve as teams. Students who speak in class earn points for their Houses. After class, they can assemble in their House common rooms (i.e., electronic discussion boards) to talk about the material. Additionally, each House will do a final group project that combines a practical element with the philosophy they’re learning.

“Some students have a strong sense of House-belonging and are actively trying to win the House Cup [an end-of-semester prize for the House with the most points], and this can’t help but boost their participation evaluation,” Jones remarked.

To say that the class is near and dear to Jones’ heart would be understatement, given her self-described “obsession” with the novels.

“After reading the books a couple times, I got them all on CD, and have not listened to anything else in my car besides Harry Potter books in several years,” Jones admitted. “They are the soundtrack of my moving through space, so to speak.”

However, the novels move her for deeper reasons yet. Recently, she lost both of her parents to extended illnesses.

“In both cases I was very absorbed in their care and then dying processes,” she said. “Facing their mortality made the subjects of death and souls and identities quite real in an immediate way for me. These being crucial topics in the novels, the mutual reinforcing of life and literary obsession was pretty powerful and meaningful.”

In fact, the themes of death, souls, and self are also prominent in philosophy. As she continued to discover parallels between her line of work and the Potter series, Jones came to believe that the books deserve more critical attention than they have received in popular culture.

The topic of power has also proven relevant. Using the example of the evil
Lord Voldemort’s despotic use of power, the class has analyzed works by philosophers Machiavelli, Nietzsche, and Hannah Arendt.

“The contrast of power and violence is particularly salient to the question of Voldemort, and whether a trail of terror and destruction is necessary to the wielding of real power. This, we all take it in the class, is one of the central questions of the novels, as it is one of the central questions of human history,” she said.

As Jones has found, the course is pedagogically informative. Because the students enter the class with an already significantunderstanding of the books, the course demonstrates the value of teaching from an established base of knowledge.

“Both professor and student are ‘expertise equals’ where some aspects of the novel are concerned,” she said. “This is very exciting pedagogically—to teach an undergraduate course where students and teacher are in the same place as to dedication, level of experience, detailed knowledge of so decisive an element of the course is wonderful… The presence of material they already love intensely gives the class a unique feel.”

Indeed, the Keating lecture hall was rarely quiet during the class’ 10 a.m. gathering. Quill after quill, students raised their hands and added their commentary, often only mentioning Harry Potter before making some greater philosophical point.

“I hope that students gain from this a sense of how amazing education can be when that level of expertise is assumed before other course material is even encountered,”
Jones said.

Pencils are swapped for quills, and the Fordham maroon becomes a hue in another school’s color spectrum. By 10 a.m., the wood-paneled room comes to resemble a scene from Hogwarts castle.

But in class, students are not learning about charms and potions; they’re learning about Aristotle, Machiavelli, and Nietzsche.

This semester, associate professor of philosophy Judith Jones, Ph.D., launched “Harry Potter and Philosophy,” an undergraduate course that draws on J. K. Rowling’s popular Harry Potter series to elucidate philosophical topics.

“The books provide what you might call the ‘pool of common experience’ that the whole class draws on individually and collectively as we study a variety of philosophical treatments of ideas central to the novels,” Jones said.

Wearing a T-shirt with the symbol of the Deathly Hallows (a key motif in the seventh and final installment in the Potter series), Jones does not merely refer to the books in her teaching. She transforms the classroom into a Potteresque world.

Students wield pens adorned with colored feathers to mimic the quills used at Hogwarts (the magic school); four banners, each bearing the crest of a Hogwarts dormitory, hang from the chalk ledge; and the main lectern displays the Hogwarts coat of arms, emblazoned with the school motto, Draco Dormiens Nunquam Titillandus(or, Never Tickle a Sleeping Dragon).

“The novels are used constantly as a reservoir of examples and test cases for what the philosophies address, and sometimes students are specifically tasked to come to class having plumbed the books for examples or illustrations of certain ideas,” Jones said.

Elements of the novels are also incorporated into the course’s larger goals. On the first day, the class was “sorted” into the four Hogwarts dormitories. By being separated this way, the students encounter the topics of otherness and belonging.

On a more practical level, the four “Houses” also serve as teams. Students who speak in class earn points for their Houses. After class, they can assemble in their House common rooms (i.e., electronic discussion boards) to talk about the material. Additionally, each House will do a final group project that combines a practical element with the philosophy they’re learning.

“Some students have a strong sense of House-belonging and are actively trying to win the House Cup [an end-of-semester prize for the House with the most points], and this can’t help but boost their participation evaluation,” Jones remarked.

To say that the class is near and dear to Jones’ heart would be understatement, given her self-described “obsession” with the novels.

“After reading the books a couple times, I got them all on CD, and have not listened to anything else in my car besides Harry Potter books in several years,” Jones admitted. “They are the soundtrack of my moving through space, so to speak.”

However, the novels move her for deeper reasons yet. Recently, she lost both of her parents to extended illnesses.

“In both cases I was very absorbed in their care and then dying processes,” she said. “Facing their mortality made the subjects of death and souls and identities quite real in an immediate way for me. These being crucial topics in the novels, the mutual reinforcing of life and literary obsession was pretty powerful and meaningful.”

In fact, the themes of death, souls, and self are also prominent in philosophy. As she continued to discover parallels between her line of work and the Potter series, Jones came to believe that the books deserve more critical attention than they have received in popular culture.

The topic of power has also proven relevant. Using the example of the evil
Lord Voldemort’s despotic use of power, the class has analyzed works by philosophers Machiavelli, Nietzsche, and Hannah Arendt.

“The contrast of power and violence is particularly salient to the question of Voldemort, and whether a trail of terror and destruction is necessary to the wielding of real power. This, we all take it in the class, is one of the central questions of the novels, as it is one of the central questions of human history,” she said.

As Jones has found, the course is pedagogically informative. Because the students enter the class with an already significantunderstanding of the books, the course demonstrates the value of teaching from an established base of knowledge.

“Both professor and student are ‘expertise equals’ where some aspects of the novel are concerned,” she said. “This is very exciting pedagogically—to teach an undergraduate course where students and teacher are in the same place as to dedication, level of experience, detailed knowledge of so decisive an element of the course is wonderful… The presence of material they already love intensely gives the class a unique feel.”

Indeed, the Keating lecture hall was rarely quiet during the class’ 10 a.m. gathering. Quill after quill, students raised their hands and added their commentary, often only mentioning Harry Potter before making some greater philosophical point.

“I hope that students gain from this a sense of how amazing education can be when that level of expertise is assumed before other course material is even encountered,”
Jones said.