Dear Members of the Fordham Community,

The University has completed a thorough assessment of our campuses following the 4.8 magnitude earthquake in the greater New York City area. No members of the community were injured, and there was no damage to any of Fordham’s campuses. If you notice any damage, or need assistance, please call Public Safety at 718-817-2222.

Please see the Fordham News story for details about the earthquake, including commentary and a seismograph reading from Stephen Holler, professor of physics at Fordham and head of the William Spain Seismic Observatory at Rose Hill.

We don’t anticipate further updates.

Sincerely,

Robert Fitzer
Associate Vice President for Public Safety

Dear Members of the Fordham Community,

The greater New York City area experienced an earthquake with a preliminary magnitude of 4.7, according to the U.S. Geological Survey. The earthquake was centered in Lebanon, N.J., about 45 miles west of the city. If you see any damage, or need assistance, call Public Safety at 718-817-2222 immediately.

There may be aftershocks, but they will be weaker tremors. If you are outdoors, do be aware of possible falling objects if you are near buildings or other structures.

Our initial assessment indicates no apparent damage to Fordham’s buildings, but we are continuing to survey all campuses for any breakages or damage. Campuses remain open and are operating as scheduled. We will update the community as necessary.

Robert Fitzer
Associate Vice President for Public Safety

Our photographers snapped these snowy scenes at our Lincoln Center, Rose Hill, and Westchester campuses and the Louis Calder Center, Fordham’s biological field station in Armonk, New York.

Photos by Argenis Apolinario and Taylor Ha

The Lincoln Center campus will reopen for evening classes at 5 p.m. today following a water main break and street flooding at Broadway and 62nd Street in Manhattan. Ram Van service to Lincoln Center will resume at 4 p.m. We anticipate the Lincoln Center campus opening on its normal schedule on Tuesday, January 14.

The decision to reopen is based upon consultation with New York City Emergency Management regarding the resumption of water service to campus via the New York City Department of Environmental Protection, and the resumption of steam heat to several buildings either via ConEd or emergency boilers. Temperatures may be cooler, though still safe, in certain buildings (likely Lowenstein Center, 140 West 62nd Street, and Martino Hall) while steam service is being restored. Students, faculty, and staff are advised to bring an extra layer of clothing to campus this evening and tomorrow.

The Quinn Library will reopen this evening as a study space only; the Law Library will be open and fully staffed.

As always, members of the University community should take local conditions into account when traveling to or from campus. Faculty, students and staff should call any of the following numbers for the latest campus travel-related information:

(718) 817-5555
(212) 636-7777
(800) 280-7669 [(800) 280-SNOW]
(877) 375-4357 [(877) 375-HELP]

In an emergency, please call Fordham Public Safety at (718) 817-2222.

UPDATE Monday, January 13, 2020 | 10:05 a.m.

The Lincoln Center campus will remain closed today because of a water main break and street flooding at Broadway and 62nd Street in Manhattan. The campus may reopen for evening classes. Public Safety will notify the University of any status changes as we have them.

As always, members of the University community should take local conditions into account when traveling to or from campus. Faculty, students and staff should call any of the following numbers for the latest campus travel-related information:

(718) 817-5555
(212) 636-7777
(800) 280-7669 [(800) 280-SNOW]
(877) 375-4357 [(877) 375-HELP]

In an emergency, please call Fordham Public Safety at (718) 817-2222.

Monday, January 13, 2020 | 6:55 a.m.

Because of a water main break and street flooding at Broadway and 62nd Street in Manhattan the Lincoln Center campus will delay opening until noon today. The NYPD is diverting street traffic in the area, and one or more subway lines to the 59th Street Station and other local stations has been suspended.

As always, members of the University community should take local conditions into account when traveling to or from campus. Faculty, students and staff should call any of the following numbers for the latest campus travel-related information:

(718) 817-5555
(212) 636-7777
(800) 280-7669 [(800) 280-SNOW]
(877) 375-4357 [(877) 375-HELP]

In an emergency, please call Fordham Public Safety at (718) 817-2222.

Power has been fully restored to the Lincoln Center campus.

Please report any residual problems to Public Safety at (212) 636-6076.

