“Poverty and Development: A Catholic Perspective,” which was co-sponsored by Fordham’s International Political Economy and Development Program, featured a multinational delegation that included the Vatican Secretary of State, Pietro Cardinal Parolin, and other high-level church officials. The conference is one of three that are being cosponsored worldwide by Centesimus Annus Pro Pontifice (CAPP), the Vatican foundation created by St. John Paul II to promote Catholic social teaching.

Representatives from each of the three conferences will present their findings to the pope this spring.

“Our world has undergone seismic social changes,” said Archbishop Silvano Maria Tomasi, C.S., Papal Nuncio to the United Nations. “Inequality has worsened, both within developed countries and between developing and developed countries, increasing the gap between persons at the extremes of income distribution.

“There is a growing danger that this state of affairs is becoming accepted as the new normal.”

Before countries can even begin to tackle poverty, they must first address rampant violence around the world, cautioned General Roméo Dallaire, the UN force commander during the Rwandan Hutu-Tutsi genocide in 1994.

Rwanda is a grim example of the developed world’s attitude toward intervening in conflicts, the general said. In 100 days, more people were “killed, injured, internally displaced, and raped” in Rwanda than in the six years of ex-Yugoslavian warfare, which was occurring around the same time, he said.

The world came to Yugoslavia’s aid. It did not come to Rwanda’s.

Troubled by this discrepancy, General Dallaire, who is a senior fellow at the Montreal Institute for Genocide and Human Rights Studies, conducted a study, “The Will to Intervene,” to investigate how leaders decide to intervene. The team found that the decision often comes down to a single principle: What’s in it for us?

Their findings corroborated what General Dallaire had experienced firsthand. One by one, nations’ reconnaissance teams arrived in Rwanda to assess the efficacy of intervening and left advising their home countries against involvement. They argued that the country lack “strategic resources” and was not in a strategic location.

“One nation’s representative told me, ‘The only thing that’s here are human beings, and there’s too many of them anyway,’” the general said. “Humanity was not even a factor. And so, the killing went on.”

General Dallaire urged the conference participants to promote a policy of intervention based in humanitarianism, not self-interest. This is especially important in cases where children are being used in warfare, which has characterized many conflicts, including those currently plaguing the Middle East.

According to the general, the use of children in war obliges countries to intervene.

“In the past, children were used in wars in spite of their age, because they were the only fighters left. Now, we use them because of their youth. And it’s not just boys—40 percent are girls who are used as cooks, spies, and ultimately sex slaves and bush wives. This is the weaponry of our era—our children.”

Failure to intervene—both during a crisis and before one erupts—will continue to prove catastrophic.

Archbishop Silvano Maria Tomasi, C.S., Papal Nuncio to the United Nations.
Photo by Bruce Gilbert “The slaughter in Rwanda 20 years ago was done not by adults, but by a youth militia—young people who were indoctrinated into a political party, nurtured by a radio station, and given opportunities and empowerment,” he said. “In a country that is 90 percent Catholic, militants were able to make the youth the primary instrument to slaughter 800,000 other Catholics.”

At a dinner event later that evening, Secretary of State Cardinal Parolin described the Vatican’s stance on issues such as poverty and security. He reiterated Pope Francis’ message to the United Nations earlier this year, saying that entrepreneurship must be balanced by virtuousness in the pursuit of human progress.

“Economic activity should contribute to integral human development for everyone so that ‘humanity is served by wealth and not ruled by it,’” Cardinal Parolin said. “There must be the firm commitment to ensure that private enterprise strives for the common good. Thus, in every business activity, the personal and social virtues of honest, integrity, fair-mindedness, generosity, and concern for others should prevail over the maximization of profits.”

Joseph M. McShane, S.J., president of the University, said Fordham was honored to host such a crucial discussion.

“The world is unstable, violent, and unjust—but it’s a world that, because of Pope Francis, is being called with greater urgency and effectiveness than ever before,” he said. “The least-known treasure of the Church is Catholic is social teaching. The world needs it more than ever.”

Other speakers included Chibly Cardinal Langlois, bishop of Les Cayes, Haiti, and Metropolitan Jean Clément Jeanbart, archbishop of Aleppo, Syria.

Will sanctions against Putin’s inner circle succeed in provoking regime change? And if so, will Putin’s replacement be any better?

