Since the 1970s, Fordham students have been studying and contributing to the spirit of innovation and community renewal that has come to define what it means to be a Bronxite.

Fifty years ago, a new art form burst forth on the streets of the Bronx, born from rich musical traditions and a spirit of innovation in neighborhoods of color ravaged by deindustrialization and written off by most of the country. In the ensuing decades, the Fordham community has not only studied and celebrated hip-hop as a revolutionary cultural force but also helped preserve its Bronx legacy—through efforts to recognize the apartment building at 1520 Sedgwick Avenue as the genre’s birthplace, and through oral-history interviews with some of hip-hop’s seminal figures.

“I think the lesson is, let’s explore, interrogate, and embrace the cultural creativity of our surrounding areas because it’s unparalleled,” said Mark Naison, Ph.D., professor of African and African American studies and founding director of Fordham’s Bronx African American History Project.

Naison teaches a popular class, From Rock and Roll to Hip-Hop, that draws on artists like Cardi B, Nas, and Run-DMC to understand the music and its part in U.S. history—and to explore issues he’s spent his career teaching. “I’m not a hip-hop scholar,” he said. “Rather, I’m someone who works to have community voices heard.”

And just as the music has evolved over the past 50 years, so have efforts to revitalize the borough and tell the stories of its residents.

Challenging ‘Deeply Entrenched Stereotypes’

Amplifying community voices is at the heart of the Bronx African American History Project (BAAHP). Fordham launched the project in 2002, at the request of the Bronx County Historical Society, to document and preserve the history of Black people in New York City’s northernmost borough. Naison and his team of Fordham students, faculty, and community historians have spoken with hip-hop pioneers like Pete DJ Jones and Kurtis Blow, but the project is much broader: The archive contains verbatim transcripts of interviews with educators, politicians, social workers, businesspeople, clergy members, athletes, and leaders of community-based organizations who have lived and worked in the Bronx since the 1930s. The archive, which also includes scholarly essays about the Bronx, was digitized in 2015, making the interviews fully accessible to the public.

“Starting by interviewing a small number of people I already knew,” Naison wrote in Before the Fires: An Oral History of African American Life in the Bronx from the 1930s to the 1960s (Fordham University Press, 2016), “I stumbled upon a large, passionate, and knowledgeable group of people who had been waiting for years to tell stories of communities long forgotten, communities whose very history challenged deeply entrenched stereotypes about Black and Latino settlement of the Bronx.”

For Naison, the project highlights how the borough, defying the odds, rebuilt neighborhoods following the arson of the 1970s and the crack epidemic of the 1980s. The neighborhoods, with lower crime rates, saw community life flourish again, and in recent decades, the Bronx became a location of choice for new immigrants to New York. BAAHP research includes interviews with Bronxites from Ghana, Nigeria, Mali, Sierra Leone, Guinea, and Burkina Faso, among other nations. It gives voice to growing, diverse immigrant communities that have enlivened Bronx neighborhoods where Jewish, Irish, Italian, Puerto Rican, and Dominican people lived before them. “The Bronx is this site where people mix their cultures and they create something new,” Naison said. “It makes this a lot of fun to study.”

Shaping Global Perceptions

Brian Purnell, Ph.D., FCRH ’00, helped facilitate at least 50 BAAHP interviews from 2004 to 2010, when he was the project’s research director. He said the archive is useful for anyone studying how cities have changed over the decades.

“I hope people use it to think differently about the Bronx, to include the Bronx more deeply and broadly in urban studies in the United States,” said Purnell, now an associate professor of Africana studies and history at Bowdoin College, where he uses the Fordham archive in his own research and in the classroom with his students. “I hope that it also expands how we think about Black people in New York City and in American cities in general from the mid-20th century onward.”

Since 2015, when the BAAHP archives were made available online, the digital recordings have been accessed by thousands of scholars around the world, from Nairobi to Singapore, Paris to Berlin. Peter Schultz Jørgensen, an urbanist and author in Denmark, has been using information from the digital archive to complete a book titled Our Bronx!

“Portraying and documenting everyday life in the Bronx, as it once was, is essential in protecting the people of the Bronx from misrepresentation, while at the same time providing valuable knowledge that can help shape their future,” he said. “Just as BAAHP gathers the web of memory, my book is about the struggles that people and community organizations have waged and are waging in the Bronx. And more important, and encouraging, it talks about how they are now scaling up via the Bronxwide Coalition and their Bronxwide plan for more economic and democratic control of the borough.”

Championing Bronx Renewal

The movement Jørgensen describes is one in which members of the Fordham community have long played key roles, according to historian and journalist Jill Jonnes, author of South Bronx Rising: The Rise, Fall, and Resurrection of an American City. In the mid-1980s, when she published the first edition of the book, Bronxites were just beginning to reverse the toxic effects of long-term disinvestment and arson that had ravaged the borough.

“Today, we far better understand the interplay of blatantly racist government policies and private business decisions … that played a decisive role in almost destroying these neighborhoods,” Jonnes wrote in a preface to the third edition of South Bronx Rising, published last year by Fordham University Press. “Even as fires relentlessly spread across the borough—as landlords extracted what they could from their properties regardless of the human cost—local activists and the social justice Catholics were mobilizing to challenge and upend a system that rewarded destruction rather than investment.”

One of those Catholics was Paul Brant, S.J., a Jesuit scholastic (and later priest) who arrived at Fordham’s Rose Hill campus in the late 1960s to teach and to pursue graduate studies in philosophy. At the time, faith in the viability of cities was at a low point. Deindustrialization, suburbanization, and two decades of studied underinvestment had taken their predictable toll. The Bronx was experiencing the worst of it, and the people who lived in its neighborhoods were demonized as the cause of the problems.

Brant, who died in May 2023 at the age of 82, wanted to understand what could be done. He earned a spot in New York City’s prestigious Urban Fellows program, meant to harness ideas for a city in crisis. Gregarious and forceful, yet able to work diplomatically, he had the backing of Fordham’s president at the time, James Finlay, S.J., to serve as the University’s liaison to the Bronx. With other young Jesuits, he lived in an apartment south of campus, on 187th Street and Marion Avenue, gaining firsthand insight into the scope of neglect and abandonment afflicting the borough.

“Paul felt, well, look, there’s a lot of people still in these neighborhoods. It’s not inevitable that everything gets worse,” said Roger Hayes, GSAS ’95, one of Brant’s former Jesuit seminary classmates. “What are we going to do?”

Long conversations with Hayes and Jim Mitchell, another seminary friend, convinced Brant that solutions to the Bronx’s problems would come by directing the power of the people themselves. In 1972, they formed a neighborhood association in nearby Morris Heights. They used relationships within the parish to confront negligent landlords. Seeing nascent successes there, they moved to launch a larger group.

In 1974, Brant convinced pastors from 10 Catholic parishes to sponsor an organization to fight for the community, and the Northwest Bronx Community and Clergy Coalition (NWBCC) was born. The group expanded to include Protestant and Jewish clergy—membership was always nonsectarian—and went on to train leaders in hundreds of tenant associations and neighborhood groups, including the University Neighborhood Housing Program, which Fordham helped to establish in the early 1980s to create, preserve, and improve affordable housing in the Bronx, and which has been led for many years by Fordham graduate Jim Buckley, FCRH ’76.

All of these groups were knit together across racial lines and around share interests during the worst years of abandonment and destruction. When they learned that rotten apartments had roots beyond individual slumlords, they picketed banks for redlining, the practice of withholding loans to people in neighborhoods considered a poor economic risk. Before long, Bronx homemakers and blue-collar workers were boarding buses to City Hall, demanding meetings with commissioners and testifying at the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation.

With similar people-power organizations nationwide, they won changes in the nation’s banking laws through the Community Reinvestment Act of 1977, drove reinvestment to cities, and sprouted a new ecosystem of nonprofit affordable housing.

Preserving Hip-Hop’s Bronx Birthplace

It’s the stuff of legend now: On August 11, 1973, Cindy Campbell threw a “Back to School Jam” in a recreation room at 1520 Sedgwick Avenue, a 100-plus-unit apartment building just blocks from the Cross Bronx Expressway in the Morris Heights neighborhood of the Bronx. Her brother, Kool Herc, DJ’d the party, which came to be considered the origin of hip-hop music.

Fast forward to 2008, when 1520 Sedgwick was laden with debt acquired by Wall Street investors who were failing to maintain the building. Organizers from the Urban Homesteading Assistance Board, a group focused on preserving affordable housing, hoped that documenting 1520’s history would help save it. They asked Fordham professor Mark Naison, Ph.D., to help. His research—which led to a lecture on C-SPAN and was highlighted in an August 2008 appearance on the PBS show History Detectives—helped convince the city government to intervene, eventually preserving the building as a decent and affordable place to live. In 2021, its standing became official: The U.S. Congress adopted a resolution acknowledging 1520 Sedgwick as the birthplace of hip-hop.

Learning About Bronx Renewal

Each year, Fordham’s Center for Community Engaged Learning shares this view of Bronx (and Fordham) history with incoming students, particularly those who participate in its Urban Plunge program in late August. The pre-orientation program gives new students the chance to explore the city’s neighborhoods and join local efforts to foster community development.

“For 30 years, the Plunge experience has offered our students their first introduction to institutions like Part of the Solution and the Northwest Bronx Community and Clergy Coalition, organizations founded by Fordham community members in collaboration with local residents that have built community, advocated for justice, and provided services and resources for the whole person,” said Julie Gafney, Ph.D., Fordham’s assistant vice president for strategic mission initiatives and executive director of the Center for Community Engaged Learning.

Students learn directly from local residents and policy experts about how they can shape policy decisions and build a better future for Fordham and its neighbors. “We really want to introduce first-year students, along with their upper-class mentors, to what’s driving community work in the Bronx right now,” Gafney said. “It’s an ideal ground for fostering a four-year commitment to community solution-building here in the Bronx.”

Reimagining the Cross Bronx

On August 25, nearly 250 first-year Fordham students fanned out across the Bronx as part of Urban Plunge. They served lunch to those in need at POTS—Part of the Solution, where Fordham graduate Jack Marth, FCRH ’86, is the director of programs; they helped refurbish Poe Park and the community-maintained Drew Gardens, adjacent to the Bronx River; and they visited the NWBCCC, now led by Fordham graduate Sandra Lobo, FCRH ’97, GSS ’04.

Students also learned about the Cross Bronx Expressway, a major highway built in the mid-20th century that has been blamed not only for separating Bronx communities but also for worsening air and noise pollution in the borough, contributing to residents’ high rates of asthma and other respiratory diseases.

Before visiting parts of the expressway, students heard from Nilka Martell, founding director of Loving the Bronx, a nonprofit that has been leading community efforts to cap the Cross Bronx and develop public green spaces above and around it. A few years ago, Martell connected with Fordham graduate Alex Levine, FCRH ’14, who was pursuing the same goal.

At Fordham, Levine majored in economics and Chinese studies and interned at the Department of City Planning in the Bronx. By 2020, he was a third-year medical student at Albert Einstein College of Medicine, where he co-founded the Bronx One Policy Group, a student advocacy organization focused on capping an approximately 2.5-mile section of the Cross Bronx that runs below street level. The idea is to cover the road with parks and install vents to remove toxic fumes caused by vehicular traffic. They said the cost of the project, estimated to be about $1 billion, would be offset by higher property values and lower health care costs.

“When you think of preventive medicine, it impacts everyone’s life,” Levine told the Bronx Times in 2021. “If we can get a small portion of this capped, then it might be a catalyst to happen on the rest of the highway. This is a project that can save money and lives.”

Martell said Levine’s group connected her with Dr. Peter Muennig, a professor at Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health who had published a study on the benefits of capping the Cross Bronx.

“We created this perfect trifecta,” she said. They brought their idea to Rep. Ritchie Torres, and in December 2022, the city received a $2 million grant from the U.S. Department of Transportation to study how to reimagine the Cross Bronx. Fordham’s Center for Community Engaged Learning later received a $25,000 grant from the New York City Department of Transportation as one of only 10 community partners selected to help the department gather input from residents who live near the expressway.

The feasibility-study funding is just a first step, Martell told students during an Urban Plunge panel discussion that featured a representative of the city planning department’s Bronx office and an asthma program manager from the city’s Department of Health and Mental Hygiene. “This isn’t easy,” Martell said. “If this was easy and there was a point-by-point playbook on how to get it done, all these projects would happen.”

But recent Bronx history gives her ample reason to press on. “You know, 40 years ago, we had the restoration of the Bronx River. Fifty years ago, we had the creation of hip-hop.” When there was little support and “no other outlet,” she said, “Bronxites came together to create an outlet.”

“For me, this is what it’s like to be a Bronxite; this is what it’s like to be in the Bronx—to have this kind of energy and these organizing skills to get things done.”

—Eileen Markey, FCRH ’98, teaches journalism at Lehman College and is working on a book about the people’s movement that helped rebuild the Bronx in the 1970s and ’80s. Taylor Ha is a senior writer and videographer in the president’s office and the marketing and communications division at Fordham.

When 1520 Sedgwick Avenue—the Bronx building considered by many to be the place where hip-hop began—had fallen into disrepair, Fordham professor Mark Naison, Ph.D., contributed his research to community organizers who were trying to save it. He also led other Fordham efforts to preserve hip-hop’s past, including the University’s Bronx African American History Project’s (BAAHP) interviews with artists from the early days of the genre, which created an important collection of oral histories from DJs and MCs. Naison also teaches a popular class called From Rock and Roll to Hip-Hop that spans past to present, drawing on artists like Cardi B, Nas, Run DMC, and onetime Fordham “rapper-in-residence” Akua Naru to help students understand the art form and its part in U.S. history.

“I think the lesson is, let’s explore, interrogate, and embrace the cultural creativity of our surrounding areas because it’s unparalleled,” said Mark Naison, Ph.D., director of the BAAHP and professor of African American Studies and History.

The Party That Started It All

It’s the stuff of legend now: On August 11, 1973, teenager Cindy Campbell hosted a back-to-school party in the community room of her building at 1520 Sedgwick Avenue,  just blocks from the Cross Bronx Expressway. She charged admission and had her brother Clive, aka DJ Kool Herc—they called him Hercules because he was so big—spin some records. Herc had been practicing on his father’s sound system, jumping just to the hottest percussive grooves—the bits where dancers really got down—and stretching those out by manipulating two copies of the same record. He had two turn tables and a microphone, and played a mix of funk and disco that he blended with the talking-over style he’d grown up hearing in Jamaican dancehall music. While many have pointed out that the art form was developing in other places as well, that party is commonly celebrated as the birth of hip-hop.

Saving 1520 Sedgwick

Fast forward 40 years to the aftermath of the financial crisis of 2008. In a perverse inversion of the redlining that had devastated the Bronx at the time of hip-hop’s birth, 1520 was now laden with debt acquired by Wall Street investors who were failing to maintain the building. Organizers from the Urban Homesteading Assistance Board, a group focused on preserving affordable housing, hoped documenting 1520’s history would help save it. They asked Naison to put his scholarly acumen into determining 1520’s significance. Naison’s research—which later led to a lecture on C-Span and an appearance on PBS’ History Detectives —was among the efforts that helped convince city government to intervene, eventually preserving the building where hip-hop was born as a decent and affordable place to live. And in 2021 the U.S. Congress adopted a resolution acknowledging 1520 Sedgwick as the birthplace of hip-hop. 

In Their Own Words

Brian Purnell, FCRH ’00, former research director of the BAAHP and current associate professor of African American Studies at Bowdoin College, said hip-hop culture “exemplifies hallmarks of the long history of Black culture in the U.S.”

“Hip-hop turned the supposed blight of the context its creators lived in into something stunning and fantastic and beautiful—and this is tried and true to Black culture over the centuries,” he said.

In 2003, Fordham formed the BAAHP, at the request of the Bronx County Historical Society, to document the history of Black people in the Bronx. Naison said soon DJs and MCs were calling saying, “Aren’t you going to record our story?”

Over the next several years BAAHP built an archive of interviews with some of the first hip-hop practitioners like Pete DJ Jones and Kurtis Blow, as well as Benjy Melendez —who in 1971 brokered a gang truce allowing the movement between neighborhoods that pollinated the music. The digital recordings have been accessed by scholars the world over, from Nairobi to Singapore, Paris, and Berlin.

WFUV in the House

One of those early hip-hop DJs, Eddie Cheeba, spun both in downtown clubs and uptown parties. In the summer of 1978 he worked at Fordham’s radio station WFUV. He rapped about it at a legendary 1979 party with Melle Mel, Grandmaster Flash, and DJ Hollywood: “Cheeba’s gonna be the winner. I’m mean, I’m bad, I’m cool and smooth, so I know you’ll do it with me. I guess that’s why I ran my game on WFUV. (22-minute mark)”

‘It Was Black People Being Free’

Michael Partis, FCRH ’08, who grew up in the Bronx and has contributed to the BAAHP, said preserving that joy and experimentation palpable in the first years of hip-hop is crucial.

“I think it’s important that the history of hip-hop is documented, because it really shows Black freedom. In this country people of African descent are often tied down by segregation and racism, by respectability that says you can’t be a certain way,” he said. “And hip-hop in its earliest form kind of broke through all that stuff. It was Black people being free.”

While Partis was at Fordham, a student-led Hip-Hop Coalition focused on the politically conscious roots of hip-hop. They brought acts to campus that weren’t mainstream or corporate. “These were street guys who were talking about socioeconomic inequality, and how these working poor communities, Black and Brown working communities, responded to that,” he said. “I thought it was excellent political education for the Fordham kids,” he said.

Today, Naison is helping to continue that education at Fordham.

“I’m not a hip-hop scholar, rather I’m someone who works to have community voices heard,” he said.

The Power—and Reach—of the Music

“When students in my class study hip-hop, there are two things that make the most powerful impression on them: First, the power of the best hip-hop artists, like Tupac Shakur, Lauryn Hill, and Wu-Tang Clan, to tell stories that can touch your heart strings as well as make you think. And second, the truly global impact of hip-hop, which includes dance and visual arts as well as music and is now deeply entrenched in Europe, Africa, and Asia, as well as the Western Hemisphere,” he said.

“Hip-hop was a multicultural arts movement of the most isolated, marginalized, disenfranchised people in society and they created a movement that swept the world.”

–By Eileen Markey, FCRH ’98

“We had downloads from Ukraine and the Russian Federation on the same day—two countries at war with one another,” said Mark Naison, Ph.D., co-founder of BAAHP and professor of history and African & African American studies at Fordham. “It’s so exciting that people all over the world are interested in our interviews and essays.”

Downloads From Nearly Every Continent

BAAHP was founded more than two decades ago in collaboration with the Bronx County Historical Society in order to preserve the history of the Bronx and its people. The bulk of the archive contains verbatim transcripts of interviews with political leaders, educators, musicians, social workers, businesspeople, clergy, athletes, and leaders of community-based organizations who have lived and worked in the Bronx since the 1930s, in addition to scholarly essays about the Bronx. For many years, these articles lived on audio tapes and paper. In 2015, they were uploaded to a digital archive that made their stories fully accessible to the public. 

Since then, thousands of scholars, students, and strangers have accessed the digital archive from around the world. People in Europe, Africa, Asia, Oceania, and the Caribbean have downloaded resources from the archive, according to data from Fordham Libraries. Online visitors in Singapore and Paris even downloaded the entire archive twice, said Naison. 

Among the scholars is Peter Schultz Jørgensen, an urbanist and author in Denmark who is using information from the digital archive to complete his upcoming book “Our Bronx!” 

“Portraying and documenting everyday life in the Bronx, as it once was, is essential in protecting the people of the Bronx from misrepresentation, while at the same time, providing valuable knowledge that can help shape their future,” Jørgensen said. “Just as BAAHP gathers the web of memory, my book is about the struggles that people and community organizations have waged and are waging in the Bronx. And more important, and encouraging, it talks about how they are now scaling up via the Bronx Wide Coalition and their Bronx Wide Plan for more economic and democratic control of the borough.”

The archive is also helpful for those who aren’t familiar with the Bronx, said Mattieu Langlois, a history Ph.D. student in Fordham’s Graduate School of Arts and Sciences.  

“I’m from Canada, so I didn’t know much about the Bronx,” said Langlois, who served as a BAAHP graduate assistant, ensuring interviews were transcribed correctly and uploading them to the archive. “It’s a good source of information for many people.” 

A Treasure Trove for Scholars

It’s unclear what thousands of other visitors are searching for in the archives, said Naison, but he suspects that some are scholars who are researching the history of hip-hop, a genre born in the Bronx that has influenced scores of artists, including Bronx-born rappers like Cardi B and Lil Tjay. Other scholars might be studying immigration—and the Bronx, a city heavily shaped by immigration, is a great model, said Naison. 

“The Bronx has a global reputation for music, but also for immigration and the mixing of cultures,” Naison said. “And our archive brings that to life.”

‘I Hope People Use It To Think Differently About the Bronx’ 

Brian Purnell, Ph.D., FCRH ’00, a former BAAHP research director from 2004 to 2010 who helped to facilitate at least 50 interviews in the archive, said the archive is also useful for urban studies scholars who are studying how cities have changed over the decades. 

“I hope people use it to think differently about the Bronx, to include the Bronx more deeply and broadly in urban studies in the United States,” said Purnell, now an associate professor of Africana studies and history at Bowdoin College, who uses the archive in his own research and in the classroom with his students. “I hope that it also expands how we think about Black people in New York City and in American cities in general from the mid-20th century onward.”

Naison said his team plans to upload more interviews to the archive—and that their work won’t stop there. 

“It’s ongoing. It’s exciting,” said Naison. “And to know now that people all over the world are interested in this, it makes it even more motivating to keep it going.”

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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.

“I found all these histories that I had never read in high school,” Kiernan said of the classes, which were taught by Mark L. Chapman, Ph.D., associate professor and associate chair of Fordham’s Department of African and African American Studies.

Kiernan reached out to Chapman and invited him, along with two other Fordham professors, Mark Naison, Ph.D., and Claude Mangum, Ph.D., to visit the Long Island brewery he co-owns. The group got together at Sand City Brewing Co. last June.

“I hadn’t seen these professors in [almost]  20 years,” Kiernan said. “It was such a positive reunion. That whole notion of caring about the individual, caring about society, trying to promote justice in a pragmatic way, those were things that the professors really inspired in me.”

In a Facebook post, Naison said visiting the brewery and hearing about Kiernan’s work as a teacher made him proud of Fordham.

“Spending time with [this]  remarkable grad … gave me a deep appreciation of my faculty colleagues and everyone else on campus who inspired [his]  commitment to making the world a better place,” Naison wrote.

Dual Career Paths, Both Cultivated at Fordham

After graduating from Fordham College at Rose Hill in 2002 with a bachelor’s degree in philosophy and religious studies, Kiernan worked in the contracts department at Random House. He often talked about books the company was publishing with one his former teachers, the chair of the English department at his high school alma mater, St. Anthony’s in South Huntington, New York. When a half-year teaching job opened up at the school in 2005, the chair encouraged Kiernan to apply. He got the job, went on to earn a master’s degree in education from Molloy College and a master’s in educational leadership from Long Island University, and now he’s an Advanced Placement literature and composition teacher at St. Anthony’s.

Meanwhile, in the early 2010s, a friend named Kevin Sihler approached Kiernan with the idea of opening up a brewery in Northport. After several years of planning, they opened Sand City in 2015, and this year, they launched a location in Lindenhurst, on Long Island’s South Shore, with Kiernan focusing on the day-to-day business operations of the company.

While committing to two careers can require long hours, Kiernan said that his love for teaching made it an easy decision for him to keep working at St. Anthony’s as the brewery grew. He also said that his Fordham education, aside from influencing his teaching, has had a big impact on his approach as a business owner.

“The Fordham education really significantly impacted me in a couple of different dimensions, one being the spiritual, [inspiring a]  concern for the dignity of the individual,” he said. “As a teacher, that goes without saying. But as an employer, when I think about my employees and their health and well-being and the goal of developing them as individuals, I think so much of that goes back to the way we were cultivated at Fordham.”

He also said that the critical thinking skills he developed as a philosophy major have helped him run the brewery.

“The types of conversations you have, the types of logic problems you solve, all these things prepared me unknowingly to confront problems in the world and try and figure out solutions to them in my business,” Kiernan said.

That combination of a pragmatic liberal arts education and the spiritual and political value of classes like the ones he took with Chapman had such a positive impact on Kiernan that when his high school students are looking at colleges, he heartily encourages them to apply to his alma mater. He also said that living in a vibrant Bronx community as an undergraduate provided him with an “unspoken curriculum of how to actually function in society.”

“When I hear students want to go to Fordham, I’m like, ‘There’s no question in my mind that you should.’”

“We arrived on August 26. And right after Labor Day, I started the third grade,” Lopez said. “I didn’t really speak English. I didn’t really know what was happening. We didn’t really have a network, and we had to do a lot on our own.”

Being on their own was new. Though she’d grown up with 12 siblings in the Dominican Republic—each of her parents was married and had six children before they met each other—she arrived in New York City with only three family members: her mother, one brother, and one sister. The rest of the family stayed put while the four of them set up a home in the U.S.

The family settled in the Inwood area of Manhattan, home to “a large Dominican contingency” that allowed Lopez to remain connected to her cultural roots while trying to bridge the gap “between being a Dominican and being an American,” she said.

Part of the network she developed, as a newly arrived third-grader attending public school, ultimately led her to Fordham. Lopez attended John F. Kennedy High School in the Bronx with a “dear friend from the third grade.” The two were discussing where they wanted to attend college when the friend asked her to tag along for a visit to Fordham’s Rose Hill campus.

“I came in through that entrance on East Fordham Road, [past]the gate, and onto that pathway that leads up to [Duane] Library, and I’ve never seen anything more beautiful in terms of, ‘Wow, this is what a college looks like, a university,’” she said.

Not only did Lopez fall in love with the campus, but she also said it immediately “felt so safe to me after coming from a Bronx high school where girls felt quite unsafe. I just very much immediately felt at home in an odd way.”

Finally afforded a “chance to really learn,” Lopez said her Fordham experience wasn’t filled with many extracurricular or community activities. Instead, the academics alone made her feel that she was finally getting what she “came here to this country for.”

As a psychology major, Lopez enjoyed studying the human mind—delving into “some of the mental issues that people in society face, and how people deal with them”—and she threw herself into preparing for her next step: law school.

“I knew that I needed to have very good grades to get into law school, so I spent a lot of time in Duane Library studying to get the best possible,” she said. “It was the academic deep dive that I was sort of waiting to have all my life.”

She found another love at Fordham, too: her husband, Ray Garcia, FCRH ’89. They met in a class as first-year students, and after some relentless note-passing, Lopez agreed to go out with him. “The first few weeks of school, classmates would send a little note up from the back row where he sat to the front row where I sat.” She usually declined his invitations, but “after a while I just decided, OK, I guess I’m going to go on a date,” she said, “and so that was the beginning.”

They were eventually married in the University Church, with longtime Fordham sociology professor Joseph Fitzpatrick, S.J., presiding, and they have two children: a son, Nicholas, who graduated from Fordham College at Rose Hill in 2019, and a daughter, Giselle, who is currently attending George Washington University.

After earning her B.S. from Fordham, Lopez earned a J.D. from the University of Pennsylvania in 1992 and has been practicing law ever since. For the past 23 years, she’s worked at McKinsey & Company, but soon she’ll take over as general counsel and chief legal officer at Spencer Stuart, an executive search and leadership advisory firm, in what she described as a dream role.

“One of the things I love doing is leaning into the development of people because we can all be really smart and really capable, but if we’re not investing in people and their growth and their excitement, and we’re not making them feel like they’re part of something special, I’m not sure we’re accomplishing very much,” said Lopez, who was honored as a Latina Trailblazer in 2018 by the nonprofit advocacy group LatinoJustice.

The imperative to invest in young talent to create future leaders isn’t one that’s limited to Lopez’s legal work; she thinks ensuring that current and future students can thrive is one of her duties as a Fordham alumna: playing a role so that “other students have the benefit of the experience I had.”

“Fordham taught me how to think differently and focus on being a good human and a student of life, not just a student for four years. To focus on doing good things and service and living in service.” There’s something more that comes with being a Fordham graduate, she said: “It’s something broader; it’s about purpose.”

Fordham Five (Plus One)

What are you most passionate about?
Making the community in which I live and work better. One of the ways in which I do this is through my involvement in Big Brothers Big Sisters of New York, both as a member of the board of trustees and as a mentor. I have mentored several young women since they were in high school, and they are all moving successfully to the next chapter in their lives. Seeing kids succeed is awesome!

What’s the best piece of advice you’ve ever received?
My mother told me to get the best education possible because it would be the path to a better life. She was right.

What’s your favorite place in New York City? In the world?
My favorite place in New York City is the neighborhood I grew up in, 215th Street and Seaman Avenue, tucked in the most northern part of Manhattan near Inwood Hill Park. What a gem of a neighborhood. I love the stairs that connect Broadway to Park Terrace East, built in 1915 and a great reminder of the world before the automobile. My favorite place in the world is Italy. I love the food, culture, people, and variety of landscapes. Somehow, I feel very much at home there. I’ve dragged my children there several times, starting when my youngest was 5 years old. It’s never too early to learn a different culture.

Name a book that has had a lasting influence on you.
Night by Elie Wiesel. It is a beautifully written, wrenching, and deeply moving memoir. I have read it many times and will read it many times more. Night helped me understand the suffering and anguish of a people and the imperative to be ever mindful of the suffering of others.

Who is the Fordham grad or professor you admire most?
I admire many Fordham professors who opened my eyes to the world, including “the Notorious Ph.D.,” Mark Naison; Raymond Grontkowski, Ph.D.; Joseph Fitzpatrick, S.J.; and Claude Mangum, Ph.D. There is one [grad]who stands out above the rest: my husband, Ray Garcia. Ray has been a huge supporter of everything I’ve tried to do professionally since we both graduated from Fordham. He has been my biggest fan, and I admire him for his willingness to sacrifice so much so that his partner can shine. Thank you, Ray! You embody everything that is good and genuine in this world.

What are you optimistic about?
The ability of young people to change the trajectory of the world we live in. This next generation of leaders is less patient and hopefully will not tolerate injustice for as long as prior generations have. I am optimistic that new leaders will demand more, as they should.

Interview conducted, edited, and condensed by Sierra McCleary-Harris.

“We’re working on having our students understand that what goes on outside is community. It’s love. It’s history,” said Lisa Preti, an assistant director in student financial services at Fordham and the mural project manager. “We’re having people actually immerse themselves in the community, as opposed to just learning about it in the classroom.”

The initiative was spearheaded by Fordham Bronx Advocates, a grassroots group of 10 to 15 Fordham community members and Bronx residents whose goal is to create a stronger partnership between Fordham and its neighbors. The mural is the first major project for the group, which was founded by Preti and her colleague Mark Naison, Ph.D., professor of history and African and African American studies, this past fall semester. The large scale artwork is being painted on a side wall of the John E. Grimm III Clubhouse, a center that offers academic and recreational activities for young people in the community, said Preti. 

“The first building I saw right across the street from Fordham was the clubhouse on 189th Street and Lorillard Place. I went in and asked them if they were interested in creating a mural on site, and they said, ‘Yes, absolutely—we’ve been looking to do something like that for a long time,’” said Preti. “It’s really just taken off from there.” 

The mural was designed by Lovie Pignata, a Bronx artist and community activist, and funded by several Fordham groups and departments including the Bronx African American History Project, the Office of the Chief Diversity Officer, the Fordham College Dean’s Office, and the Center for Community Engaged Learning. Project organizers also received free paint, rollers, and supplies from the nearby New Palace Paint & Home Center on 180th Street, said Preti. 

“It was amazing to see the community so quickly say, yes, we’ll help,” said Preti, a Bronx native whose parents still reside in the borough. “It started as a small grassroots movement, and we got lucky along the way.”

In mid-April, the artist behind the mural, Pignata, met with Fordham student volunteers and the clubhouse’s teenagers and staff to transform a plain brick wall into a garden mural bursting with colorful fruits, vegetables, and flowers. The mural includes several symbols, including root vegetables, which represent hidden potential, said Pignata.

After the mural is completed in May, the clubhouse will plant an actual community garden in front of the mural to help combat local food insecurity. Three planter boxes have been donated by the Northeast Bronx Community Farmers Market Project, which will also provide seedlings, said Pignata. 

“The theme of the mural is ‘growing together,’” Pignata said. “I like to make what I call community art, which is more hands-on and has more interaction with the people who will live near it [than public art]. I hope everybody involved in the mural is proud of it and feels like they’re a part of it.” 

Isabella Iazzetta, a junior at Fordham College at Rose Hill who has participated in two painting sessions, said her volunteer experience has introduced her to more members of the Bronx community, including elementary school students who walk by and marvel at the mural. This summer, Iazzetta will be able to walk past the finished mural every day. 

“My roommates and I are actually moving off campus on that same block,” said Iazzetta, who studies humanitarian studies and theology religious studies at Fordham. “It’ll be so cool to look at and know that I had a tiny role in helping this all come to life.”

Mark Naison, Ph.D., professor of history and African and African American studies, said Jones’ life made for a great story because it was so “incredibly improbable” but also relatable.

“A lot of people growing up in the Bronx can really identify with his stories, in terms of what’s going in their families and neighborhoods, and what gives you the ability to get out of difficult circumstances and become successful,” said Naison, who co-authored the memoir, which was published in 2009 by Fordham University Press.

On Oct. 16, Naison and the Center for Community Engaged Learning (CCEL) invited a dozen students from Mott Hall Bronx High School to a class he teaches called The Bronx: Immigration, Race, and Culture. Though the books hadn’t come in time for the class, Naison made a compelling case for why the students should read it when they arrive. In the Zoom conversation, the class dissected the story’s main themes, including the importance of mentorship and code-switching, or changing the way you express yourself with different groups of people. They also talked about how books like The Rat That Got Away, whose author was profiled in The New York Times and a 2009 Fordham News story, can have the power to change people’s lives. 

“It’s a book about a young man who grew up in the ‘50s in a housing project in the Bronx when public housing was a really desirable place to live, watched it deteriorate in the face of drug epidemics and the Vietnam War, and then led a double life as a drug dealer and a basketball player and ended up—because he had mentors—being sent to a New England prep school after spending four months in Rikers Island,” Naison said. “It’s a real, true story.” 

An ‘Upside Down’ View on College Classes

In his memoir, Jones writes about how rapping was a popular way of communicating with his peers in the Sixties, said Naison. So Naison showed his students and guests the video of the song “Rapper’s Delight” by the Sugarhill Gang—the first hip-hop single to land in the Billboard top 40—and rapped to two different songs himself: “The Message” by Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five and his own “Notorious Ph.D.” 

“The students thought it was the funniest thing they’d ever seen,” Naison said. “This is turning their views of what a college is like—or college professors—a little upside down, but hopefully getting them excited about going to college and then having the opportunity to be creative and expand their horizons.” 

Jainaba Camara, a senior at Mott Hall Bronx High School, said this class was the first college course she had attended. The media often portrays professors as strict instructors who don’t interact with their students, she wrote in an email. But at Fordham, a professor rapped to music, created a space where she felt comfortable sharing her thoughts, and taught her a valuable lesson that will help her prepare for college, she said. 

“Everyone has a story, no matter how boring or uninteresting you think your life is. It was really motivating and gave me the push I needed to start my college essay,” said Camara, who wants to become a nurse or health care professional someday. 

Keeping A Connection with the Community

Alison Rini, a senior English major at Fordham College at Rose Hill, said she recognized some of the high school students. The day before, she had virtually assisted a few of them with their Common Application college essays through a CCEL initiative that started this semester. 

With everything being on Zoom, she said, it’s easy to have class sessions with local high schoolers—“to still keep that connection with the community even though they can’t physically go on campus,” said Rini, who works as a research assistant for the Bronx African-American History Project and the Bronx Italian-American History Initiative. “It was really refreshing to have everyone altogether.” 

“It was more important than ever to capture these stories, because the Bronx was probably one of most hard-hit boroughs out of the whole city—and those stories weren’t being told,” said Bethany Fernandez, a rising junior at Fordham College Rose Hill.

With support from Fordham professor Mark Naison, Ph.D., the founding director of the Bronx African American History Project, Fernandez and Veronica Quiroga, FCRH ’20, launched the Bronx COVID-19 Oral History Project.

Their goal is to document the stories of Bronx residents in audio and video interviews, giving people an opportunity to talk about how they and their families, communities, and workplaces have been affected by the pandemic.

“Recording these voices is of especial importance because the people of the Bronx, many of whom live on the edge of poverty and work in ‘essential occupations,’ have experienced one of the highest fatality rates from COVID-19 in the entire world. … If we are ever to change the conditions which have imposed such disproportionate pain on Bronx residents, we must allow them to speak for themselves,” the students wrote in a mission statement on the project’s website.

On July 7, Fernandez and Quiroga shared some of their work with Fordham alumni as part of a webinar organized by the Office of Alumni Relations. They were joined by the COVID-19 project’s faculty advisers—Naison, who established the Bronx African American History Project in late 2002 to fill in the gaps of African American history in the Bronx, and Jane Kani Edward, Ph.D., who has led the project’s immigrant research initiative since 2006.

COVID-19’s Disproportionate Impacts

Quiroga said that she, Fernandez, and rising Fordham College at Rose Hill seniors Carlos Rico and Alison Rini learned how to conduct oral history interviews through their work on the Bronx African American History Project. They drew on those skills to launch this COVID-19 offshoot so quickly and capture what’s happening in real time.

During the webinar, Quiroga and Fernandez shared clips from some of the project’s video interviews. In one, Bronx resident Maria Aponte, Fordham’s assistant director of diversity and global inclusion, said the pandemic and recent protests against racial injustice brought back traumatic memories of growing up in Harlem during the 1960s, when there were riots in response to incidences of police violence and housing and employment discrimination that disproportionately affected people of color.

“It really devastated me when they started breaking down the groups that were devastated the most [by COVID-19], which was the lower income, African American, Latino community, and it’s almost like a whole history of people just got wiped out,” she said. “My husband and I live near Montefiore Hospital, and the first early weeks, it was the nonstop ambulance sirens. … That for me was a trigger, because I was a kid during the riots in the ’60s, and I watched Harlem burn with my mother. … It just took me back to when I was 9, 10, 11 years old.”

Quiroga said that Aponte’s reference to COVID-19’s disproportionate impact on marginalized groups, including Black and Latino communities, as well as the elderly, underscores larger societal issues that need to be examined.

“I also felt that her perspective was a window into the collective trauma experienced by most Bronxites during the pandemic,” she said.

Bronx resident Marlene Taylor, a 1979 Fordham College at Rose Hill graduate who currently works as a physician assistant at the Ryan Chelsea-Clinton clinic in Manhattan, said she’s seen how the pandemic has continued to exacerbate disparities, particularly in health care.

“I believe strongly that those who are already underserved from a health-care standpoint feel more distressed because if they already had challenges with getting medication, food, housing, now there are more obstacles, now there are more challenges,” she said in a video interview for the project.

Trying to Provide Hope During a Pandemic

Another project participant, Maribel Gonzalez, the owner of the South of France restaurant in the Bronx, said that as an entrepreneur, she has faced the emotional and physical toll of trying to stay in business while trying to support her longtime customers and neighbors.

“It’s still a struggle because you don’t know if you’re going to be around the next day,” she said.

But despite her personal concerns about her business, Gonzalez has made it her mission to be there for her customers who are struggling.

“When I deliver to people, I see so much sadness, I see so much devastation, I see food insecurity, I see hunger … which we’re also trying to address as a restaurant, and I am giving pep talks,” she said. “I’m giving them encouragement. I’m their mother, I’m their sister, I’m their friend. I’m often the only person that they’ve seen in a long time, because they’ve been in their house and they’re people who are alone and they don’t have conversation.”

Gonzalez said she tries to stay positive through her faith, for herself and others, and believes “that the business will come back, that the community will come back, that the Bronx will come back.”

“I think that her words near the end encapsulate the stories we try to tell,” Fernandez said. “The story of a lot of Bronxites deals with resilience.”

The Growth of the Bronx African American History Project

The Bronx African American History Project has been documenting these stories of the borough’s resilience since 2002. During the webinar, Naison provided an overview of the project’s work, including the COVID-19 oral history project, as well as research papers, including one by Edward on African immigration to the Bronx, and books, such as Naison’s Before the Fires: An Oral History of African American Life in the Bronx from the 1930s to the 1960s (Fordham University Press, 2016).

He said the project highlights how the borough, defying the odds, rebuilt neighborhoods from the fires of 1970s and the crack epidemic of the 1980s and 1990s. The neighborhoods, with lower crime rates, saw community life flourish again and it became the location of choice for new immigrants to New York.

“The Bronx African American History Project started when I was approached by an archivist from the Bronx County Historical Society who told me that groups were looking [for information]about African American history in the Bronx and couldn’t find anything,” Naison said. “What I discovered was pretty amazing—500,000 people in the Bronx who were basically invisible.”

His first interview for the project was with a social worker, Victoria Archibald-Good, who talked for three hours about her experience growing up in the Patterson Houses, a housing project in the Bronx. While the project eventually came to be known as a place where crime and drugs were rampant, in the 1950s and early 1960s, Archibald-Good said it was a great place to raise a family, and it produced well-known talent, including her brother, Hall of Fame Basketball point guard Nate “Tiny” Archibald, who earned a master’s degree from Fordham’s Graduate School of Education in 1990.

“That defies all your stereotypes about the Bronx in the ’50s and also about public housing,” Naison said.

After that first interview, BAAHP grew, thanks in part to funding from the Fordham College at Rose Hill dean’s office, which allowed more student and professional researchers to join the project. BAAHP also began partnering with local schools to teach students about Bronx history.

“Learning all this about the Bronx, as a site of successful migration and cultural creativity, was something that was going to lift the spirits of students who had only been told negative things about the Bronx,” Naison said.

Within the first few years, Naison said newspapers had been regularly reporting on their work, and researchers from other countries, including Germany and Spain, also began reaching out, asking if they could come along. The project also began to bring guest speakers to Fordham.

Around this time, Naison said while out in the community, he and others began noticing a large West African presence in the Bronx. “We [saw]a lot of people in Muslim garb, and mosques and Islamic centers opening up, and we realized there is an African immigration story emerging in the Bronx.”

Highlighting the Contributions of African Immigrants

Edward, who is from Sudan and had studied Sudanese women living in exile in Uganda, joined Fordham in 2006 as a postdoctoral fellow and launched BAAHP’s African immigrant research initiative.

“We noticed there was a large number of Africans in the Bronx, and someone needed to study their history,” she said. “Their contributions were not studied well.”

The main objective of the project is to examine the conditions of African immigrants and migrants who came to the Bronx from 1985 to the present, and highlight their contributions to the borough, Edward said.

“[We wanted to] shift the discussion from simply assessing their needs and challenges that they face to looking at their contributions and achievements,” she said.

Their research has included interviews with immigrants from Ghana, Nigeria, Mali, Sierra Leone, Guinea, and Burkina Faso, among other nations, which revealed a growing and diverse immigrant community that has enlivened neighborhoods where Jewish, Irish, Puerto Rican, and Dominican immigrants trod before them.

Naison said that the borough, throughout its waves of migration, has been a home for “cultural fusion,” particularly in the areas of music and food.

“The Bronx is this site where people mix their cultures and they create something new,” he said. “It makes this a lot of fun to study.”

While the history project allows for many fun moments, right now its focus is on documenting stories of both suffering and resilience related to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Fernandez said her goal with this project is to provide an accurate portrayal of the Bronx and its residents—and to counter “negative stereotypes and … extreme prejudices about the Bronx and what the borough is like” that she’s heard from people, including some within the Fordham community.

“The Bronx African American History Project tries to tell the stories of the people who live here. This is somebody’s home, this is a place that somebody loves, this is a place rich of culture and history just like any other place that you might think of,” she said.

Learn more about the Bronx COVID-19 Oral History Project at thebronxcovid19oralhistoryproject.com.

Video by Tom Stoelker, staff writer. 

The articles, films, academic papers, podcasts, and interviews listed below are for anyone interested in learning about the Black Lives Matter Movement, racial inequality and racialized violence, and communal responses toward action and healing.

Self-Care

How Black Americans can practice self-care… And how everyone else can help, Elizabeth Wellington, 2020
4 Self-Care Resources for Days When the World is Terrible, Miriam Zoila Pérez, 2020

Demonstrating Care for Black People

Your Black Colleagues May Look Like They’re Okay — Chances Are They’re Not, Danielle Cadet, Refinery 29, 2020
Before You Check In On Your Black Friend, Read This, Elizabeth Gulino, Refinery 29, 2020

Articles

Around the world, the U.S. has long been a symbol of anti-Black racism, Nana Osei-Opare, The Washington Post, 2020
NYPD at the Crossroads: Some Background History, Mark Naison, The Gotham Center for New York City History, 2020
Racism Won’t be Solved by Yet Another Blue Ribbon-Report, Adam Harris, The Atlantic, 2020
The assumptions of white privilege and what we can do about it, Bryan N. Massingale, National Catholic Reporter, 2020
The NFL Is Suddenly Worried About Black Lives, Jemele Hill, The Atlantic, 2020
Performative Allyship is Deadly (Here’s What to Do Instead), Holiday Phillips, