BRUCE GREEN
New York A.G. to Subpoena Trump to Testify in Fraud Investigation
New York Times 12-9-21
Bruce Green, who directs a center for legal ethics at Fordham University, said in an interview that it was typical for civil investigations to defer to criminal inquiries. Ms. James’s actions, he said, might suggest she wants to put her investigation on a firm footing in case the criminal inquiry does not result in charges. “You don’t want to forgo doing the civil investigation on the theory that the prosecutors are going to indict, and then they don’t,” Mr. Green said.

CHERYL BADER
Ghislaine Maxwell’s lawyers attack her accusers’ motives and memories
Fortune 12-10-21
Cheryl Bader, a professor at Fordham Law School, said Maxwell faces a difficult choice. “The defense’s main strategy is to discredit prosecution witnesses, put Epstein center stage and draw as little attention to Maxwell as possible,” she said. “To keep with that strategy, they may want to keep her off the stand and not risk that she makes her situation worse on cross-examination.”

PATRICK HORNBECK
Transgender people can’t be baptized unless they’ve ‘repented,’ Catholic diocese says
The Washington Post 12-7-21
Hornbeck, who is also a theology professor at Fordham University, noted the policy comes at a time when many Catholic leaders have taken to drawing lines beyond which they believe it’s not possible for a person to be in good standing within the church…“The Diocese of Marquette seems to be adding fuel to that particular fire by saying that beliefs about gender and gender transition also fall into that category,” Hornbeck said.

FORDHAM UNIVERSITY

Fordham University Hosts Global Ethical Vision AI Conference
Businesswire 12-3-21
On November 29th, Fordham University hosted a conference entitled, “Ethical Vision Artificial Intelligence: Creating an Effective AI Compliance Framework” in New York. The conference was hosted by Professor Shlomit Yanisky-Ravid, a visiting professor at Fordham Law School and a Fellow Professor at Yale Law School.

ADMINISTRATORS

FATHER JOSEPH MCSHANE
Catholic Extension honors Cardinal Dolan with its Spirit of Francis Award
Diocese of Tucson Online Nes 12-6-21
Honorary co-chairs were Jesuit Father Joseph M. McShane, president of Fordham University, and Dr. Ramon Tallaj, chairman and founder of the SOMOS Community Care network of 2,500 health care providers in New York City’s boroughs.

HILLARY MANTIS
How to save money on law school application fees
NationalJurist.com 12-7-21
Hillary Mantis consults with pre-law students, law students and lawyers. She is the Assistant Dean for the Pre-law Advising Program at Fordham University and author of career books for lawyers.

WFUV-FM

Cycle of giving: Brookhaven Bike Co-op gets LIers on wheels On a 45-degree day in late November, Najib Ullah walked several miles to the Flo…
Newsday.com 12-6-21
“We usually do FUV. Eclectic,” he said, referring to Fordham University’s WFUV/90.7 FM.

SCHOOL OF LAW FACULTY

MIMI TSANKOV
Victory for US immigration judges as Biden administration recognizes union
The Guardian 12-7-21
Tsankov was appointed as an immigration judge in 2006 and is based in New York, where she also teaches at Fordham University School of Law. “This administration has really doubled down on maintaining the [Trump] position that we are not a valid union,” Tsankov said before the settlement.

JOHN PFAFF
Gun violence in Oakland has become a “pandemic within the pandemic.” Here’s what data shows is happening
USA Breaking News 12-3-21
John Pfaff, a criminologist and law professor at Fordham University, said he’s observed this discrepancy in other U.S. cities as well. “For the amount that shootings went up, homicides should’ve gone up a lot more than they did,” Pfaff told The Chronicle.

MARIA VULLO
Who’s Running for Attorney General in New York? It’s a Crowded Field.
Brooklyn Daily Eagle 12-3-21
She [Maria Vullo] currently teaches law at Fordham University’s law school.

AARON SAIGER
Supreme Court poised to further open the door for taxpayer funding of religious schools
Los Angeles Times 12-7-21
“The really big question that Carson tees up is whether by funding public schools, the state incurs a duty to fund religious schools as well,” said Aaron Saiger, a law professor at Fordham in New York. This could trigger “a cataclysmic change in the place of public education in American society and government. But if one extends the kinds of arguments that have been winning in the Supreme Court, this may be the future.”

DONNA REDEL
Most Influential 2021: Gary Gensler
Coindesk 12-9-21
Donna Redel, an adjunct professor at Fordham University’s law school, told CoinDesk that many in the industry hoped he would propose regulations for crypto based on his experience both as a longtime participant in the financial sector, as well as his digital asset knowledge.

BRUCE GREEN
New York A.G. to Subpoena Trump to Testify in Fraud Investigation
New York Times 12-9-21
Bruce Green, who directs a center for legal ethics at Fordham University, said in an interview that it was typical for civil investigations to defer to criminal inquiries. Ms. James’s actions, he said, might suggest she wants to put her investigation on a firm footing in case the criminal inquiry does not result in charges. “You don’t want to forgo doing the civil investigation on the theory that the prosecutors are going to indict, and then they don’t,” Mr. Green said.

CHERYL BADER
Ghislaine Maxwell’s lawyers attack her accusers’ motives and memories
Fortune 12-10-21
Cheryl Bader, a professor at Fordham Law School, said Maxwell faces a difficult choice. “The defense’s main strategy is to discredit prosecution witnesses, put Epstein center stage and draw as little attention to Maxwell as possible,” she said. “To keep with that strategy, they may want to keep her off the stand and not risk that she makes her situation worse on cross-examination.”

GABELLI SCHOOL OF BUSINESS

Fordham University’s Gabelli School of Business Teams with Value Reporting Foundation to Offer Students Access to the Foremost ESG Reporting Credential
AP News 12-7-21
A dynamic collaboration between Fordham University’s Gabelli School of Business and the Value Reporting Foundation now grants students exclusive access to resources that enable them to pursue the foremost professional credential in the field of environmental, social, and governance (ESG) reporting.

ARTS & SCIENCES FACULTY

ERICK RENGIFO
China Xiangtai Food Co., Ltd. Announces Appointment of Senior Economist and Sophisticated Blockchain Scholar Dr. Erick W. Rengifo as Chief Strategy Officer and Director and Asset Management Expert Dr. Jiaming Li as President
Nasdaq.com 12-6-21
Dr. Erick W. Rengifo is a Professor of Economics at Fordham University in New York…“I am very excited about the opportunity to be part of the Company and contribute to the Company’s future strategic direction. With the addition of Dr. Jiaming Li as President, I firmly believe that we will help strengthen internal governance, improve internal control, and enhance the Company’s overall image in the global capital markets as well as increase net profit and provide greater value for shareholders.”

CHRISTINA BAKER KLINE
Rotary Club Speaker: Christina Baker Kline
LA Daily Post 12-6-21
She has taught fiction and nonfiction writing, poetry, English literature, literary theory, and women’s studies at Yale, NYU, and the University of Virginia, and served as Writer-in-Residence at Fordham University for four years.

CHRISTINA GREER
NYC Racial Justice Commission
New York Amsterdam News 12-9-21
Christina Greer, Ph.D., is an associate professor at Fordham University, the author of “Black Ethnics: Race, Immigration, and the Pursuit of the American Dream,” and the co-host of the podcast FAQ-NYC.

CHRISTINA GREER
NY attorney general Letitia James ends run for governor
AP News 12-9-21
Christina Greer, a political science professor at Fordham University, said Hochul’s moves to lock up support may have played a role in James’ calculation about whether to keep running.“Kathy Hochul has been very aggressive these past few months shoring up endorsements and essentially the donor class of New York state. And it’s easier to do that as a sitting incumbent,” Greer said.

CAITLIN BEACH
Failey Grants Awarded To Three Noteworthy Projects
Antiques and Arts Weekly 12-7-21
Caitlin Meehye Beach, an assistant professor in the department of art history and affiliated faculty in the department of African and African American studies at Fordham University, will utilize grant funds for her forthcoming book, Sculpture at the Ends of Slavery, which will be published by the University of California Press in 2022.

STUDENTS

Parents of the social media generation are not OK
CNN 12-8-21
Gabriella Bermudez, a 19-year-old Fordham University student, told CNN Business she started struggling with body image issues in middle school after a boy she had a crush on started Liking photos of a 30-year-old model on Instagram.

ALUMNI

Bronx Community Foundation announces outgoing schools chancellor as its president, CEO
Bronx Times 12-3-21
She’s [Dr. Meisha Porter] obtained further credentials from Mercy College, New York City’s Advanced Leadership Institute, the Harvard Graduate School of Education and most recently completed her Educational Doctorate at Fordham University.

Steptoe Expands Legal Talent Team with Two New Hires in Attorney Development
General Counsel News 12-3-21
[Lindsay] Daniels received her M.S. in Teaching from Fordham University, and her B.A. from Macalester College.