A lively panel discussion on Monday, Sept. 22 at Fordham’s School of Law, laid bare the bind that the U.S. and its allies face when it comes to how to deal with Russia in the years ahead.

“Back to the Future of U.S.-Russia Relations,” featured Stephen Sestanovich, Ph.D., professor at Columbia University, Kimberly Marten, Ph.D., professor at Barnard College, and Mark Galeotti, Ph.D., professor at New York University. Stephen Holmes, Ph.D., professor at New York University School of Law, served as moderator.

Panelists spent a great deal of time debating the best way to counter the sway that Putin exerts on the Russian elite. His decision to annex Crimea and send troops into Eastern Ukraine, are clearly meant to be challenges to international institutions such as the United Nations, which Galeotti noted he despises for being too dominated by Western interests.

“From Putin’s point of view, he’s happy to see Russians sacrifice their day-to-day quality of life, if in the process they regain some sort of Russian-ness,” he said.

“He wants to ensure that Europe is not in a position to flout Russian interests within what he regards as Russian’s sphere of interest.”

The biggest disagreement revolved around sanctions that the United States and Europe have recently imposed on Russian businesses and leaders.

Martin argued that it’s not clear what Russia would have to do to get them lifted, it’s not clear whether any of the things we would like Russia to do are possible, and for them to be successful, they have to be as severe as those that are currently being imposed on Iran.

“In terms of what the goal is in Russia, it’s not clear either. Is it to separate Putin from his networks so that they’ll put pressure on him? Who would provide for their needs better than Putin is providing for them?” she said.

“It’s just cementing a really ugly form of anti-west nationalism, that now the west is once again picking on us, so let’s all get together on this.”

Sestanovich said if there’s something wrong with sanctions, it’s that there haven’t been enough of them.

“It seems to me that we should also establish the precedent that serious cooperation is possible. We shouldn’t write that off,” he said.

Martin cautioned that a replacement for Putin might be no better than he is; a point that Galeotti took issue with. He noted that Nikita Kruschev and Margaret Thatcher are good historical examples of times when countries’ elites judged their leader to be a problem rather than an asset, and forced them to step down.

“I’m not sure the next person is likely to be worse. We’re not talking about Libya. We’re not talking about a place where we bomb the snot out of countries and hope suddenly that democratic leaders rise from the rubble,” he said.

At the same time, all the panelists agreed that Russia’s foray into Eastern Ukraine illustrated a stunning level of over-reach on Putin’s part. Sestanovich said that had Russia only seized Crimea, it probably would have gotten away with it, while
Marten noted that the incursion had re-invigorated the NATO alliance, which isn’t in his interest.

It helps to remember that Putin’s a judo master, not a chess player, she said, because judo masters go into every round as if it’s a new one.

“To be the winner of a judo match, you don’t have to be the stronger person, you have to be the cleverer person. You have to know more about your opponent more than your opponent knows about you, and have to get your opponent to fall from his own weight,” she said.

“I believe that’s how Putin approaches every interaction with the west, and so I don’t think even he knows what how long term strategy is in Ukraine.”

The evening was sponsored by the Center on National Security at Fordham Law and PEN America.

The organizations, Banco de Ahorro y Credito Adopem and Credit Where Credit is Due (CWCID), provide financial education and counseling to low-income communities and play a large role in assisting immigrants who remit money to their home countries.

The transnational collaboration between Adopem, an organization that supplies women in the Dominican Republic with microfinancing loans and other products, and CWCID, a Manhattan-based credit union and financial literacy organization, was forged in March.

The venture will provide the groups with a larger financial platform to jointly offer transnational savings, credit and loans to the Dominican community here and in the homeland, mainly through the use of remittance and saving incentives.

Fordham faculty members Norma Fuentes-Mayorga, Ph.D., assistant professor of sociology; Erick Rengifo, Ph.D., assistant professor of economics; and Darryl McLeod, Ph.D., assistant professor of economics, have been working with the institutions since they organized “Migration, Remittances and Financial Inclusion,” a conference hosted in November by Fordham’s Center for International Policy Studies (CIPS).

“This is a historical and unique development,” Fuentes-Mayorga said. “This event brought together many community organizations to advocate for research support as well as collaboration between transnational microfinanciers.”

To foster financial investments in New York and the Dominican Republic, both associations will provide financial education about savings, credits and loans targeting immigrant communities, she said.

McLeod said the collaboration comes at an important time.

“The current economic crisis is affecting local businesses and especially access to credit, so certainly this will help,” he said. “Just recently I heard a story on National Public Radio describing how pawn shops are not making new loans because they cannot sell the merchandise they have already taken in as collateral.”

Upper Manhattan’s Washington Heights and Inwood neighborhoods comprise the largest concentration of Dominicans outside the Dominican Republic, according to information provided by CWCID. Dominicans represent 71 percent of the population living in the area, which is overwhelmingly low-income.

Many CWCID customers have financial obligations and priorities in the Dominican Republic. Their budgets often include support of family in their home country through remittances, as well as a longer-term commitment to investment opportunities in the Dominican Republic. It is estimated that Dominicans send money to their home country seven times a year, on average, though less than 5 percent of recipients deposit the funds into a Dominican bank account.

“We’re cross marketing our services to our audiences in New York and in the Dominican Republic,” said Ryan Newton, director of business development for Credit Where Credit is Due. “The bottom line is: we’re working together to help families here and there become ‘banked,’ which is lacking.”

Fuentes-Mayorga said CIPS is planning to host a seminar later this month that will bring together a number community microfinanciers and other cash-based business from Manhattan and the Bronx, such as the NYC association of Dominican Bodegueros and Taxi and Limousine Services.

“The main objective of the seminar will be to convene the expertise and insights of these service providers in trying to develop a financial service model that can both benefit the service provider but also help reduce the cost that poor families are forced to pay for financial services,” she said. “We also want to brainstorm new ways of linking some of these microfinanciers in New York and the Bronx with simillar institutions in the Dominican Republic and Mexico in order to help promote the development of a financial transnational model that will help protect and invest the remittance of immigrants in the New York area.”

“Ironically, the ideals of western constitutionalism were not applied by colonial powers. They did not practice the ideals of western democracy and respect for human rights and minorities,” Deng explained. “In fact, they were very authoritarian regimes.

“When independence came, you had a dual problem of constitutions being of foreign origin, and at the same time, not applied during the colonial period. [Africans] had no relevant experience to emulate,” he said.

This combination rendered these constitutions dysfunctional and inapplicable, Deng said, and no one shed tears when they were thrown out.

Deng discussed his new book, Identity, Diversity and Constitutionalism in Africa (United States Institute of Peace Press, 2008) at an event hosted by Fordham’s Institute of International Humanitarian Affairs and International Studies program. The talk was co-sponsored by several other University programs.

Deng said the constitutional models adopted by African states did not take the diversity of African societies into account.

“The fundamental challenge of managing diversity that Africans faced was not a major issue,” he said. “Also, they didn’t at all look into the African value system to see how they could build on those values in devising systems of government that were relevant.”

Identity conflicts that arose during modernization of these states led to crises still experienced in many of these states today. As the world has seen, such identity conflicts can lead to genocide, Deng said.

Long ago, before most African states gained independence, it was tribal leaders like Deng’s father, Deng Majok, the paramount chief of the Ngok Dinka of Abyei from 1949 to 1969, who kept a peaceful co-existence between tribes. Later, colonial powers were able to keep a degree of parity. But independence changed all that, he said.

“Peaceful co-existence was no longer attractive,” Deng said. “What we have in Darfur is exactly that situation. The balance is tipped in favor of the Arab tribes.”

The challenge of preventing genocide is successfully managing identity so that everyone gets a sense of having equal footing as a citizen, Deng said.

“Every society, however small, has their own norms for regulating social relations and differences. By and large, societies that are internally harmonious succeed in constructively managing diversities,” Deng said.

To prevent genocide, Deng said, state and world leaders must look to the prevention of conflict.

“Genocidal conflicts are primarily identity-related, often in the form of a national identity crisis—how a nation is described and how people relate to the nation in terms of belonging,” said Deng.

The event, “Migration, Remittances and Financial Inclusion,” was held on Nov. 14 at the University’s Rose Hill campus.

It was hosted by Fordham’s Center for International Policy Studies (CIPS), a research center created four months ago to combine the expertise and resources of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, Graduate School of Business and Fordham School of Law.

The workshop brought together microfinance organizations and credit unions from both ends of two major migration corridors—between New York City and Mexico as well as New York City and the Dominican Republic.

“The connection between these two regions is remittances—the billions of dollars that migrants send back to their families each year,” said Darryl McLeod, Ph.D., an associate professor of economics who organized the event with Norma Fuentes, Ph.D., assistant professor of sociology and Erick Rengifo, Ph.D., assistant professor of economics.

“Channeling these funds through microfinance and community development credit unions can potentially greatly enhance small business and job creation in rural Mexico and the Dominican Republic as well as in the Bronx,” McLeod said.

According to figures released last year by the World Bank, remittances accounted for about a third of total external finance worldwide in 2005. A report released by the World Bank this past July shows that remittance flows to developing countries were $251 billion in 2007, up 11 percent from 2006.

This means there are vast sums of money flowing from immigrants in the United States to their home countries. But that doesn’t mean that the system of sending money abroad is perfect, McLeod said.

“At both ends of the remittance corridor, immigrants find themselves excluded from the formal financial services we take for granted,” he said. “The result is high fees and great risk, as immigrants are known to carry large amounts of cash and are often reluctant to report crimes they witness.”

Workshop presenter Alexandre Berthaud, of the Asociación Mexicana de Uniones de Crédito del Sector Social A.C. (AMUCSS), a non-profit organization that works to better financial services in rural Mexico, noted that Mexicans on the receiving end of remittances pay steep costs to collect what their families send them.

“It costs an average $17 plus the risk of being robbed for someone living in the sierras—four hours away from a major city,” he said. “That’s a lot of money. If you receive $200, that’s 10 percent plus the risk of losing it all.”

Berthaud also pointed out the negative effects remittances have on Mexican residents, who may grow to depend on these earnings instead of finding a better way of life.

“The money is not circulating because it’s under a mattress, and if the remittances stop, the young people who depend on them migrate themselves, leaving an aging population in the sierras where they once lived,” Berthaud said.

The workshop included presentations from organizations working to improve financial literacy and provide credit and banking services for immigrants in New York and the surrounding area as well as residents of Mexico and the Dominican Republic.

The afternoon portion of the daylong event, which was hosted by John N. Tognino (FCLS ’75), chairman of the Fordham Board of Trustees, focused on efforts by Yale University and community organizations to promote the use of municipal identification cards. Yale began issuing the cards in 2007 to help immigrants gain access to bank accounts and to make them more comfortable reporting crimes to local police.

Presently, CIPS is conducting a survey of Mexican immigrants from Guerrero and Puebla to better understand their use of financial services to cash checks, transfer funds to Mexico and pay bills, McLeod said. He is co-directing the project with Norma Fuentes, Ph.D., assistant professor of sociology.

“We have a system for the time we no longer live in,” said Charles Chukwuma Soludo, governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria, during an appearance on Oct. 14 at Fordham College at Rose Hill.

His talk was part of a Distinguished Lecture Series hosted by Fordham’s Center for International Policy Studies. John Nash, Nobel Prize-winning economist and one of the founders of game theory, also spoke.

The topic, “Current Issues in Financial Markets,” drew an overflow, standing-room-only crowd to the Flom Auditorium at Walsh Library. Dozens of students followed the lecture on video monitors outside.

Soludo said the need for a new international order, with new safeguards, is shown by the current plight of Nigeria and other developing countries.

Thailand and Kenya, for instance, strengthened their economies by following the received wisdom that they should live within their means and control inflation, he said. Nigeria embarked on an ambitions recapitalization of its banks, and by March it had 12 banks among the top 1,000 in the world, with six in the top 400, he said. But despite their efforts, all three countries have been hit hard by the recent credit crisis.

Crises are coming about every 10 years, with the last one coming with the East Asian financial crisis of 1997, he said.

“It raises a fundamental question about the nature of the global financial architecture that we have today,” he said.

“Where are we?” he asked. “Is it time to think anew?”

Soludo said nationalizing banks has shown to bring its own problems: “Once government is in, politics will obviously be in. You cannot have government and divorce politics from it,” he said.

He was introduced by Dominick Salvatore, Ph.D., chairman of the Fordham economics department, who said the crisis calls for better, more comprehensive financial regulation, along with less exotic financial instruments and more transparency.

“The long-term solution to the problem is, in fact, to live within our means,” he said.

Before the lecture, Soludo met with faculty and University officials to discuss research collaborations between Fordham and the Nigerian government. Salvatore attended, along with John Tognino, chairman of the Fordham University Board of Trustees.

