There’s no need to apply and no membership dues—just relevant, engaging programming for you to take part in. From timely lectures to career forums to social events, you’ll find many opportunities to connect with your fellow alumni. Your Fordham degree also grants you access to a host of special offers and benefits.

Make sure to visit forever.fordham.edu for an updated list of all things Fordham alumni!

Fordham Alumni by the Numbers

As new alumni, you’re part of a large, global network of Fordham Rams. There are more than 200,000 total alumni living in all 50 U.S. states and 160 countries. Around 57% of Fordham alumni live within 50 miles of New York, but there are 50+ regional chapters worldwide.

Upcoming Alumni Events

Jubilee at Rose Hill: June 2 – 4

Block Party at Lincoln Center: June 9

FUAA Night at Yankee Stadium: September 8

Young Alumni Yacht Cruise: October 6

Homecoming: October 7

“When you’re out in the busy world, please be proud of Fordham, tell the Fordham story,” Joseph M. McShane, S.J., president of the University, told attendees. “What is the Fordham story? It’s your story, a story of the friendships you’ve made, the transformational nature of the education you received, and the great sense of community that was nurtured among you.”

That sense of community was on display across all of the Block Party events. From the separate cocktail receptions for five Lincoln Center-based schools to the open-air dance party uniting everyone on the plaza, alumni enjoyed the chance to recognize influential grads, faculty, and staff, and reconnect in person after last year’s virtual celebration.

For William Greene, a three-time Fordham graduate, this year’s Block Party was a chance to celebrate his many ties to the University. After graduating from Fordham College at Rose Hill in 1961, he earned a Fordham Law degree in 1965. Two decades later, he enrolled at the Gabelli School of Business, earning an M.B.A. in 1987.

“I always got more than my money’s worth at Fordham,” he said with a laugh. “I seemed compatible with the people—or at least they found me acceptable over a long period of time.”

Greene said that he practiced law for a number of years and served as executive director of the New York County Lawyers Association before deciding to make a career change. Earning a Fordham business degree, he said, helped him launch a career as a consultant.

Two Fordham undergraduates—saxophonist Will Harvey and pianist Miguel Sutedjo, who has written classical, jazz, and musical theater pieces for both Fordham and as part of the Juilliard Evening Division program—kicked off the festivities with a musical performance in Pope Auditorium.

Each of the five schools—Fordham College at Lincoln Center, the Graduate School of Social Service, the Graduate School of Education, the School of Professional and Continuing Studies, and the Gabelli School of Business—held receptions where alumni, faculty, and administrators mingled. (Fordham Law School, also based at Lincoln Center, held its annual alumni reunion in April, and the Fordham Law Alumni Association hosted its annual luncheon on June 2.)

Other groups, such as The Observer—the award-winning student newspaper at Lincoln Center—and Psi Chi, the Lincoln Center psychology association, held their own alumni gatherings. Psi Chi honored John C. Hollwitz, Ph.D., professor of psychology and rhetoric at Fordham, and Leonard Davidman, Ph.D., GSE ’82, with its 2022 Psi Chi Outstanding Achievement medals. Earlier this year, Davidman, a licensed psychologist and longtime president of the labor union that represents New York City’s public sector psychologists and mental health counselors, was honored by Manhattan Borough President Mark Levine for his contributions to the city.

Honoring Lincoln Center’s First ‘Golden Rams’

When Pat Friel started at Fordham College at Lincoln Center in fall 1968, the Lowenstein Center was still under construction. She and her classmates took their first classes in the old Fordham Law building at 140 West 62nd Street, which was completely renovated after the new Fordham Law building opened in 2014.

“It’s amazing to come back and see all the new renovations and even just floor by floor [in the Lowenstein Center], it’s just amazing. It really is beautiful,” said Friel, who graduated in 1972.

Friel and other members of the Fordham College at Lincoln Center Class of 1972 celebrated the 50th anniversary of their graduation, making them the school’s first-ever Golden Rams.

Friel said coming back and seeing the school in its current form, with two residence halls, additional classroom space, and a growing undergraduate population, makes her feel like the school has lived up to its initial goals.