Oregon O-coordinator will take over Akron HC reins
Mac Reporter Online 12-4-21
[Joe] Moorhead is a graduate of Fordham University, where he earned a bachelor’s degree in English in 1996.

James Corrigan
WMTV 8 News 12-4-21
James [Corrigan] is originally from New Jersey and earned his bachelor’s degree in political science at Fordham University and a master’s degree in broadcast and digital journalism at Syracuse University in 2021.

Unit Auto Sales Struggle As Shortages Continue
Citizens Journal 12-5-21
Bob [Robert Hughes] has a MA in economics from Fordham University and a BS in business from Lehigh University.

How to succeed in Crypto and the Blockchain Industry, Ryan Williams, The Blockchain Academy
Irish Tech News Podcast 12-3-21
Ryan [Williams] grew up on the east coast in New York and New Jersey attending Fordham University in the Bronx for his undergrad and achieving his Masters at New York University.

A sliver of Cambridge to vote in Dec. 14 state primary
WickedLocal.com 12-8-21
[Lydia] Edwards graduated from Fordham University with a bachelor’s degree in political science and legal policy, American University Washington College of Law with a juris doctorate and the Boston University of Law with a masters of law in taxation.

In Mass. Senate special election, it’s progressive muscle versus hometown(ish) appeal
WGBH News 12-8-21
She’s [Lydia Edwards] a graduate of Fordham University and the American University Washington School of Law. In 2014, she led the successful campaign to pass a domestic workers’ bill of rights in Massachusetts.

These 10 Power Women in Business Drive Change in the Hudson Valley
Hudson Valley Magazine 11-13-2021
In 2008, Corey [DeMala] headed back to graduate school at Fordham to gain the necessary training she would need to combine her two careers.

Riverside Appoints Jeffrey Gordon to Co-Fund Manager
Businesswire 12-8-21
[Jeffrey] Gordon received his Bachelor of Arts degree in Sociology from the University of Michigan, JD Degree from Fordham Law School and a Master of Business Administration from Columbia Business School.

Connell Foley taps environmental law co-chair as next managing partner
Real Estate NJ 12-6-21
He [Connell Foley] received his law degree from Fordham University School of Law, his bachelor’s from Hobart College and a master of laws in environmental law from Pace University School of Law.

‘It’s going to be competitive.’ Boston political veteran Lydia Edwards, Revere’s Anthony D’Ambrosio face off in special election days before Christmas
Boston Globe 12-9-21
An Air Force brat and Fordham University grad turned public interest attorney by trade, [Lydia]Edwards has pitched herself as the experienced candidate who has spent years representing low-paid workers, shaping legislation, and championing affordable housing in a city increasingly out of reach for low-income and middle class families.

OBITUARIES

Obituary: Thomas Harris Astore, 1961-2021
Seven Days Vermont 12-9-21
He received a bachelor’s degree from Hofstra University, a law degree from Fordham Law School and then became a CPA and practiced as a tax accountant, most recently as tax partner at Rodman & Rodman.

Jerry Fabian Pervinich
NorthJersey.com 12-2-21
He graduated from St. Joseph of the Palisades HS and earned a BA from Fordham University in Journalism. His career started with the NY Herald Tribune.

John ‘Jack’ Simermeyer, obituary
Penobscot Bay Pilot 12-2-21
He later attended Fordham University and was a lifelong supporter of Fordham, interested in all the developments there. He was also a lifelong Yankees fan, having attended games at the stadium with his family.

James (Jim) Joseph Maun
KeysNews.com 12-3-21
Becoming a World War II veteran changed his life and allowed him to continue his education at Fordham University.

Anthony Idigo
Legacy.com 12-3-21
He went on to receive a master’s degree from Fordham University.

Thomas A. Giacose Jr.
Legacy.com 12-3-21
He attended Fordham University, where he studied biology and engineering. He worked for Keyence Corporation and Clarostat Systems and Controls as an electrical engineer.

Waverly Duval Taliaferro
Legacy.com 12-3-21
He went forward serving in the U.S. Army for two years, briefly matriculating at UVA, and later in New York at Fordham University where he earned his Bachelor of Arts degree.

ASIF SIDDIQI
50 Years Ago, a Forgotten Mission Landed on Mars
Discover Magazine 12-1-21
“The Soviet space program was under a lot of pressure in the 1960s to achieve ‘firsts,’” says Asif Siddiqi, a Fordham University history professor who’s penned multiple books on the Soviet side of the space race.

CHERYL BADER
Rittenhouse Verdict Sparks Split Reactions, Fears of Vigilantism
Bloomberg.com 11-19-21
“I am afraid that as people are empowered by this verdict to weaponize the public spaces, we will see more fatalities,” said Cheryl Bader, a former assistant U.S. attorney and associate clinical professor at Fordham University School of Law.

ZEPHYR TEACHOUT
‘I Want to Be a 21st-Century Trustbuster’: Zephyr Teachout on Her Run for A.G.
New York Magazine 11-24-21
Teachout is currently a professor at Fordham Law School, where she specializes in constitutional and antitrust law.

FORDHAM UNIVERSITY

Capital Campaign Watch: Dickinson, Fordham, Springfield, Tulane
Inside Higher Ed 11-22-21
Fordham University has announced a campaign to raise $350 million, probably by 2024. The university has raised $170 million so far.

Museum of American Finance to Present Virtual Panel on “SPACs: The New IPO?”
BusinessWire 11-30-21
“SPACs: The New IPO?” is sponsored by Citadel Securities and Vinson & Elkins. It is presented in partnership with the Fordham University Gabelli Center for Global Security Analysis.

Study Abroad Programs Reopen To Eager College Students
Gothamist.com 12-1-21
This fall, Fordham University only re-opened its London program. Joseph Rienti, director of the study abroad office, said the enrollment for that campus was higher than usual.

LAW SCHOOL FACULTY

CHERYL BADER
Rittenhouse Verdict Sparks Split Reactions, Fears of Vigilantism
Bloomberg.com 11-19-21
“I am afraid that as people are empowered by this verdict to weaponize the public spaces, we will see more fatalities,” said Cheryl Bader, a former assistant U.S. attorney and associate clinical professor at Fordham University School of Law.

JOHN PFAFF
In Depth Podcast: Why Kyle Rittenhouse was acquitted
Audacity.com 11-19-21
This week’s guests include Kim Belware, John Pfaff (sic), and Charles Coleman Jr.
… Pfaff (sic), an author and law professor at Fordham University, breaks down how self defense laws, open carry laws, and the burden of proof contributed to this case.

OLIVIER SYLVAIN
FTC Chair Khan Brings on AI Policy Advice From NYU Researchers
Bloomberg Law 11-19-21
They join Olivier Sylvain, a law professor from Fordham University, who is serving as Khan’s senior adviser on technology.

DORA GALACATOS
The future of geographic screens for NYC’s high schools is up in the air amid concerns over diversity, commutes
Chalkbeat.com 11-19-21
Dora Galacatos is the executive director of the Fordham Law School Feerick Center for Social Justice, which recently released a report calling for a number of reforms to make the admissions process more fair.

CHERYL BADER
Rittenhouse’s Winning Strategy Rested on Tear-Filled Testimony
Bloomberg Law 11-19-21
Cheryl Bader, a former federal prosecutor who now teaches at Fordham University School of Law, said there didn’t appear to be any obvious errors in the state’s case.

CHERYL BADER
Rittenhouse verdict raises stakes in Arbery trial
SFGATE 11-20-21
Cheryl Bader, a former assistant U.S. attorney and a professor at Fordham University School of Law, said that while people of any race can claim self-defense, implicit bias means that race will inevitably factor into who can successfully claim it.

RICHARD M. STEUER
The congressional debate over antitrust: It’s about time
The Hill 11-20-21
Richard M. Steuer is an Adjunct Professor at Fordham Law School

ERIC YOUNG
Who Was Watching Over The CEO Of Activision Blizzard?
Forbes 11-22-21
Eric Young, a former chief compliance officer at a number of large global investment banks, and currently an adjunct professor for compliance at Fordham Law School, said about this matter, “Where there’s smoke, there’s fire.”

OLIVIER SYLVAIN
Hochul tops new poll
Politico 11-22-21
Olivier Sylvain will be senior adviser on technology to [FTC Chair Lina] Khan. He is a law professor at Fordham University and is considered a Section 230 expert.

CHERYL BADER
Table Topics: Oil Prices, Rittenhouse, and Ethical Debates
Player.fm 11-23-21
Cheryl Bader, clinical associate professor of law, Fordham

OLIVIER SYLVAIN
FTC Chair Lina M. Khan Announces New Appointments in Agency Leadership Positions
MyChesco.com 11-24-21
Olivier Sylvain will serve as Senior Advisor on Technology to the Chair. Sylvain joins the FTC from Fordham University where he has served as Professor of Law.

ZEPHYR TEACHOUT
‘I Want to Be a 21st-Century Trustbuster’: Zephyr Teachout on Her Run for A.G.
NY Mag 11-24-21
Teachout is currently a professor at Fordham Law School, where she specializes in constitutional and antitrust law.

BRUCE GREEN
Jan. 6 panel faces double-edged sword with Alex Jones, Roger Stone
The Hill 11-26-21
“Even people that have a tendency to lie in a lot of different contexts have strong motivation not to lie under oath because it puts them at risk,” said Bruce Green, a law professor at Fordham University and a former federal prosecutor.

BRUCE GREEN
Ahmaud Arbery trial shines a light on prosecutorial misconduct
DNYUZ 11-30-21
Bruce A. Green is the Louis Stein Chair at Fordham Law School, where he directs the Louis Stein Center for Law and Ethics.

BRUCE GREEN
10 Things in Politics: Kamala Harris’ Big Tech problem
Business Insider (subscription) 12-1-21
Bruce Green, who leads the Louis Stein Center for Law and Ethics at Fordham Law School, said it would be “misleading or irresponsible” to make such a commitment.

JOEL COHEN
When a President Comments on a Pending Criminal Case
Law & Crime 12-1-21
He is the author of “Broken Scales: Reflections On Injustice” (ABA Publishing, 2017) and an adjunct professor at both Fordham and Cardozo Law Schools.

TANYA HERNANDEZ
A college law professor who teaches critical race theory worries that educators are living through another ‘Red Scare’
Business Insider 12-1-21
Tanya Katerí Hernández feels fortunate to be a tenured professor at Fordham University School of Law, a private Catholic institution in New York City that she said supports her teaching on critical race theory.

FORMER LAW SCHOOL FACULTY

ALISON NATHAN
Who Is Alison Nathan? Ghislaine Maxwell Trial Judge
Newsweek 11-29-21
From 2008 to 2009, she was a Fritz Alexander Fellow at New York University School of Law and before that, from 2006 to 2008, a visiting assistant professor of law at Fordham University Law School

ANNEMARIE MCAVOY
From Serious to Scurrilous, Some Jimmy Hoffa Theories
NewsNation USA 11-24-21
Former federal prosecutor and adjunct law professor at Fordham University Annemarie McAvoy discusses history and fascination of the Hoffa case.

GABELLI SCHOOL OF BUSINESS FACULTY

FRANK ZAMBERELLI
How does the Impact Index support sustainable fashion?
Sustainability.com 11-19-21
Frank Zambrelli, Executive Director of the Responsible Business Coalition at Fordham University’s Gabelli School of Business, says, ‘it is not a green light or a red light. It’s merely a platform. Nobody’s saying this is a better skirt than this one; we’re just saying, “This skirt was produced this way, with these certifications”’.

BARBARA PORCO
Companies Are Falling Short Measuring Environmental Performance Against Goals: Report
Forbes 12-2-21
As I wrote last month, “All elements of ESG reporting are really based on proper risk management,” according to Barbara Porco, director for the Center of Professional Accounting Practices at Fordham Business School.

LERZAN AKSOY
Aflac Lands Top-15 Spot on the 2021 American Innovation Index
PR Newswire 12-1-21
“The pandemic continues to challenge companies to adapt their business models at a faster rate than in normal times,” said Lerzan Aksoy, Ph.D., professor of marketing at Fordham University’s Gabelli School of Business.

GRADUATE SCHOOL OF SOCIAL SERVICES FACULTY

Aging Behind Prison Walls
WFUV-FM 11-30-21
Tina Maschi, PhD, LCSW, ACSW Professor, Fordham University Graduate School of Social Service

ARTS & SCIENCES FACULTY

BRYAN MASSINGALE
Christians must develop an anti-racist spirituality, Mennonite authors argue
National Catholic Reporter 11-24-21
Among that year’s honorees was Fr. Bryan Massingale, who was then on the faculty of Marquette University in Milwaukee and now teaches at Fordham University in New York.

JACK WAGNER
In Their 80s, and Living It Up (or Not)
New York Times 11-26-21
Dr. Katharine Esty has the right idea. I am 85 and my wife is 80. I work out six times a week at my local gym, and I teach mathematics at Fordham University. We are fully vaccinated, including boosters.

KATHRYN REKLIS
Telling Native stories on TV
The Christian Century 11-19-21
Kathryn Reklis teaches theology at Fordham University and is codirector of the Institute for Art, Religion and Social Justice.

SHELLAE VERSEY
Forever Young: Seniors Dance in the Bronx
The Villiage Voice 11-24-21
“Even before COVID, we were already noticing the squeeze of gentrification on the social lives of older adults who were living in these communities,” Shellae Versey, an assistant professor of psychology at Fordham University, tells the Voice in a phone interview, referring to members of racial minority groups being priced out of their neighborhoods.

CHARLES CAMOSY
Takeaways from the USCCB’s General Assembly
National Catholic Register 11-20-21
To help shed some light on the broader scope of what happened in Baltimore, and the general assembly’s true significance, the Register spoke with Charles Camosy, a moral theologian at Fordham University;

CHRISTINA GREER
Eric Adams, off on the right foot
Marietta Daily Journal 11-20-21
The rubber’s yet to hit the road and I’ve written plenty already about my doubts and concerns about Adams and what Fordham University political science professor and my FAQ.NYC co-host Christina Greer calls his “nervous cop energy.”

CHRISTINA GREER
Thanksgiving is upon us
Amsterdam News 11-25-21
Christina Greer, Ph.D., is an associate professor at Fordham University, the author of “Black Ethnics: Race, Immigration, and the Pursuit of the American Dream,” and the co-host of the podcast FAQ-NYC.

BRYAN MASSINGALE
Bryan Massingale wins social justice award from Paulist Center
The Christian Century 11-29-21
He currently teaches ethics at Fordham University, where he also serves as the senior ethics fellow for the school’s Center for Ethics Education.

ARISTOLTLE PAPANIKOLAOU
Jan. 6 panel faces double-edged sword with Alex Jones, Roger Stone
National Catholic Reporter 11-30-21
Looking ahead to the pope’s time in Cyprus and Greece, Aristotle Papanikolaou, co-director of the Orthodox Christian Studies Center at Fordham University, told NCR that “the symbolism is key.”

CHRIS RHOMBERG
Fattest Profits Since 1950 Debunk Wage-Inflation Story of CEOs
Daily Magazine 11-30-21
“Workers may be tired of seeing the fruits of their labor go to corporations making record-breaking earnings,” Chris Rhomberg, a professor of sociology at Fordham University, said at that point. “The Deere workers evidently felt that the company could afford more.”

SARIT KATTAN GRIBETZ
Yeshiva University Museum Receives NEH Planning Grant
Yeshiva University 11-20-21
Additional consultants on the project are Sarit Kattan Gribetz, Associate Professor of Classical Judaism at Fordham University, who has particular expertise on the Jewish calendar and its development during the rabbinic period and on aspects of the calendar as they relate to the historical experience of Jewish women;

ASIF SIDDIQI
50 Years Ago, a Forgotten Mission Landed on Mars
Discover Magazine 12-1-21
“The Soviet space program was under a lot of pressure in the 1960s to achieve ‘firsts,’” says Asif Siddiqi, a Fordham University history professor who’s penned multiple books on the Soviet side of the space race.

DAISY DECAMPO
The Ethics of Egg Freezing and Egg Sharing
The Cut (subscription) 12-1-21
Daisy Deomampo, a medical anthropologist and associate professor at Fordham University who has researched donor egg markets.

NICHOLAS JOHNSON
School Board Finds Anti-2A Bias In Elementary School Textbook
Bearing Arms 12-1-21
As Fordham professor Nicholas Johnson brilliantly pointed out in his book Negroes and the Gun: The Black Tradition of Arms, the Second Amendment has long played a role in advancing the cause of freedom in the United States.

CHRISTINA GREER
December is upon us
New York Amsterdam News 12-2-21
Christina Greer, Ph.D., is an associate professor at Fordham University, the author of “Black Ethnics: Race, Immigration, and the Pursuit of the American Dream,” and the co-host of the podcast FAQ-NYC.

FORMER ARTS & SCIENCES FACULTY

ROGER PANETTA
Houston highway project sparks debate over racial equity
MyNorthwest.com 11-23-21
Roger Panetta, a retired history professor at Fordham University in New York, said those opposing the I-45 project will have an uphill battle, as issues of racism and inequity have been so persistent in highway expansions that it “gets very difficult to dislodge.”

ATHLETICS

KYLE NEPTUNE
Early returns on the Kyle Neptune era at Fordham University positive
News12 New Jersey 11-19-21
The early returns on the Kyle Neptune era at Fordham University have been pretty positive.

Red Bulls Pick Up New Players In Super Draft
FirstTouchOnline.com 11-28-21
Janos Loebe, a German-born Fordham University product, will start to move from forward to attacking wingback, a key position on the field for New York.

ALUMNI

40 Under 40: Kyle Ciminelli, Ciminelli Real Estate Corp.
The Business Journals (subscription only) 11-19-21
[Kyle Ciminelli] Bachelor’s, finance, Fordham University; master’s, real estate and finance, New York University.

Devin Driscoll to Host Christmas Gathering
The Knoxville Focus 11-21-21
Devin Driscoll graduated from Catholic High School and went on to earn a degree from Fordham University.

Columnist Judith Bachman Captures The Spirit Of Sister Mary Eileen O’Brien, President Of Dominican College
Rockland County Business Journal 11-23-21
Sister O’Brien has dedicated herself to education for over 50 years. Sr. Mary Eileen earned a doctorate degree in Educational Administration and Supervision from Fordham University and holds a master’s degree in Adult and Higher Education from Teachers College of Columbia University and a master’s in Mathematics from Manhattan College.

Lacerta Therapeutics Appoints Min Wang, PhD, JD and Marc Wolff to its Board of Directors
BusinessWire 11-24-21
Dr. [Min] Wang received her PhD in Organic Chemistry from Brown University and a JD from Fordham University School of Law.

Teva Attorneys Leave Goodwin Procter For Greenberg Traurig
Law360.com (subscription) 11-24-21
He earned his law degree from Fordham University School of Law.

She went through foster care. Now she leads one of the oldest U.S. child welfare organizations.
MSNBC 11-29-21
[Kym Hardy] Watson, who holds degrees from Fordham University and Baruch College, CUNY, began her career in the 1980s after a summer job working with youth at St. Christopher’s Home.

FreedomCon 2021 – Native Lives Matter
Underground Railroad Education Center 11-27-21
[Loriv Quigly] earned her bachelor of arts in Journalism and Mass Communication from St. Bonaventure University, and a master of arts in Public Communication and Ph.D. in Language, Learning and Literacy from Fordham University.

The Hall case in the Poconos and malice in the US | Moving Mountains
Pocono Record 11-27-21
Anthony M. Stevens-Arroyo holds a doctorate in Catholic Theology from Fordham University and authored a column on religion for the Washington Post from 2008-2012.

The Success Of Emmy Clarke, Both In And Out Of The Camera
The Washington Independent 11-29-21
[Emmy Clark] decided to attend Fordham University. She finished her studies in 2014 and received a bachelor’s degree in Communication and Media Studies.

Paraco’s CEO puts business lessons, family experiences in print
Westfair Communications Online (subscription) 11-19-21
…was born in Mount Vernon, the oldest of four sons He attended Fordham University, graduating in 1976 with a Bachelor of Arts degree in…

Greenberg Traurig Further Strengthens Pharmaceutical, Medical Device & Health Care Practice
PR Newswire 11-19-21
In addition, [Glenn] Kerner has experience in complex commercial litigation, antitrust, real estate litigation, and other civil litigation. He has a J.D. from Fordham University School of Law and a B.A. from Cornell University.

Three Universities Have Announced the Hiring of African Americans to Diversity Positions
The Journal of Blacks in Higher Ed 11-19-21
[Tiffany Smith] holds a master’s degree in education, specializing in counseling services, from Fordham University in New York.

President Biden nominates second out woman to federal appellate court
LGBTQ Nation 11-21-21
[Alison Nathan] has clerked in the Supreme Court and taught at Fordham Law School and NYU Law.

GOTS ramps up oversight on product claims in North America
HomeTextilesToday.com 11-22-21
[Travis Wells] earned his Juris Doctorate (J.D.) in Corporate Law from George Washington University Law School and his Master of Business Administration (MBA) in Global Sustainability and Finance from the Gabelli School of Business at Fordham University.

Malcolm X’s 5 surviving daughters: Inside lives marred by tragedy and turmoil
New York Post 11-23-21
[IIyasah Shabazz] graduated from the elite Hackley School, obtained a bachelor’s degree from SUNY New Paltz and a master’s degree in human resources from Fordham University.

Michael R. Scoma is recognized by Continental Who’s Who
PR Newswire 11-24-21
From a young age, Dr. [Michael] Scoma knew he wanted to pursue a career helping others. He started off earning his Bachelor of Science from Fordham University.

STODDARD BOWL: 2021 game will honor the former greats, Maloney’s Annino and Platt’s Shorter
MyRecordJournal.com 11-24-21
After Platt, [Michael] Shorter did a post-grad year at Choate, where he was an All-New England running back, then went on to play four years at Fordham University, where he earned a degree in Economics.

Local performer returns to state with ‘Fiddler’
HometownSource.com 11-24-21
From there [Scott Willits] went to The Ailey School and Fordham University and received a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in dance in New York.

The Singer Who Calls Himself Sick Walt
Long Island City Journal 11-24-21
After graduating from Fordham University with a degree in communications and a minor in German and singing in a cover band, Sick Walt set out on a traditional (he means boring!) career path, taking what he calls a corporate “suit job” in a financial institution.

Aleksander Mici files to run for U.S. Senate
Bronx Times 11-24-21
[Aleksander] Mici, 46, is a practicing attorney with a law degree from Fordham Law School.

Robert Hughes
Citizens Journal 11-20-21
Bob [Robert Hughes] has a MA in economics from Fordham University and a BS in business from Lehigh University.

Grassroots solutions and farm fresh eggs
The Bronx Free Press 11-27-21
[Jack] Marth first connected with POTS when he was a Fordham University student in 1988, as he volunteered to help in the soup kitchen.

Suozzi enters governor’s race
The Daily Star 11-29-21
A graduate of Boston College and Fordham Law School,, [Thomas] Suozzi lives with his wife, Helen, in Nassau County.

Latino students succeed in graduate school with the support of the Hispanic Theological Initiative
FaithandLeadership.com 11-30-21
The Rev. Dr. Loida I. Martell recalls a critical, do-or-die moment she faced while pursuing a Ph.D. in theology from Fordham University.

Governor Hochul Announces 2021-2023 Fellows
Governor.ny.gov 11-30-21
[Shaquann Hunt] received a B.A. in Philosophy and Psychology from Colby College and a J.D. from Fordham University School of Law.

With Graduate Degree She Worked At McDonald’s, She Now Owns Three
Patch.com 11-30-21
Just after Sara Natalino Amato received a graduate degree at Fordham University, she went to work at an Orange McDonald’s.

Lamont nominates Nancy Navarretta as Mental Health and Addiction Services Commissioner
Fox61.com 12-1-21
[Nancy Navaretta] earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in psychology from Boston College, and a Master of Arts degree in clinical psychology from Fordham University.

United Way Board of Directors Appoints Four New Members
Patch.com 12-1-21
[Marjorie] De La Cruz was awarded the Fordham School of Law 25th Annual Corporate Counsel Award; Latino Justice 2019 Lucero Award and was featured in Hispanic Executive in March 2019.

Jasmine Trangucci, LCSW-R is Meritoriously Named a ‘Top Patient Preferred Psychotherapist’ Representing the State of New York for 2022!
DigitalJournal.com 12-2-21
[Jasmine Trangucci] then went on to complete her Master of Social Work degree at Fordham University in 2005.

Hamilton Re-Signs Anderson as General Manager
OurSportCentral.com 12-2-21
A 2006 graduate of Fordham University, [Jermaine] Anderson earned his Master of Business Administration from the Ted Rogers School of Management at Ryerson University in September of 2019.

Hers Is a Filmmakers Festival
The East Hampton Star 12-2-21
Ms. [Jacqui] Lofaro grew up in Greenwich Village and graduated from Fordham University.

Connell Foley elects new managing partner
ROI-NJ 12-2-21
[Timothy] Corriston earned his J.D. from Fordham University School of Law and his B.A. from Hobart College. He also holds an LL.M. in environmental law from Pace University School of Law.

OBITUARY

Walter Miner Lowe, Jr.
Auburn Citizen (subscription) 11-24-21
Born in NYC, he was the son of late Walter Sr. and Florence Lowe. Walter was a 1958 graduate of Fordham University and an Army veteran serving his …

Denis Collins
Legacy.com 11-24-21
He graduated from Gonzaga High School in 1967, and attended Fordham University, with various mis-adventurous detours to Trinity College in Ireland, Talladega College in Alabama, and Stony Brook University in Long Island.

Sr. Marie Vincent Chiaravalle
Legacy.com 11-29-21
She attended St. Elizabeth Teacher College, Allegany, Fordham University in New York City and graduated from St. Bonaventure University, Allegany, with a bachelor of science degree in education.

Frank J. Messmann III
The Enterprise 11-26-21
He received a doctorate from Fordham University.

Roderick Dowling
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution 11-28-21
He received his law degree from Fordham Law School as the President of his class in 1965, paying for his tuition through multiple jobs as a waiter, lifeguard, and a Fordham scholarship.

Mary Waddell
The Atlanta-Journal 12-1-21
Mary was born in Manhattan, New York to James and Anna McHugh McGuinness on August 18, 1927. She attended St. Barnabas High School in the Bronx and graduated from Fordham University with a Bachelor of Science degree in Chemistry before joining the global headquarters of the New York City-based public relations firm Carl Byoir & Associates.

ZEPHYR TEACHOUT
Zephyr Teachout announces run for New York attorney general
AP News 11-15-21
Teachout, 50, is an associate professor of law at Fordham University and a scholar on corruption and antitrust laws.

LAURA AURICCHIO
The U.S.-France relationship has always had friction
The Washington Post 11-15-21
Laura Auricchio, Dean of Fordham College at Lincoln Center, is the author of “The Marquis: Lafayette Reconsidered” and serves on the scientific advisory board for France in the Americas, an international collaborative project led by the French National Library.

MARK NAISON
How GOP focused voters on critical race theory
USA Today 11-16-21
Mark Naison, a professor of history and African American studies at Fordham University, told USA TODAY that critical race theory is used as a label to attack all efforts to diversify school curricula. “There is no school system in the country which uses it as a basis for curricular development,” Naison said.

FORDHAM UNIVERSITY

Bachelor’s Degree Center Releases National Rankings of Real Estate Degree Programs
PR Newswire 11-16-21
Fordham University – Bronx, NY

ADMINISTRATORS

JEFEREY NG
Campus Counselors Are Burned Out and Short-Staffed
The Chronicle of Higher Education 11-15-21
Jeffrey Ng, director of counseling and psychological services at Fordham University, reports that the number of students seen for clinical appointments has risen 42 percent since last fall.

LAURA AURICCHIO
The U.S.-France relationship has always had friction
The Washington Post 11-15-21
Laura Auricchio, Dean of Fordham College at Lincoln Center, is the author of “The Marquis: Lafayette Reconsidered” and serves on the scientific advisory board for France in the Americas, an international collaborative project led by the French National Library.

BARBARA PORCO
Last Place Finish Of Systemic Risk Management Reporting In ESG Survey Raises Red Flags
Forbes 11-16-21
“All elements of ESG reporting are really based on proper risk management,” according to Barbara Porco, director for the Center of Professional Accounting Practices at Fordham Business School.

SCHOOL OF LAW

New report calls for greater equity in middle and high school admissions
Inside Schools newsletter 11-17-21
A new report by the Feerick Center for Social Justice at Fordham University School of Law calls on the city to overhaul middle and high school admissions by taking some concrete steps.

FORMER SCHOOL OF LAW FACULTY

ALISON NATHAN
President Biden Names Tenth Round of Judicial Nominees
The White House 11-17-21
Judge Nathan was a Fritz Alexander Fellow at New York University School of Law from 2008 to 2009 and a Visiting Assistant Professor of Law at Fordham University Law School from 2006 to 2008.

SCHOOL OF LAW FACULTY

BRUCE GREEN
Legal Professors’ Lawsuit Spotlights Resistance to Prosecutor Accountability
Filter Magazine 11-12-21
“Were [the state bar]motivated by the fact that the complaints were filed publicly so that a failure to act expeditiously would look bad?” Bruce Green, a Fordham Law professor not involved in filing the complaints, rhetorically asked.

MARTIN FLAHERTY
What one American’s case says about the future of the courts in Hong Kong
Vox 11-14-21
“My sense is that [Hong Kong’s rule of law is] on life support — but the prognosis is not very good,” said Martin Flaherty, a professor of international law at Fordham University.

ZEPHYR TEACHOUT
Zephyr Teachout announces run for New York attorney general
AP News 11-15-21
Teachout, 50, is an associate professor of law at Fordham University and a scholar on corruption and antitrust laws.

BENNETT CAPERS
Iowa scores lowest in the nation in policing and corrections spending
The Center Square 11-15-21
“These expenditures mean less money for schools, for libraries, for parks, you name it,” Fordham Law School Professor and Center on Race, Law, and Justice Director Bennett Capers said. “More importantly, they mean less money for things that could actually reduce crime, such as more affordable housing, job creation, and mental health treatment.”

JOHN PFAFF
Rittenhouse doesn’t have to prove he acted in self-defense
The Washington Post 11-15-21
John Pfaff is a professor of law at Fordham University. He is the author of “Locked In: The True Causes of Mass Incarceration and How to Achieve Real Reform.”

BRUCE GREEN
Bad romance: When courts won’t let lawyers and clients part ways
Reuters 11-16-21
As legal ethics expert Bruce Green, a professor at Fordham University School of Law, put it, “To have an effective lawyer-client relationship requires trust between the lawyer and the client.”

JOHN PFAFF
He’s Remaking Criminal Justice in L.A. But How Far Is Too Far?
DNYUZ 11-17-21
The single largest group in state prisons, totaling around 55 percent nationally, have been convicted of crimes of violence, according to John Pfaff, a law professor at Fordham University.

ALAN RUSSO
How Social Inflation is Changing Liability Insurance
Legal TalknNetwork 11-18-21
He’s also a regular lecturer for the National Business Institute on trial advocacy, and an instructor for the Corporation Counsel’s Trial Advocacy Program at Fordham University Law School and regular contributor to Lawline.

GABELLI SCHOOL OF BUSINESS FACULTY

DENISE BENNETT
Denise L. Bennett: Reaching a hand back in the business world
New York Amsterdam News 11-17-21
Along with her positions at iHeartMedia, Bennett just completed her first year as a professor at Fordham University’s Gabelli School of Business, where she teaches Advanced Business Communications at the graduate level.

ARTS & SCIENCES FACULTY

CHRISTINA GREER
Buffalo Mayor Byron Brown faces backlash after winning write-in campaign
City and State NY 11-12-21
“Oftentimes, if you’ve been elected four different times, you’re not terribly worried about a primary, and so you tend to let your guard down just a little bit,” Fordham University associate professor of political science Christina Greer told City & State. “Ask Joe Crowley, right?”

MARK NAISON
How critical race theory went from conservative battle cry to mainstream powder keg
Yahoo News via USA Today 11-15-21
Mark Naison, a professor of history and African American studies at Fordham University, told USA TODAY that critical race theory is used as a label to attack all efforts to diversify public school curricula.

SAUL CORNELL
Will SCOTUS Force Us All to Find Out How Polite an Armed Society Will Be?
History News Network 11-14-21
Fordham Professor Saul Cornell, one of the leading authorities on early American constitutional thought, led 16 professors of history and law in a brief, arguing that “One of the longest continuous traditions in Anglo-American law are limits on the public carry of arms in populous areas.”

SAUL CORNELL
Former Prosecutor: “Wild West” Will Follow If NY Carry Laws Struck Down
BearingArms.com 11-15-21
Fordham Professor Saul Cornell, one of the leading authorities on early American constitutional thought, led 16 professors of history and law in a brief, arguing that “One of the longest continuous traditions in Anglo-American law are limits on the public carry of arms in populous areas.”

MARK NAISON
BronxTalk I November 15, 2021 – Racial Disparities
Bronx Net 11-15-21
…Dr. Mark Naison, Professor of African American Studies and History at Fordham University and Founder and Director of the Bronx African American History Project.

CHARLES CAMOSEY
Catholic groups criticize Archbishop Gomez for speech on ‘woke’ movements
Crux.com 11-16-21
He is an associate professor of theological and social ethics at Jesuit-run Fordham University.

MARK NAISON
How GOP focused voters on critical race theory
USA Today 11-16-21
Mark Naison, a professor of history and African American studies at Fordham University, told USA TODAY that critical race theory is used as a label to attack all efforts to diversify school curricula. “There is no school system in the country which uses it as a basis for curricular development,” Naison said.

CHRISTINA GREER
As N.J. Dems lick their wounds over 2021, 2022 looms
New Jersey Monitor 11-17-21
Christina Greer, politics professor at Fordham University, pointed to the failure of the party to capitalize on popular provisions in the infrastructure and spending bills that have been D.C.’s focus for months.

ATHLETICS

Largest Number of Ridgefield High School Athletes Ever Participate in Signing Day
Ridgefield’s Hamlethub 11-12-21
Daniel Bucciero, RHS class of 2022, has signed a National Letter of Intent to play Division 1 baseball at Fordham University…Miranda Bonitatebus, RHS class of 2022, has signed a National Letter of Intent to swim on the women’s swim and dive team at Fordham University…Eva Niemeyer, RHS class of 2022, has signed a National Letter of Intent to play women’s soccer at Fordham University in New York.