Nash told the audience that such financial crises would be less likely to occur if there was some international monetary standard, such as the gold standard or competition among worldwide currencies, to curb inflation and prevent the rise of mortgage abuses. He expressed some skepticism about a government bailout as a solution.

“I get the impression that the government is not ready to do anything that is really beyond a short-term basis,” said Nash, a senior research mathematician at Princeton. “[But] we need a natural stability of value.”

Nash said that various interest groups that subscribe to Keynesian, or short-term, economic theories have sold the public on the notion that inflation is acceptable or that “bad money is better than good money.” Such a notion, he said, led to the dangerous proliferation of bad mortgage loans—loans made on the gamble that house values would continue to rise and eventually turn a profit.

“A fixed-rate 30-year mortgage would be reasonable under the gold standard,” Nash said. “Now, there are variable rates, and adjustables, and convertibles, and it is very complicated” for homeowners to figure out what they are getting into. In fact, Nash said, nobody really knows the depth of the financial crisis.

Having an internationally oriented money standard would promote better quality currencies and less inflation, he added.

Nash further said that any such new international monetary system should be democratically determined, and cited the recent vote in Sweden not to abandon the Krona for the Euro.

Nash shared the 1994 Nobel Memorial Prize with two other economists for research in game theory, a method of predicting behavior in strategic social situations and a tool now widely used by economists and biologists. His academic notoriety was catapulted into celebrity status in 2001 when he and his wife, Alicia, became the subject of the movie “A Beautiful Mind.” The film was nominated for eight Oscars and won four. The movie, part of which was filmed in the basement of Keating Hall, documents Nash’s seminal contributions to game theory and mathematics and his subsequent 25-year struggle with schizophrenia.

The event was also attended by special guest Charles Soludo, Ph.D., governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria.

Dominick Salvatore, Ph.D., Distinguished Professor of Economics, introduced Nash and Saludo to the standing-room-only crowd and concurred with the need for a new international regulatory system more in tune with today’s global economy.  “The entire financial sector has to be regulated, but those regulations cannot be specific,” Salvatore said. “Money is fungible. You have to be comprehensive, but general.”

Reform starts at home, Salvatore argued. “We need less exotic derivatives and much more transparency. And the U.S. has to live within its means. We save practically nothing at the individual level . . . we have a huge trade deficit and we are mortgaging our future.”

The event was part of the Distinguished Lecture Series hosted by Fordham’s Center for International Policy Studies.

Although that notion of individual rights may sound strange, Arthur S. Hayes, associate professor of mass media and journalism, told eight foreign journalists it is also the key to promoting the flow of information vital to the survival of the republic.

“The press law is based on the American Revolution, in that the printing press and people who owned newspapers in the 1770s and 1780s played a major role in disseminating information about the revolution and galvanizing people to revolt against the British,” Hayes said in a wide-ranging and free-wheeling two-hour workshop on Thursday, Oct. 9, in the Special Collections Room of the William D. Walsh Family Library.

“Consequently, when our Constitution and Bill of Rights were written, we had this press clause,” he continued.

Hayes’ workshop on mass media law in the United States was the third of eight for eight international journalists, who were visiting the country as part of the United Nations’ Reham Al-Farra Memorial Journalists Fellowship Program.

The fellowship was well established before taking its name from Al-Farra, a U.N. public information employee who was killed in an attack on the United Nations headquarters in Baghdad in 2003. It has invited radio, print and television reporters from around the world to live and work in New York for the past 28 years.

This year’s crop of journalists covered the United Nations’ General Assembly, visited media organizations and spent two days with members of Fordham’s communications and media studies department.

Among the countries represented were Gabon, Somalia and Turkey. Their cultural differences from the United States became especially apparent when Hayes, a former associate editor of the National Law Journal who holds a master’s degree in communication from Fordham and a law degree from Quinnipiac University, explained the legal decisions that have shaped American free speech.

He also explained why printed and politically tinged speech has more protections under the law than film, radio and television.

When the conversation turned to obscenity and hate speech, several of the journalists questioned whether the high level of hate speech that the United States allows would benefit their own countries.

“Wouldn’t you say that the press is so free here that it can create divisions among people?” asked Jacqueline Bryan, a radio reporter from Saint Kitts and Nevis.

“Yes, and that’s good,” Hayes replied. “If we believe that the people are sovereign and intelligent, and that people are capable of making decisions on their own, then why should we fear that the press is supposedly making things divisive?”