Saturday, July 13, 2019 | 7:45 p.m.

The Lincoln Center campus is experiencing a power outage that is apparently affecting sections of the Upper West Side and Midtown Manhattan.

All events at the Lincoln Center campus are cancelled this evening.

Martino Hall and 140 West 62nd Street are closed; the Lowenstein Center and Law School are operating on partial power from generators; and McMahon Hall is operating normally on generator power.

Please report any dangerous conditions to Public Safety at (212) 636-6076.

Public Safety will send updates as we learn more about the outages. Thank you for your cooperation and patience.

“It was a chance to get away, a different environment,” he said. “I was working five days a week, 12 to 13 hours a day. When it was time for me to go to school, I was ready to go. It was awesome.”

Besides taking technology courses to buttress his career as a computer programmer, there were other benefits of attending Marymount. It was there that he met Michele Holmes Chavers, MC ’99.

“I decided to stay in the dorms that fall, and who stepped off the elevator in the science building but my future husband,” recalled Holmes Chavers. “And that’s how we met. We had classes together at different times, grabbed a slice of pizza, a cup of coffee, and it went on from there.”

By 1985, Chavers’ career hit high gear and he was off to other cities. When he returned to Marymount, its transition to becoming a part of Fordham had already begun, so he transferred his Marymount credits to Fordham and took classes at the Westchester campus on the weekends through the School of Professional and Continuing Studies (PCS). He would go on to take classes with PCS at Rose Hill and finally at Lincoln Center—making him one of the very few to take classes at all four campuses.

“I really got a charge out of it. I was the first male student that helped create the ambassador program for career services [at Marymount]. I volunteered because I felt so good in my heart about Fordham,” he said, adding that he hopes to become more involved with the alumni community in the future.

“I contribute because they gave me a lot, especially having a program where I could go back to school as an adult. I was a man in my 50s and I got my [college]  degree.”

Spearheading the donation effort was Olga Baez, an administrative assistant in Fordham College at Lincoln Center’s residential life office.

“I grew up in the Bronx … It doesn’t make sense for us not to coordinate with different nonprofits to make sure that these items are going to people in need,” said Baez. “We’re supporting the Bronx—we’re supporting different organizations that are able to help people.”

About 30 plastic bags of clothes, enough residential hall items to fill a truck, and several bags of nonperishable items were distributed to six nonprofit organizations across New York City. Lightly used mini fridges were given to high school seniors at the Urban Assembly Gateway School for Technology and the Mott Haven Educational Campus. Other donated items include kitchenware, cleaning supplies, bed linens, hangers, shoes, storage containers, mirrors, and microwaves.

In years past, students dropped off clothing donations in Goodwill bins and nonperishable snacks at the end of the academic year. But this year—the third consecutive year that Lincoln Center has hosted a student donation drive—is different.

“This year, we went a little bigger,” Baez said. “We allotted one of the student lounges [in McMahon]for all the items to be donated there. We used one of the student lounges at McKeon as well.”

Some items were shuttled via Ram Van to a homeless shelter for mothers and their children in the Bronx. Others were given to Grad Bag, an organization that gives lightly used residential hall items to incoming first-year college students from low-income households.

Bridge Haven Family Traditional Residence, a transitional shelter for families, was another recipient of the donated household items.

“The goal is for them to move into their own space,” Baez said. “That’s why a lot of the items, like the kitchenware, mirrors, and microwaves, are so useful for them.”

Emaeyak Ekanem, the executive director of Christ Disciples Int’l Ministries, Inc., a church in the Bronx that received some of the donations, said many of the people in the church’s community “don’t have access” to these household items that so many people take for granted.  Fordham’s donation, he said, “helps to further our mission of providing for the needy in the community.”

Thanks to a recent renovation, the second floor of the Lowenstein Center is home to a brand new welcome center for undergraduate admission, where potential Rams can learn about all that Fordham has to offer.

For decades, the admission office at Lincoln Center served as the place where staff greeted visitors and staged tours. But the space was confined to a few small offices adjacent to the second-floor lounge, and in recent years it had become difficult to accommodate a growing number of guests.