That Noise You Heard Was The Entire Atlantic Ten Conference Shitting Their Pants; The Loyola Ramblers Will Join The A10 In 2022
Barstool Sports 11-17-21
Fellow Jesuit institutions Fordham University, Saint Joseph’s University and Saint Louis University are current members of the Atlantic 10 Conference and in joining the A-10, Loyola will renew rivalries with The University of Dayton, Duquesne University, La Salle University and Saint Louis University, which were all-conference foes of the Ramblers at one time in the Midwestern Collegiate Conference.

STUDENTS

Amid Black exodus, young Catholics are pushing the church to address racism
The Washington Post 11-15-21
To John Barnes, who will be leading an upcoming webinar episode, says, “Black people always exist in liminal spaces.” Barnes, a doctoral student in systematic theology at Fordham University, converted to Catholicism in his 30s and said he was drawn by the religion’s sacraments and rituals.

Food Insecurity Linked to Disordered Eating in Patients With Obesity
Clinical Advisor 11-15-21
While more than 14 million US households experience food insecurity, research on the relationship between food insecurity and eating pathology is only just emerging, explained Jill Stadterman, MA, of Fordham University, and lead author of one of the studies with coauthors Yvette G.

ALUMNI

Former Japanese Princess Arrives In U.S. For New Life With Husband
Forbes 11-14-21
Mako is the elder daughter of Japan’s Crown Prince Fumihito and niece of Emperor Naruhito, while her new husband was raised by a single mother and graduated from Fordham Law School, according to the Associated Press.

Cedar Fair hires a new chief legal officer
CrainsCleveland.com 11-15-21
Nurse earned a bachelor’s degree from the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School and a law degree from Fordham University School of Law.

Built on Beer
RichmondMagazine.com 11-15-21
McKay graduated from Fordham, earning his MBA, and Murtaugh attended Siebel Institute of Technology, the oldest brewing school in the United States, with campuses in Chicago and Germany.

Sam Ramirez Jr., a second-generation investment executive for the people
Al Dia 11-17-21
He earned a bachelor’s degree in economics from the University of Vermont, before pursuing two MBAs at Dartmouth and Fordham University, respectively.

Bressler, Amery & Ross Welcomes Jorge Campos as Counsel in New York Office
PR Newswire 11-17-21
He went on to earn his Executive MBA in Global Business from Thunderbird School of Global Management in Arizona and an LL.M in Intellectual Property and Information Technology from Fordham University School of Law.

Msgr. John P. “Doc” Monaghan (1890-1961)
Catholic New York 11-17-21
Assigned to St. Peter’s Church on Staten Island, Father Monaghan taught at St. Peter’s Boys and Girls High Schools, while pursuing a doctorate in English literature at Fordham University.

Crowder College names finalists for president
The Joplin Globe 11-16-21
She holds a doctorate in educational leadership, administration and policy from Fordham University in New York, and a master’s degree in higher education administration and a bachelor’s degree in international marketing from Bernard M. Baruch College, CUNY, in New York.

Loyola Academy names new president
Evanston Now 11-17-21
He holds bachelor’s degrees from the University of Dayton in mechanical engineering and English and master’s degrees in English from Pennsylvania State University, in philosophy from Fordham University, in theology from Boston College, and in educational policy and management and in public administration from Harvard University.

Four finalists announced in Crowder College President Search
FourStatesHomepage.com 11-17-21
She previously served as Administrator for Retention and Student Success at Bronx Community College, CUNY, in New York, NY. Dr. Simpson earned a Doctor of Education in Educational Leadership, Administration and Policy from Fordham University in New York, NY; a Master of Education in Higher Education Administration, and a Bachelor of Business Administration in International Marketing from Bernard M. Baruch College, CUNY, in New York, NY.

Erin Dahl, Home Décor Expert for MyDomaine
MyDomaine.com 11-18-21
She went on to study French Language & Literature and International Political Economy at Fordham University in the Bronx.

Cuban scholar publishes new book detailing Cuba’s history through stamps
The Independent Florida Alligator 11-17-21
In the U.S. he earned a J.D. from Fordham University Law School and a M.A. in Political Science from Columbia University.

OBITUARIES

James Brundage
Lawrence Journal-World 11-15-21
B.A. (1950) and M.A. (1951) from the University of Nebraska; Ph.D. (1955) Fordham University.

Betty Starr, 93, longtime Katonah resident, educator and St. Luke’s parishioner
The Record-Review 11-15-21
She received a Bachelor of Arts degree in elementary education from Fordham University and a master’s degree in education administration from the University of Chicago.

William J. DuMond
Legacy.com 11-16-21
Will attained a perfect score on his college entry exam and received an academic scholarship to Fordham University.

Sister Maureen McDermott, Catholic school leader, dies at 65
CatholicPhilly.com 11-17-21
Along the way she earned a master’s degree in English from West Chester University and a Ph.D. in Catholic educational leadership from Fordham University.

Vincent R. Harter
Legacy.com 11-18-21
Vince’s essence remains with us.
Vince was a graduate of Fordham University, served in and retired from the United States Air Force, worked in the private sector, was involved in the wellbeing and maintenance of St. John’s Catholic School in Belleville, coached sports, volunteered his time at St. Luke’s in Belleville and never knew a stranger.

With just 5% of the world’s people but more than 20% of its prison and jail inmates, the United States clearly has an incarceration problem—and experts say it will take far more than federal legislation to truly fix it.

“Mass incarceration is not just a huge policy failure. It’s a humanity failure,” says John Pfaff, Ph.D., a professor at Fordham Law School and author of Locked In: The True Causes of Mass Incarceration and How to Achieve Real Reform (Basic Books, 2017).

Pfaff has shifted the debate about criminal justice reform by challenging the standard story about the runaway growth of the U.S. prison population since the early 1970s. The primary cause, he argues, is not the war on drugs and the proliferation of nonviolent offenders in prison but the unchecked power of local prosecutors and how we respond to violent crime.

Part of the solution is to give prosecutors incentives and tools to take a less punitive approach, Pfaff says. He has also called for more public consideration of the prison system’s impact on people and communities. “We spend $50 billion a year on running the prison system,” he says. “But we can’t tell you what we’re really spending in terms of the actual human costs.”

In prison, people contract diseases like HIV and tuberculosis at a rate 10 to 100 times higher than outside the prison system, he says. They suffer physical and sexual abuse, develop mental health problems, and have a hard time earning enough money when they’re released. Their families earn less and suffer from mental health trauma as well, and their children face a greater risk of going to prison. “And despite doing this for 40 years,” he says, “we’ve just never estimated those costs, and I think we haven’t measured them, because at a very real level, we don’t care.”

A change in attitudes is needed, he says. “How do you get people who aren’t in the prison system to care about those who are? Until we make that move, we’re going to really struggle to not be the world’s largest jailer.”

Prevention Before Incarceration

Like Pfaff, Anthony Bradley, Ph.D., GSAS ’13, decries overly punitive approaches to criminal justice, and points to a host of additional causes of mass incarceration: class, poverty, race, family breakdown, and mental illness.

In his book Ending Overcriminalization and Mass Incarceration: Hope from Civil Society (Cambridge University Press, 2018), he argues for taking a comprehensive, long-term approach to safeguarding the well-being of people who are at a higher risk of getting in trouble with the law. Everyone can help in this effort, he says. “This is largely an issue about who we decide has human dignity and who does not.”

During a lecture at Fordham’s Rose Hill campus last November, he explained that the book had its beginnings in a class he took while earning a master’s degree in ethics and society at Fordham. He was “blown away,” he said, after learning about the links between young children developing post-traumatic stress disorder and ending up in the juvenile justice system later on.

“I realized that we’re not just locking up bad kids, we’re locking up hurt kids. It completely changed the course of my career,” said Bradley, a professor of religious studies and director of the Center for the Study of Human Flourishing at The King’s College in Manhattan.

The federal government’s war on drugs since the early 1970s can’t be the main cause of mass incarceration, he said, because 90% of all inmates are in state prisons, and of those, only 17% are drug offenders. In part because of a focus on federal prison data, “we get the story wrong,” he said. “If we don’t get the story right, we’ll get the solutions and interventions wrong.”

Part of that story, he said, is society’s views toward the poor. “Here’s a tough social fact in this country: We resent poor people in America regardless of their race,” he said. “We’ve used the criminal justice system to remove them, the poor, from civil society.”

And those who enter the criminal justice system are “overwhelmingly poor,” he added. With no money to pay legal bills, they have to rely on overburdened public defenders, and their poverty is compounded when their prison records create a barrier to employment, he said.

Caring for the Whole Person

Last December, the federal government enacted the First Step Act to reform criminal justice and reduce prison crowding, following on many state governments’ legislative efforts over the past decade.

While the new law is commendable, deep and meaningful change can only come from convincing the nation’s local prosecutors and police chiefs to do things differently, Pfaff says. “We tend to focus on the federal government as what is going to fix the problem,” but solutions must come on a “city-by-city, county-by-county level.”

In his talk at Rose Hill, Bradley also called for grassroots, “upstream” efforts to provide emotional, social, psychological, and moral support to children before they wind up in trouble with police.

“As long as we have hurting children, we’re going to have violent children,” he said. “We need to invite more players to the table. Yes, we need lawyers; yes, we need judges. … We also need coaches and teachers and business owners and cousins and aunts and uncles and community nonprofit leaders to offer the sorts of interventions that address the whole person.”

Bringing Ignatian Spirituality to the Incarcerated

Public defender John Booth, GRE ’14, has taken an interdisciplinary approach to the problem. After a decade representing people charged with serious crimes in Hudson County, New Jersey, he felt he was burning out, tired of watching clients repeat the cycle of incarceration.

“Why do I find myself representing the children of former clients?” he wondered. “When will all of this hurt end? Most importantly, where is God in all of this and why am I a witness to such horror?” He examined his own motives for becoming a public defender. “I knew I cared for them and was always fighting for them,” he says, “but I didn’t realize just how deeply they had touched me.”

Booth recognized there was a spiritual element to addressing the problems of criminality, mass incarceration, and recidivism. But there were limits to what he could do as a lawyer, ethically and practically. He knew it was inappropriate to discuss matters of faith with his clients, that “melding the roles of attorney and minister can add another injustice upon the accused person,” as he put it, but he also had no plans to give up his day job.

So in 2009, after he and his wife lost a child to stillbirth, Booth began further exploring his Catholic faith. He took “the Ignatian retreat in daily life,” a way to complete the 500-year-old Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius Loyola over a period of eight months instead of during an intensive 30- day retreat in solitude. Afterward, he felt that undertaking the Spiritual Exercises—a mix of meditations, prayers, and contemplative practices—could prove as valuable a healing process to incarcerated people as it was to him.

That thinking led him to Fordham’s Graduate School of Religion and Religious Education, where he completed a master’s degree in religious education in 2014. His thesis explored how the exercises could provide emotional support and spiritual freedom to inmates and help them transition to society after release.

“A lot of [inmates]will say that they can’t do this on their own,” he says.

Bringing Guidance Behind Prison Walls

After completing his master’s degree, Booth met Zach Presutti, S.J., a Jesuit scholastic and a psychotherapist with an interest in prison ministry. Presutti read Booth’s thesis and realized it contained the kind of spiritual guidance he wanted his new nonprofit, Thrive for Life Prison Project, to provide for the incarcerated.

Booth created a brochure for Thrive for Life volunteers providing Ignatian spiritual direction to inmates—and he began volunteering with the group as a spiritual director. Several times a month, he visits with inmates in New York—at Sing Sing Correctional Facility in Ossining, the State Correctional Institution in Otisville, and the Manhattan Detention Complex, also known as the Tombs—and leads them through an abridged version of the Spiritual Exercises, providing a safe environment that fosters self-expression.

“They can just kind of let go and be themselves,” he says. “And as time goes on, you see them expressing more and more and more, individually and collectively.”

Breaking the Cycle, Building Relationships

Thrive for Life’s spiritual directors stay in touch with the group’s participants. One former inmate now works full time with the group. Many other former inmates gather once a month with volunteers, friends, and family at the Church of St. Francis Xavier in Manhattan, where the organization is based. And Thrive for Life recently opened Ignacio House, a Bronx residence for people recently released from prison.

Meanwhile, Booth says his workload as a public defender was made more manageable by bail reforms New Jersey instituted two years ago, which include new standards for deciding whether an inmate poses a danger to society. His time at Fordham gave him new perspective on his day job—and on practicing his faith in service of others. “Courses were geared toward trying to live out your faith in the modern world, with constant interaction with the real world,” Booth says. “Fordham made me into the best spiritual director that I could be.”

College in a Maximum Security Prison

Since 2015, Steve Romagnoli, FCRH ’82, a playwright, novelist, and adjunct professor of English at Fordham, has been helping to bring the transformative power of education to women in prison. On a Thursday evening near the end of the spring semester, he led his students through the moral ambiguities of Ruined, Lynn Nottage’s 2009 Pulitzer Prize-winning play about the wages of war in the Democratic Republic of Congo. The scene in the classroom was reminiscent of an undergraduate seminar on any college campus, with one exception: Students wore the green uniform of inmates at Bedford Hills Correctional Facility, the only maximum security women’s prison in New York state.

Like all guests at the prison, Romagnoli enters the compound through a trailer-like structure that separates the visitors’ parking lot from the prison buildings, which are ringed by metal gates topped with razor-wire coils. He passes through a security checkpoint carrying only his car keys, driver’s license, and notes for class.

“It’s like going in and out of a concentration camp, with the walls and the wires,” he says. “But sitting in the room and watching them talk and laugh and banter, you could be anywhere.”

Romagnoli’s students range in age and experience. For one woman, the course—Social Issues in Literature—is her first taste of college; for another, it’s the next-to-last class needed for her bachelor’s degree in sociology.

“Steve is always in demand,” says Aileen Baumgartner, FCRH ’88, GSAS ’90, the director of the Bedford Hills College Program. Overseen by Marymount Manhattan College, it offers courses leading to an associate’s degree in social sciences and a bachelor’s degree in sociology.

“Students really get a lot from his classes. I don’t know how he does it—I’ve said, ‘Really, Steve? You think they’re going to get through all this in a semester?’ Somehow or other they do.”

‘Students Have to Feel There Is Love’

At Fordham, Romagnoli teaches a similar course on ethics and literature, albeit with a more sensational title: Murder, Mayhem, and Madness. In both settings, students focus on “moral dilemmas and ethical questions that confront us throughout our lives,” he says.

“The Fordham students have great things to say, but they’re initially a bit shy,” he says. “At the prison, sometimes you’ve got to pull them together, but they’re totally engaged, and they say what they’ve got to say.”

Romagnoli began his career as an educator at P.S. 26 in the South Bronx during the mid-1980s, not long after earning a bachelor’s degree in English at Fordham. He later earned an M.F.A. in creative writing at the City College of New York.

For 15 years, he was an itinerant teacher for the New York City Department of Education, working with students in their late teens to early 20s at drug rehabilitation facilities, homeless shelters, and halfway houses, among other locations. “I would go in and teach a lesson and go out,” he says. “Engage them, that was the whole thing. You’ve got to engage them.”

No matter where he teaches, his approach is essentially the same. “Students have to feel there is love there—not love love, but a deep respect. And if they come to the conclusion, consciously or unconsciously, that you have that deep respect, then it allows you to be as demanding as you want to be.”

Baumgartner notes that all of the students at Bedford Hills are required to work during the day—as porters or clerks or sweeping floors, for example. And they complete their coursework in the evening and early morning hours without the benefit of internet access.

Like Romagnoli, Baumgartner went to Fordham, where she earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees in English. She started teaching at Bedford Hills in 2001, when she was a professor at Mercy College, and became the director of the college program in 2002.

“I had never given any thought to prison education programs,” she says. She recalled that on her first day of class, “all the students were looking at me, sizing me up, and they asked, ‘Why are you here?’ ‘I was asked to teach, and so here I am.’”

Baumgartner’s straightforward answer satisfied the students, who, she realized, didn’t want to “hear someone come in and talk to them about high-minded ideals.”

She notes that prison education programs reduce recidivism and create better employment opportunities for former inmates. “Whether you’re a prisoner or not, you have many more options in life if you have a college education. And if you are a prisoner and you have a felony conviction on your record, when you return to the outside, it’s very nice to have a college degree on your record too.”

Students also benefit in ways that are less tangible. “They gain a deeper understanding of the forces that shape communities, that shape themselves, that shape their children,” she says. “They learn that they have the power to act in positive ways in their communities that perhaps they didn’t feel they had before.

“And then there’s that ripple effect,” she adds. “They’re concerned with their children going to college. Now it matters to them.”

Regarding costs, she says “the college program is not as expensive as keeping people imprisoned.”

Approximately 150 women—or roughly 25% of Bedford Hills’ standing inmate population—are enrolled in the college program, Baumgartner says. And every spring, the program hosts a graduation ceremony. This year, she says, six women earned a bachelor’s degree and 14 received an associate’s degree.

‘A Fairer, More Effective Criminal Justice System’

Inmates at Bedford Hills have benefited from college education programs for decades. “Mercy College had a college program there until the tough-on-crime bill was passed,” Baumgartner says, referring to the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994, which eliminated Pell Grants for inmates.

“Across the country, a lot of colleges, including Mercy, closed their prison programs in the mid-1990s because they just couldn’t afford it” without federal funding, Baumgartner says. The number of U.S. prison college programs dropped from about 300 to just a handful.

At Bedford Hills, a coalition of community members designed the college program, which is funded by private donors and grants. Since it began in spring 1997, more than 200 women have earned college degrees there.

And since 2016, it has also received support through the Department of Education’s Second Chance Pell Pilot program, a three-year experiment that aims to “create a fairer, more effective criminal justice system, reduce recidivism, and combat the impact of mass incarceration on communities.”

Inmates who take part in prison education programs are 43 percent less likely to return to prison in three years, compared to those who don’t take part, according to a federally funded RAND Corporation study from 2013, the education department noted in announcing the program.

Baumgartner credits the New York State Department of Corrections and Community Supervision for supporting higher education programs in prisons, including the one at Bedford Hills. “These programs sometimes tax their resources,” but the department understands their importance, she says.

Romagnoli talks with his Fordham students about his work at Bedford Hills, and about mass incarceration and criminal justice reform. “It resonates strongly with them,” he says. “And it’s something that’s really come into the public consciousness [in recent years]; the ball’s rolling a little quicker.”

‘Knowledge Is Power’

Back in the classroom at Bedford Hills, after a heavy but lively discussion about Ruined, Romagnoli gives the students a brief break before moving on to Zora Neale Hurston’s 1937 novel Their Eyes Were Watching God.

Asked to reflect on the course, which also includes discussion of philosophers from Socrates to Simone de Beauvoir, students say they’ve learned that “knowledge is power.” They say that “perception plays a big role in how people judge people,” that the readings have helped them “gain different perspectives,” and yet the class “brings a unity, even if we agree to disagree.”

“You learn more about yourself, about your ethical system, and you question the things you do,” says one student. “I am one class away from a B.A. When I leave here, I will always question the morality of a situation.”

—By Chris Gosier, Adam Kaufman, and Ryan Stellabotte

Locked In reevaluates the conventional thinking surrounding the causes of mass incarceration in the United States, namely that the War on Drugs, draconian sentencing laws, and the private prison industry caused the explosion of prison populations. Pfaff argues that the causes stem far beyond these three factors. The overlooked key factor in Pfaff’s estimation are prosecutors, who, in the mid-1990s, began administering felony charges twice as often as they had before. Pfaff also examines how counties do not pay for the people they send to state prisons, and how white suburbs establish law agendas for more-heavily minority cities. Agreeing that racial inequality drives the country’s criminal justice system, Pfaff’s work prompts readers to consider how to rebuild the system and establish a more just society.

Joining Pfaff in the discussion were Adam J. Foss, co-founder of Prosecutor Impact and a visiting senior fellow at Harvard Law School, and Phillip Atiba Goff, the Franklin A. Thomas Professor in Policing Equity at John Jay College and the co-founder and president of the Center for Policing Equity. The trio framed their discussion around Pfaff’s book, which challenges conventional wisdom about the origins of the United States’ unprecedentedly massive prison population and the reforms proposed to reduce it.

“Democrats and Republicans can’t even agree if it’s rainy or sunny, but we can agree that we need to reduce our prison populations,” said Pfaff. “Newt Gingrich, Corey Booker, the ACLU, and the Koch brothers lined up on this issue. Yet in this—being one of the few areas where there’s a bipartisan consensus—our success is fairly minimal.”

In Locked In, Pfaff argues that received ideas concerning mass incarceration have prevented meaningful action. He pointed to the example of nonviolent drug offenses, which, the public views as an essential driver of mass incarceration, but which, Pfaff’s data show, account for a mere 16 percent of the U.S. prison population overall.

Though he advocates justice system reform, Pfaff argues that the explosion in the U.S. prison population between the 1970s and the present owes not to the “dramatic stuff” of public discourse but rather to commonly overlooked facets of the justice system.

“[County prosecutors] are the ones driving this, to a remarkable degree, and to a remarkably overlooked degree,” he said. “And there’s no discussion. No state reform bill has yet to talk about them, yet they are the ones driving this.”

Pfaff says that public prosecutors, who decide which crimes to charge defendants with, have increasingly chosen since the 1990s to bring felony charges rather than significantly less severe misdemeanor charges. Since prosecutors, not judges or juries, typically negotiate plea bargains, prosecutors often choose how long defendants will spend in prison.

Foss and Goff also picked out prosecutorial discretion as a key driver in increasing the U.S. prison population. Calling on his eight years of experience as a prosecutor in the Juvenile Division of the Suffolk County District Attorney’s Office, Foss said prosecutors often mete out punishments with little understanding of how those punishments will affect the communities from which defendants have been drawn.

“Every single day, around this country, thousands and thousands of times, prosecutors are conducting heart surgery on neighborhoods that they know nothing about,” Foss said.

Goff substantially echoed these sentiments. A social psychologist and neuroscientist whose work focuses on policing equity, Goff praised Pfaff’s book for offering concrete paths to action on criminal justice reform.

“The place you get in trouble is where the relationship between law enforcement and the criminal justice system segregates the pain of enforcement from the pain of victimization,” he said. “And that’s what the book talks about, in a better way than any book prior.”

Pfaff himself expressed his hope that Locked In would help the cause of criminal justice reform by providing new issues on which to take action. He said that resolving misunderstandings about the criminal justice system was the first step towards reform.

“One of the conservative critiques of the Black Lives Matter movement is that they somehow don’t care about crime,” he said. “That’s insane. Black Lives Matter emerges from those groups that feel both the benefit from crime reduction and most closely feel its costs as well. And they’re telling us that these costs are out of balance, that this is not the way you approach this problem.”

—Shane Danaher

Over the past 30 years, the response to prison overcrowding due to harsher laws and longer sentences has been a growing number of government-contracted for-profit prisons companies.

On April 23, a panel at Fordham said these privately owned and operated prisons raise urgent moral concerns about how justice is carried out in the United States.

Sponsored by Fordham’s Center for Ethics Education, “Jailing for Dollars: The Moral Costs of Privatizing Justice,” held at Fordham School of Law, featured a panel of experts that included Cindy Chang, staff writer for Los Angeles Times, Thomas Giovanni, counsel to the Justice Program at the Brennan Center for Justice, Judith Greene, criminal justice policy expert at Justice Strategies, Michael Jacobson, Ph.D., president and director of the Vera Institute of Justice, and John Pfaff, associate professor of law.

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Panelists discussed portions of the film Billions Behind Bars: Inside America’s Prison Industry, which documents the rising danger of prison overcrowding. As states have begun to outsource prisoners—California sends inmates as far as Mississippi, while Hawaii has 1,700 male inmates housed in a prison in Arizona—private prisons have taken up the excess.

Pfaff questioned, however, whether private facilities are in fact driving prison growth, or whether they are merely part of a complex problem fueled by politics. Although the number of private prisons has surged over the last three decades, only about 8 percent of state prisoners are housed in these facilities.

These politics, Jacobson said, are characterized less by Republican versus Democrat and more by “upstate versus downstate.” That is, private prisons are largely concentrated in rural areas, creating jobs as a byproduct.

“Prisons have been used as a form of economic development in communities across the country—that’s a bad thing,” Jacobson said. “That’s not a private versus public thing—that’s a prison-as-jobs dynamic, and it’s a very difficult dynamic to break. It’s one of the many reasons that closing prisons is so difficult. These communities fight to have them and keep them.”

Even if private prisons have not caused the prison crisis, Jacobson said they represent an obstacle to future reform.

Chang, who spent a year researching the correctional system in Louisiana, which has the highest incarceration rate in the country, found that private prisons also bring resources and jobs to law enforcement officials who run the prisons.

“One sheriff said that he hates to make money off of the back of some unfortunate person, but he also remembers when the police force had nothing—they had to share shotguns on patrol,” she said. “It’s a Faustian bargain. You get jobs, but in return, you’re part of this troublesome system.”

Even worse, maintaining these prisons triggers a vicious cycle. “If you’re putting all this money into locking people up, then you have less money for schools, or for making neighborhoods better, which is why some people end up in prison in the first place,” she said.

Giovanni said the nation must begin by addressing soaring incarceration rates, which have been spurred by harsher laws and sentencing.

“Too many things are crimes that should not be crimes,” Giovanni said, citing stringent trespassing and loitering laws, as well as policies related to the so-called war on drugs.

“When we think about prison policy legislation—we wrote it, we can erase it… That’s going to take a lot of fuel out of the fire.”

Pfaff added that in order to help curb incarcerations for low-level offenses, prosecutors who hand out prison sentences liberally, especially for non-violent, non-sexual, non-recidivist offenders, should be held financially accountable.

“Never doubt the incentives of cash,” Pfaff said. “If we make you pay for your actions, then your actions might change.”

Overall, Giovanni noted, the focus on whether prisons should be private or public obscures more important issues related to human rights, such as the abysmal conditions that prisoners suffer in public as well as private facilities.

“The debate over private versus public [has]a complete lack of focus on the human beings in the cells that we’re talking about,” Giovanni said. “The beginning and end of all policy is a human being whose life can either improve or be made worse by the policy. If we start there, then we’ll have a different discussion.”