“When we started, [there were] only 300 of us, and the idea behind the school was that it was supposed to represent the city,” she said. “It was supposed to be very diverse. … It was trying to be very reflective of the city. I am truly very glad that it became what it tried to be, and it continues to get better and progress.”

One of the people responsible for that progress was honored in a special ceremony at the reunion. Robert R. Grimes, S.J., FCRH ’75, dean of Fordham College at Lincoln Center from 1997 to 2018, was recognized for his two decades of “leadership of and commitment to” the FCLC community. A conference room in the dean’s office suite will be named in his honor.

Block Party was a fitting place to honor Father Grimes, who helped inaugurate the alumni tradition in June 2001, when he worked with the alumni relations office to host a cocktail reception on the plaza.

“Graduates of every year of the college’s existence attended the event,” Father Grimes wrote in A History of Fordham College at Lincoln Center, a booklet he published in 2018 to mark the college’s 50th anniversary, “but unlike so many college reunions, large numbers of faculty also attended, renewing relationships forged in the classrooms of Lowenstein.”

In presenting Father Grimes with a framed version of the plaque that will be installed outside the conference room, Father McShane noted that the official date of the dedication is July 31—the feast day of St. Ignatius, founder of the Society of Jesus—calling it “a day on which Jesuits tend to celebrate real greatness.”

Elizabeth “Betty” Burns, FCLC ’83, a retired senior vice president of Capital Guardian and a Fordham University trustee fellow, credited her professors for helping her stay on track to graduate. At the time, she was working full days in the GM Building and attending school at night.

“One year I said I needed a semester off, and Clive Daniel, God rest his soul, said ‘Oh, no no no, you want to take one class; you can’t quit. If you take a semester off, we’ll never see you again,’” she recalled. She took her economics professor’s advice and earned her Fordham degree in 1983. “It’s just all the people at Fordham—they were just a part of this group that provided such camaraderie and such support.”

While some graduates were celebrating big milestone anniversaries, Laura Auricchio, Ph.D., was marking her first in-person Block Party as dean of the college. She took the time to thank and recognize Mark Botton, Ph.D., a professor of biology and co-director of the environmental science program, who retired this year.

“We’re inaugurating yet another new tradition—honoring retiring faculty at Block Party,” she said.

Auricchio said that Botton, internationally regarded as an expert on horseshoe crabs, has published numerous scientific papers and helped policymakers and scientists protect the vulnerable arthropods and their habitats. In 2019, he even had a horseshoe crab fossil named after him.

“Most impressively to me, at least, is that many of his articles were published in collaboration with FCLC student co-authors,” Auricchio said to a room full of cheers.

At Gabelli School Reception, Honoring a ‘True Ph.D.’

Block Party also gave alumni an opportunity to thank two cornerstones of Fordham: Father McShane, who is stepping down as president at the end of the month, and Donna Rapaccioli, Ph.D., GABELLI ’83, who served as dean of the Gabelli School of Business for the past 15 years.

“Donna is a true Ph.D.—and not because she [earned a doctorate in] accounting at NYU,” said Mario Gabelli, a 1965 graduate of the Fordham business school that now bears his name. “The reason is that she is what I call passionate, hungry, and driven—Ph.D.”

Gabelli said that Rapaccioli has been a true changemaker for students at the University, and now, as she steps back into teaching and research, students are going to “have to be summa cum laude to get into her class.”

“Donna, without you, we wouldn’t be here today,” he said.

In 2007, Rapaccioli was named dean of what was then the undergraduate College of Business Administration. During her tenure, Gabelli and his wife, Regina Pitaro, FCRH ’76, made two historic donations to the school—$25 million in 2010 and $35 million in 2020—giving the Gabelli School of Business its name and providing long-term support for academic programs, faculty research, scholarships, teaching excellence, and more.

In 2015, Rapaccioli led the unification of the University’s undergraduate and graduate business schools, one year after launching the school’s first B.S. program at the Lincoln Center campus. She later launched Gabelli’s first doctoral programs, and oversaw significant growth in enrollments and rises in rankings at the school.

“From that day, both the undergraduate and graduate divisions of what is now called the Gabelli School of Business—they took off,” Father McShane said. “There was a greater sense of purposeful education, of a purpose-driven career in business. She was adamant that a Fordham education was not going to be like any other business education. … She wanted men and women whose lives were marked by character. They had to be men and women of integrity.”

Gabelli thanked both Rapaccioli and Father McShane for their leadership at Fordham.

“Thank you for all you’ve done, and congratulations to both of you for your leadership, your wisdom,” he said. “Thank you [for helping] us motivate the next generation that’s here tonight.”

Recognizing Educators

This Block Party marked the first for José Luis Alvarado, Ph.D., who joined the Graduate School of Education as dean in July 2021. He presented GSE’s Lifetime Achievement Award to Aramina Vega Ferrer, Ph.D., GSE ’09, a member of the 12th Judicial District of the New York State Board of Regents.

“I can’t tell you how excited and honored I am to receive this award,” said Ferrer, who came to New York from Puerto Rico as a child. “Fordham has played a pivotal role in fulfilling the vision my parents held for me, my brother, and my sisters when we took that plane in 1952. They knew they had to seek to educate us in institutions that shared their values and religious beliefs.”

Ferrer, who spent more than three decades as an educator and educational leader before being elected to the Board of Regents in April, not only reflected on her family’s history but also looked to its future—and what education continues to mean to them.

“My three amazing grandsons are living proof that the richness of literacy and culture is transmitted across generations,” she told the attendees.

After Ferrer accepted her award, Father McShane spoke to the group of graduates, telling them, “You teach not only the skills that are necessary for students to succeed in life; you also teach values. … You spend your lives serving others. We cannot praise you enough. For me, you’re saints. You answer affirmatively to God’s invitation to help him build the human family up.”

GSS Introduces Alumni Awards

At the Graduate School of Social Service reception, Cassandra Agredo, GSS ’06, received the GSS Alumni Award, which “honors an individual who embodies professional social work values and meaningfully impacts the individuals and communities they serve.” Agredo is the executive director of Xavier Mission, which provides basic services as well as opportunities for empowerment and self-sufficiency to New Yorkers in need.

Mary Brennan, GSS ’83, received the GSS Alumni Service Award, which honors “an individual who is dedicated in their support of the Graduate School of Social Service and its mission.” Brennan is a social worker at 1st Cerebral Palsy of NJ, whose mission is to assist all students with special needs to lead more active and productive lives, and she has been a generous supporter of GSS.

Alumni from the classes of 1972 and 1997, who were celebrating their 50th and 25th anniversaries, respectively, also received special recognition at the event.

The Observer Launches New Prize

At a reception in Platt Atrium, Elizabeth Stone, Ph.D., professor of English and former adviser to The Observer, announced the creation of the Many Voices Prize, which will provide financial assistance to students from underrepresented backgrounds who contribute to the award-winning student paper.

“A couple of years ago, I noticed the editorial board [of The Observer] posted a notice saying that they were aware that as an organization, they didn’t have the diversity on staff they wished they could have,” she said. “That spoke to me, and it germinated in me the idea of wanting to do something to get historically underrepresented groups to the table.”

Stone said she hopes the prize will help more students find their calling as journalists.

“Right now, democracy is in big trouble, a trouble due to too many lies and too much silence, because not everyone who should be at the table is at the table,” she said. “And I believe journalism can help. To survive, we need robust conversation with many voices, at Lincoln Center and the world.”

Celebrating After Being Apart

The return of Block Party, which concluded with a night of dancing and celebrating out on the plaza, also gave more recent graduates a chance to reconnect with each other and their school. Some alumni said the pandemic helped them put their education and lessons learned at Fordham into practice.

Dan Nasta, FCLC ’19, said that he appreciated the liberal arts background that Fordham gave him as he navigated pandemic life.

“I just think a lot of what we encountered in the past two years with the pandemic was just empathy for other people and a willingness to put others before yourself,” he said. “I feel like I’m happy with how I’ve lived the past two years. I don’t have any regrets from a moral perspective, because Fordham gave me the ability to understand my actions and my responsibility for them and my connectedness to them as a part of the community.”

Chloe Djomessi Saikam, FCLC ’21, a former anthropology and music major, works as a UX designer, a role that helps create websites and products after considering how they will function and feel to those using them. She said that she tries to bring to her work the values and teachings of her liberal arts education.

“A lot of the concepts I learned about anthropology and music theory directly translate into design thinking—testing our own biases, really trying to understand people. and really just capturing the nuance, which is big in anthropology, and also big in UX,” Saikam said.

 Additional reporting from Adam Kaufman and Connor White. 

Now, more than five decades later, Ninehan is supporting her old New York City neighborhood, one of the hardest hit by COVID-19, while paying tribute to the lifelong mentor and friend she found at Fordham College at Lincoln Center.

Her gift to Fordham’s new Cultural Engagement Internships program—made in honor of the late history professor Anne M. Mannion, Ph.D., UGE ’58—helped make it possible for the Elmhurst Corona Recovery Collaborative to offer a paid internship this year, giving a Fordham student an opportunity to support the collaborative’s efforts to meet the food security, mental health, and other needs of community members impacted by the pandemic.

For Ninehan, who graduated from Fordham College at Lincoln Center (FCLC) in 1974 and earned a Master of Science degree from Fordham’s Graduate School of Education in 2000, supporting Fordham students is a way to express gratitude for the education she received.

“The people I met, the professors I had: It was a whole world. The elevator doors would open up and you didn’t know who was going to walk out—what new celebrity,” she said, recalling one particular instance during her first year when she attended a lecture by noted anthropologist Margaret Mead, Ph.D., who was teaching at Fordham at the time.

This access to outstanding professors was eye-opening for Ninehan, but it certainly wasn’t rare. She said history professor John F. Roche, Ph.D., who died in 2012, “was really an inspiration,” and Mannion even attended Ninehan’s wedding to fellow Ram William J. Ninehan, FCLC ’93, in 1975.

Ninehan remained close to Mannion, exchanging annual holiday cards with her until she died in 2013, a year after retiring from her 53-year-long career at FCLC. She credits Mannion with not only teaching her about history but also modeling how to teach.

“She was really the most outstanding professor,” Ninehan said. “Her enthusiasm, her love of subject: It all enhanced the pedagogy. You can learn methodology, you can learn classroom management, but if you don’t bring that spark that’s a love of your subject with you, it’s meaningless.”

Never Say Never

Despite her passion for teaching, Ninehan didn’t secure a full-time teaching position until 14 years after earning her bachelor’s degree. In the meantime, she parlayed the part-time job she’d held at Bloomingdale’s as a student into a full-time gig as a personal shopper. Due to her background in history, Ninehan often was assigned to work with foreign dignitaries and political figures, but she said it was “not what I intended to be in my life.”

Finally, while reading the newspaper on the way to work in 1988, she saw a classified ad for a seventh-grade social studies teacher—“just by the grace of God,” she said. “I never used to take the newspaper to work and one day I did.”

“I called when I got to my office and the secretary said, ‘Sister will call you back,’ and I thought, ‘Catholic school?’ And that’s where I’ve been ever since.”

Funnily enough, if it hadn’t been for some insistent advice Ninehan received as a student, her path may have differed. When applying for New York state teacher certification, someone suggested she also apply for New Jersey certification. As a “kid from Queens,” she thought, “I’m never going to live in New Jersey,” but that’s where her teaching career has taken place, the bulk of it at the very first school she found via the newspaper ad: Perth Amboy Catholic School in Perth Amboy, New Jersey.

In addition to serving as a seventh- and eighth-grade teacher at Perth Amboy, Ninehan was a principal there. After an autoimmune disease diagnosis in 2011 prompted her retirement, Ninehan continued to teach part time and volunteer at the school. Due to COVID-19, she hasn’t been able to return to Perth Amboy yet, but she said she helps out however she can.

“I’ve done things like revise the handbook and helped with alumni affairs—things of that nature,” Ninehan said. “Things that are not classroom per se, but school-oriented. So, it’s kept me in the loop.”

A Cause Close to Home

As a faithful Fordham donor for more than 20 years—a milestone that earned her entrance into the University’s Doty Society—and an “Elmhurst girl” who walked to PS 13 and high school, Ninehan didn’t think twice about supporting Fordham’s Cultural Engagement Internships program after learning about it during this year’s Lincoln Center Block Party reunion, held virtually in June. The program offers FCLC and Fordham College at Rose Hill students the opportunity to participate in paid internships at local nonprofits and cultural institutions, like the Elmhurst Corona Recovery Collaborative.

Ninehan is one of several alumni donors who have stepped up to help fund student pay and expand the program. She said that while Elmhurst has “taken quite a beating—economically and physically”—over the years, it “was a wonderful place to grow up,” and it means a lot to her that people are interested in preserving the community and helping the people who live there.

“The fact that an intern can help, it’s a double blessing,” she added. “I can help [a Fordham student]do something that’s meaningful and you could help the community you came from; it just made perfect sense.”

Fordham has meant a “great deal” to Ninehan, and she’s looking forward to a time when she can connect with the Fordham community in person again. (She’ll have opportunities pretty soon: Numerous in-person alumni events are returning this month, and Homecoming, scheduled for Saturday, October 9, will be in person, too.)

“In terms of the guidance I got, in terms of my courses, the influence of the professors, and then the lifetime relationships and the friends I made, the friends I still have, my husband: It’s all Fordham,” she said.

What are you most passionate about?
I am most passionate about teaching.

What’s the best piece of advice you’ve ever received?
The best piece of advice I ever received was to go to Fordham, because of my lasting personal relationships and its impact on my career.

What’s your favorite place in New York City? In the world?
Although I have enjoyed visiting many places, my favorite place has always been my classroom.

Name a book that has had a lasting influence on you.
I couldn’t possibly name just one book; influence or inspiration comes from many and sometimes unexpected sources.

Who is the Fordham grad or professor you admire most?
Anne Mannion’s love of history and her infectious enthusiasm made her a truly great teacher and role model.

What are you optimistic about?
Despite the many challenges that face us all, with the grace of God, I am optimistic about the future.

Organized by the Office of Alumni Relations, the reunion featured virtual panels on Broadway’s return, Juneteenth, alumni leadership in education, and a commitment to centering women’s voices, as well as a student performance showcase, a guided wellness session, and a look at little-known histories of New York City and Fordham’s Lincoln Center campus—all of which can be viewed on demand by those who registered.

The History, and Future, of Juneteenth

Rafael Zapata, Fordham’s chief diversity officer, moderated a panel discussion on the history and contemporary significance of Juneteenth on June 17, the same day that President Biden signed legislation making it a federal holiday. Juneteenth marks the date—June 19, 1865—when the abolition of slavery was completed with the arrival of Union troops at Galveston, Texas, more than two years after the Emancipation Proclamation.

The panelists—Fordham professors Tyesha Maddox, Ph.D., and Michele Prettyman, Ph.D., along with Tyler Stovall, Ph.D., dean of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, discussed the long road toward liberation both before and after the Proclamation, including the ways that formerly enslaved people used mutual aid and creative pursuits to build community, and how post-emancipation practices like sharecropping kept African Americans “under the thumb of their former masters,” as Stovall put it.

Prettyman, a scholar of African American cinema and visual and popular culture in the Fordham communication and media studies department, noted the wave of Black elected officials in the U.S. following the Civil War as well as the growth of African American communities—like the one ravaged during the Tulsa Race Massacre of 1921.

“Tulsa is … the most striking embodiment of what happens as a result of this incredible wave of business and leadership and education,” Prettyman said. At the same time, “even killing people in a very literal sense did not destroy this animating impulse of Black life that comes out of these moments of just real despair and real darkness. … If we keep [the idea of freedom]in our poetry and our art and our music and our culture, it becomes something that is owned and shared, and not just something that’s commemorated on single days or in single moments.”

While acknowledging the importance of recognizing Juneteenth, Stovall also drew attention to the disconnect between the introduction of the national holiday and the fact several states are moving to limit voting rights in ways that could disproportionately affect Black voters. “There’s a real lack of respect for the very idea of democracy,” he said.

Stovall ended the event by turning his computer to show a lit lamp that was owned by his great-great-grandmother, who was born a slave.

“The lamp still shines,” he said. “Our history still shines. And I think Juneteenth represents the fact that our experience as a whole still shines, down to the present day, and will shine in the future.”

Looking Ahead to Broadway’s Reopening

The Fordham Theatre program has produced many successful artists over the years, from actors, writers, and directors to stage managers and producers. And like their peers, Fordham graduates and faculty in the industry have faced a challenging year-plus, with theaters going dark during the pandemic.

During a June 16 panel moderated by Frank DiLella, FCLC ’06, Emmy Award-winning host of Spectrum News NY1’s On Stage and introduced by Fordham College at Lincoln Center Dean Laura Auricchio, Ph.D., who said she “grew up going to the theater like other kids go to the playground”—three theater leaders with Fordham connections discussed their recent experiences and spoke with optimism about Broadway’s reopening.

“Knowing that by the fall, the majority of theaters will be open, it’s a really thrilling time,” said John Johnson, FCLC ’02, a Tony Award-winning producer whose recent Broadway executive producing credits include Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, West Side Story, and To Kill A Mockingbird.

Stephen McKinley Henderson, the renowned stage and screen actor who held the Denzel Washington Endowed Chair in Theatre at Fordham in 2015, echoed that excitement, noting that he learned from legendary playwright August Wilson “how much theater is a major part of the culture,” one that can unite audience members and provide much-needed comfort in times of struggle. “It’s very important that we know that some of our essential workers”—theater professionals—“have been out of work,” he said.

And while the panelists expressed a great deal of excitement about safely getting back in front of audiences, they also spoke about the need to create a healthier, more just environment for performers, noting issues like draining rehearsal schedules and unaddressed problems around racial equity and harassment.

“For us to continue, we need to rigorously reexamine our field and figure out how we’re going to change it for the better,” said Liesl Tommy, who held the Denzel Washington Chair last fall and in 2016 became the first woman of color to receive a Tony nomination as best director, for Eclipsed. “We cannot skip the step of interrogating it with love.”

That love for theater—and the desire to improve the quality of life for those who work in it—was evident when the panelists described the small moments and details they are most looking forward to in the fall. While Henderson said it will be that initial approach to the stage door person waiting outside the theater and Tommy mentioned the shared experience of being in an audience, Johnson elicited knowing nods from his peers with his response.

“House to half,” he said, referring to the time between when the house opens and the half hour before the curtain rises. “The anticipation of the show about the begin … I cannot wait for it.”

Centering Women’s Voices

The marginalization of people of color, asylum seekers, and immigrants isn’t new, but COVID-19 has highlighted the stark conditions female members of these vulnerable populations face. That was the topic of discussion during “Centering Women’s Voices: An Approach for Claiming Rights and Justice,” a Graduate School of Social Service (GSS) reunion event.

Professors Dana Alonzo, Ph.D., Marciana Popescu, Ph.D., Sameena V. Azhar, and Anne Williams-Isom, the James R. Dumpson Endowed Chair in Child Welfare, along with Debra M. McPhee, Ph.D., dean of GSS, gathered virtually to discuss the often-harsh everyday realities faced by women in the United States.

“The events and the experiences of the past year have altered our perspectives, and certainly it’s changed the way we connect, the way we teach, the way we learn, the way we work,” McPhee said during a brief introduction. “I think owning our individual and collective responsibility for the health and welfare of our fellow citizens, and frankly the future of our country, has never been more critical.”

Alonzo and Popescu shared their research about the challenges faced by women who experience forced migration, with particular focus on asylum seekers, and how those challenges have been exacerbated by the pandemic.

Alonzo said not only have the women she and Popescu worked with been incredibly motivated to support and build community, they’ve also “expressed to us the array of factors that impact their ability to access health and mental health care,” from language and cultural barriers to fear of not being accepted. The two professors also shared videos featuring three women’s first-person accounts of what it’s like to search for housing and apply for asylum.

Azhar presented a snapshot of her research examining intersectional stereotypes and violence of Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) women. Analyzing more than 3,000 tweets with the hashtag #ThisIs2016, which was started five years ago to highlight moments of racial harassment experienced by AAPI people, Azhar and her colleagues identified six themes regarding race, gender, and sexuality, often revolving around demeanor, physicality, and colonialism. Azhar added that highlighting “what women were saying to themselves” and adopting an active, participatory approach is key for meaningful social work intervention.

Though their specific research areas differed, all the speakers stressed the need for compassionate, comprehensive care that meets women where they are, factoring cultural traditions and means into treatment plans, and refraining from generalized judgment and stereotypes that can deter patients from seeking help.

Honoring New York State’s Education Chancellor

On Thursday evening, the Graduate School of Education honored Lester Young, Ed.D., GSE ’78, with its Distinguished Contributions to Education Award.

Young, who in January became the first Black chancellor of the New York State Board of Regents, joined members of the Fordham community for a conversation about advancing diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) in New York schools.

“We are in what I’ve described as a very incredible moral moment. This is a moment that cries out for moral, courageous leadership,” he said.

He spoke about a framework that the Board of Regents drafted in April, calling on schools throughout the state to “adopt and implement policies that take a comprehensive approach and consider the entirety of the schooling process,” in order to advance DEI.

Courtney Henry, who graduated from the school’s online teaching program in childhood special education in May, asked Young how he would respond to those with concerns “that DEI work is displacing foundational learning in other areas.”

“We believe that DE&I is really about how we conduct our business,” Young told Henry. “It is not the what, it’s the how. … If you look at who has access to rigorous content and instructional opportunities, you will see that there is no equitable distribution of that now.”

He also said one of the state’s goals is to ensure “that outcomes are not associated with who young people are, where they happen to live, what their families do.”

Mahaliel Bethea, Ed.D., GSE ’20, a graduate of GSE’s educational leadership and administration program, is the director of grant-funded programs at New York State My Brother’s Keeper, part of an initiative started under President Obama “to address persistent opportunity gaps faced by boys and young men of color and ensure that all young people can reach their full potential.” He asked Young what advice he would give to school district leaders who are at the beginning stages of this work.

“The first thing I would say to new leaders is to recognize the importance of partnerships and networking,” Young said. “The next piece: our business is the business of learning. It’s extremely important our leaders are on top of their game. They need to be on top of the science of learning and childhood development.”

Young also spoke to the way in which the COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted just how large a role schools play in towns and cities across the state and the country.

“If we’ve learned anything from the pandemic,” he said, “it’s the importance of the central location of the school as the nucleus in the community.”

Deans Discuss Upcoming Initiatives

In a virtual forum kicking off the Block Party events, the deans of the colleges and schools represented at Lincoln Center spoke about upcoming initiatives: at the Gabelli School of Business, a new student-managed investment fund focused on environmental, social, and governance factors; at the Graduate School of Social Service, a new federal grant that will help with building students’ behavioral health skills; at Fordham College at Lincoln Center, a new University-funded Cultural Engagement Internships Program that is providing students with paid internships at city nonprofits; and at the School of Professional and Continuing Studies, a Good Neighbor Initiative to make the school more financially accessible for residents of the Fordham’s surrounding neighborhoods, among other initiatives.

The deans spoke of how the Fordham community has pulled together and doubled down on its mission during the pandemic. Referring to new initiatives such as providing telehealth therapy to underserved populations in the Bronx, Akane Zusho, Ph.D., interim dean of the Graduate School of Education, said, “In many ways, I feel like as hard as it’s been, we’ve actually been more active in the community than, I think, in some ways we’ve ever been.”

“For some people it did work out; for some people, it did not,” said Stovall, dean of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, during the June 17 panel discussion offered as part of the virtual 2021 Block Party reunion for the Lincoln Center campus.

Rafael Zapata, Fordham’s chief diversity officer, moderated the discussion of Juneteenth, which marks the date—June 19, 1865—when the abolition of slavery was completed with the arrival of Union troops at Galveston, Texas, more than two years after the Emancipation Proclamation.

The discussion ranged from the history of Juneteenth celebrations to the emancipation process in Caribbean nations to the aftermath of slavery’s abolition in the U.S.

Liberation “was something that Black people fought for themselves; they weren’t just sort of waiting around for it to happen for them,” said Stovall, author of White Freedom: The Racial History of an Idea (Princeton University Press, 2021). The Civil War saw the largest slave revolts in American history, as well as “massive mobilization” of formerly enslaved people to serve in the Union armies, he said. But promises of the land that former slaves needed to establish their own farming livelihoods fell through, for the most part, forcing them into sharecropping, a form of pseudo-slavery in which they were “under the thumb of their former masters,” he said.

One of the panelists, Tyesha Maddox, Ph.D., assistant professor in the Fordham Department of African and African American Studies, described how many formerly enslaved people turned to benevolent associations or mutual aid organizations “in which they came together [and]pooled their resources of money in order to take care of themselves in the ways that the government was not providing help for them.”

“We see a similar thing happening post-emancipation in the Caribbean, where these people are trying to … make lives for themselves and not just survive post-emancipation, but thrive, and set up communities for themselves and live as equal citizens,” she said.

The Struggle in the Caribbean

Panelists described a fitful abolition of slavery throughout Caribbean nations, with freedom often seeming precarious. As in the United States, many slaveowners in these nations still continued with slavery months or years after it was abolished “so that they can continue with this free manual labor,” Maddox said.

Stovall noted that Haiti was isolated and made to suffer after achieving its independence in an 1804 revolution that abolished slavery. The government had to pay reparations to the French for the seizure of slaveowners’ property, and it wasn’t until the early 21st century that France finally abolished all duties on Haiti stemming from its revolution, he said.

In Guadeloupe, slavery was abolished for only about a decade before it was reestablished under Napoleon, and during World War II there were rumors that France’s Vichy government would bring slavery back to the Caribbean, he said. “There was always this sense that … you couldn’t rely on [freedom],” he said.

The Growth of African American Communities

Another panelist, Michele Prettyman, a scholar of African American cinema and visual and popular culture in the Fordham communication and media studies department, noted the wave of Black elected officials in the U.S. following the Civil War as well as the growth of African American communities—like the one ravaged during the Tulsa Race Massacre of 1921.

“Tulsa is … the most striking embodiment of what happens as a result of this incredible wave of business and leadership and education,” she said. At the same time, “even killing people in a very literal sense did not destroy this animating impulse of Black life that comes out of these moments of just real despair and real darkness and … just tremendous odds and obstacles,” she said.

Later, asked how the idea of freedom is expressed in Black creativity, she said it is not just under the purview of historians. “If we keep it in our poetry and our art and our music and our culture, it becomes something that is owned and shared, and not just something that’s commemorated on single days or in single moments,” she said. “It should be a part of all of our lives, intimately, and how we legislate, how we vote, how we commemorate.”

Democracy for All?

Asked by Zapata about the current “assault on voting rights” in the U.S., Stovall said that “there’s a real lack of respect for the very idea of democracy.”

“Even though you have, of course, the rejection of this being in any way racially characterized … it is really hard to escape the impression that if Black people were not able to vote, a lot of conservative white people would be a whole lot happier,” he said.

Stovall said the federal government’s creation of a Juneteenth holiday “has all come together really fast,” but also pointed out state legislatures’ recent moves to prevent school districts “from teaching the idea that racism is an intrinsic part of American history.”

“So how you can hold these two concepts together at the same time is frankly beyond me,” he said, “because if you acknowledge the role of slavery to the extent that you have a national holiday to celebrate its abolition, that says something very profound about American history, and so I think this is a country that’s still very much struggling with how do you deal with these different concepts.”

Stovall ended the event by turning his computer to show a lit lamp that was owned by his great-great-grandmother, who was born a slave. “The lamp still shines,” he said. “Our history still shines. And I think Juneteenth represents the fact that our experience as a whole still shines, down to the present day, and will shine in the future.”