In the 2017-2018 academic year, admission staff welcomed more than 14,000 visitors to the Lincoln Center campus. That included nearly 6,000 prospective students—a 68 percent increase in student visitors from 2010.

The new welcome center, which remains on the second floor of Lowenstein, is designed to comfortably accommodate many more people than before. Its offices have been reconfigured, and the space has expanded to include a large presentation room with a state-of-the-art display screen, a workspace for student employees, and a new seating/reception area. 

“The new space gives us an opportunity to greet prospective students and their families in a way that is far more gracious and inviting than we have been in the past,” said John Buckley, vice president for admission and student financial services.

The renovated center has replaced what used to be the second-floor lounge. But the University has taken several proactive steps to maintain the amount of study space available to students. A new lounge on the plaza level (PL-100) was recently opened and offers ample seating. And there are additional lounge options on campus, both in Lowenstein and in 140 West.

Three new seating areas are also currently being installed, said Frank Simio, vice president for Lincoln Center. In the west wing of Lowenstein’s third floor, there will be 24 new seats, along with electric outlets for laptops and phone chargers. In the Quinn Library, there will close to an additional 100 seats available in quiet study areas. And on the eighth floor of Lowenstein, there will be a smaller seating area, also with electrical outlets. The first two areas will be available to students before final exams begin.

The seats in the library will be in QuinnX (an abbreviation for Quinn Annex), an open stack area that holds more than 260,000 titles. It is located down the law corridor from the library entrance.

“Opening QuinnX answers the need for additional quiet study space for Lincoln Center students and provides for open browsing of the stacks, which is so valuable to faculty and researchers,” said Linda LoSchiavo, director of University Libraries.

The new admission welcome center will open for business this month. In celebration, the center will host a reception with refreshments for students and staff on a date to be determined. 

Fordham’s Institute of American Language and Culture hosted nine Chinese students at the Lincoln Center campus from Jan. 21 to 30 for its second annual Winter Institute—a language immersion program that helps participants sharpen their English language skills both inside the classroom and on the streets of New York City.

“These programs offer such a rich opportunity to showcase the best of New York and Fordham’s unique position in this city,” said Amy Evans, IALC’s associate director. “We love being able to share both with people from all over the world.”

For many institute participants, this trip is often their first time visiting an English language-dominated country. Evans said students, including this season’s participants, have told her it’s a chance for them to practice English in a native environment. Another reason why people join the annual institute is its quintessential location.

“There’s also the pull of New York City—a truly iconic place that symbolizes so much to so many people,” she said. “It’s American culture, but, like every mega-city, it has a culture, a history, and a social fabric that really are all its own.”

The past participants’ homes span across the globe: Taiwan, Guatemala, Norway, Vietnam, and Italy. But most of them hail from China, thanks to IALC’s partnership with Northwestern Polytechnical University, a public research institute in the city of Xi’an. And this year was no exception—all nine guests are NPU students.

One of them was Ewuer, a 22-year-old Mongolian-Chinese student from Xinjiang Province. (It is custom for Mongolians to have a single name.)

She came to New York to experience the archetypal American lifestyle she had seen in movies and TV shows, to improve her English language skills, and to help her confirm that she wants to earn her master’s degree abroad—perhaps in the U.S.

January 21 was her first day on American soil. In a way, it’s an adventure she has prepared for since the first grade—when she started learning English. But it wasn’t until now that she actively practiced speaking the language she had learned since she was a child.

“My English is more fluent than before,” Ewuer said. “I can make sentences more easily.”

So could Zhiyuan Shao, an 18-year-old student from Zhejiang Province. He described the Big Apple as one of the most famous cities in the world. When Shao was a child, he considered New York the capital of the U.S., rather than Washington, D.C. After watching The Wolf of Wall Street, he wanted to visit the city even more.

He got to try out his new language skills during a conversation with a stranger while they were standing on a subway platform.

“We complained about the subway,” Shao said, chuckling. “They say it’s terrible.”

Curriculum Developed by Fordham Students

Their improved English skills owe thanks, in part, to a curriculum co-developed by Fordham students. With their mentor, Hie-Myung Jo, Ed.D.—an IALC curriculum and instruction specialist and a professor in Fordham’s Graduate School of Education (GSE)—seven international Chinese students in GSE developed and compiled learning materials for the IALC participants.

“It’s a great opportunity for them to practice the real language—not just textbook English,” Jo said.

In a GSE class last semester, Jo and her seven GSE students created an intermediate-level curriculum centered around three themes: urban environment, arts and technology, and people and society. They researched online reading resources, brainstormed off-campus trips, and designed activities that would help the IALC participants practice their English. A few months later, they completed their final product—a 71-page welcome packet and workbook.

In the mornings, the IALC participants worked on the booklet. They completed fill-in-the-blank worksheets about the history behind New York City’s boroughs, read and analyzed excerpts from immigrant memoirs, and contrasted the 9/11 attacks with the 2008 earthquake in Sichuan.

“We wanted them to know that New York is a city of diversity, and we welcome immigrants,” Jo said. “Actually, it is a city of immigrants.”

In the afternoons, they embarked on excursions that linked their classroom lessons to reality. Destinations included the Museum of Chinese in America, the United Nations, and Ellis Island. They were often accompanied by the same GSE students who helped develop the curriculum, like Ruiqi Shang, GSE ’19.

“We always ask them, ‘How are you feeling? Do you think it’s very helpful for you to practice the things you learned during the morning?’” Shang said.

The students had two main assignments: Maintain a video diary with their smartphones; record themselves speaking in English during a trip outing—introducing the venue, describing their emotions, freely speaking about how they feel—and share it with their teachers and peers. And, keep a list of new vocabulary words they encountered, the definitions, and a sentence that correctly used each word.

One of the new words that Ewuer learned was “replica.” But what’s bigger than her list of vocabulary words is what she’s experienced over the past 10 days.

Ewuer recalled seeing the city skyline from the Empire State Building at night, watching the seagulls by Coney Island Beach, and drinking in the hecticness of Times Square. She said she’s still not used to drinking iced beverages in American restaurants (in China, she quipped, they always serve warm tea.) But packed in her suitcase are souvenirs from America—designer clothing and bags for her family, U.S. currency, Fordham mementos—and 10 days’ worth of memories.

“I never thought I could be here,” she said. “It’s a dream come true.”

• Columbus Avenue between 67th Street and 62nd Street
• Broadway between 68th Street and 60th Street
• Columbus Circle between 60th Street and 58th Street
• 61st Street between Central Park West and Columbus Avenue
• 62nd Street between Broadway and Amsterdam Avenue
• 63rd Street between Central Park West and Columbus Avenue
• 64th Street between Central Park West and Columbus Avenue
• 65th Street between Central Park West and Amsterdam Avenue

We advise you to plan alternate routes if you will be traveling near the Lincoln Center campus on Monday evening.

John Carroll, Associate Vice President

Fordham Public Safety

That was one of the many topics debated on by leading philosophers from the U.S. and China at the New York-China Epistemology Conference held at Fordham’s Lincoln Center campus from Oct. 18 to 20.

Their talks covered a variety of topics, including “Intuition, Understanding, and Self-Evidence,” “Imagination and Understanding,” and “Can Closed-Mindedness be an Intellectual Value?” And the scholars who delivered them were just as diverse. Among them were U.S. philosophers from schools including Harvard, Princeton, Cornell, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, as well as Chinese scholars from highly ranked universities like Peking, Fudan, and Nanjing.

“A Model of International Cooperation”

Their lectures explored the research of past philosophers and their own. About half of the presentations were accompanied by commentary from their peers. For example, after an MIT professor spoke about “Higher Order Evidence and the Perspective of Doubt,” a Chinese epistemologist critiqued and reflected on her work.

“I was hoping that the conference would lead to deep and lively exchanges about issues of common concern in epistemology [the study of knowledge, particularly with regards to its validity and scope], and I’m delighted to say it did,” said Stephen Grimm, Ph.D., Fordham’s philosophy department chair. “I was also hoping the conference would provide a model of international cooperation between our countries—and on that score too, it exceeded all my expectations.”

To Assert or Not to Assert?

One of the Chinese philosophers was Weiping Zheng, a scholar from Xiamen University. His topic was “Norms of Assertion and Chinese Speech Wisdom,” which explored the rules that allow us to state a fact or a belief, what kinds of assertions we should make and shouldn’t make, and how ancient Chinese wisdom can help us evaluate what we should say before we actually say it.

One rule of assertion, he said, is that we should only assert things that are true. Zheng argued that this rule is too restrictive. Some assertions may be true, but morally wrong.

“For example, [let’s say] I am dying. And you say [to me], you are dying. You are epistemically right, because it is true that I am dying. But you think it is morally right [to say this]?” he asked. “That’s why I want to find hierarchy of different norms of assertion.”

One way to help you make morally sound assertions, he continued, is by following a Confucian concept called Li—an ancient Chinese form of wisdom.

“It’s part of [this] wisdom that we’re gonna be virtuous, good, kind, proper, and all of these things. We’re thinking of that as the thing we’re always supposed to be answerable to,” explained Jane Friedman, a philosophy professor at New York University, who also delivered a lecture at the conference. “Whereas if all you have is a rule that says, ‘Yeah, if something’s true, it’s okay to say it’ … I think part of what he wanted to drive home was no, of course that’s not fine. We need another kind of principle governing what we’re allowed to say and when. The place to look to is this notion of Li in Chinese philosophy.”

This includes using discretion in speech, said Zheng, using solid evidence when making assertions, and keeping virtue in mind while speaking.

“It does seem like an interesting guide and a way of thinking in a more holistic way about the practice of asserting things,” Friedman said. “I like thinking about this general idea of wisdom, what that might entail, and how it might be a guide to what I should say and when.”

These are the critical questions at the core of five upcoming events: A joint conference between faculty from Fordham and Ben-Gurion University and the four-part In Dialogue Series on Polish-Jewish relations, hosted by Fordham, Columbia University, and the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research.

The faculty conference will take place from October 7 to 8 on the Lincoln Center campus. Fordham and Ben-Gurion scholars from Israel will present “Appropriation in (and of) the Premodern World,” in which they’ll address how people from different cultures and religious communities appropriated each other’s ideas, texts, legal practices, spaces, art, and material culture.

“Because we wanted to be inclusive with interreligious encounters and exchanges, we came up with this idea of appropriation: how different cultures use and appropriate different sites, texts, or traditions, and make it their own,” said Magda Teter, a Fordham history professor and the Shvidler Chair in Judaic Studies.

The four-part series will examine Polish-Jewish relations from the 15th century to the modern age. Discussion topics include the Jews’ belonging and exclusion throughout history, nationalism and antisemitism in the aftermath of World I, and how perceptions from the past have changed over time. The series will culminate with a full-day symposium on the post-WWII era at the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research.

“Jews have always been a minority group, living scattered for centuries,” said Teter. “So this certainly raises some of the larger questions of rootedness, belonging, of who belongs to what story, how history is told, and the ramifications for social inclusion and exclusion.”

Related to the series is a conversation between Teter and David Stromberg—a writer, translator, and literary scholar based in Jerusalem, and one of the inaugural Fordham-New York Public Library Research Fellows in Jewish Studies.

The events obviously hold appeal for scholars interested in European, Jewish, and Polish history, said Teter. But even for those who are oblivious to Polish or Jewish history, the discussions may still be quite relevant.

“We are living in an era where we’re witnessing the questions of how American history is told,” said Teter. “Who belongs to the rubric of American history? Who is an American? Who is not American? In that way, there might be some parallels.”

All events are free, but registration is strongly encouraged.

“Appropriation in and of the Premodern World: The First Annual Conference of Fordham and Ben-Gurion Universities”: October 7-8 at McMahon Hall

“In Dialogue” on Polish-Jewish Relations:

Part I: The Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and the period of the partitions. October 4, 2018, 6 p.m. at Fordham Law School

Part II: Polish-Jewish relations of the interwar period. November 15, 2018, 6 p.m. at Fordham University, Lincoln Center

Part III: Polish-Jewish relations during WWII. February 21, 2019, 6 p.m. Location TBD

Part IV: Full-day symposium on the post-WWII era. May 5, 2019 at the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research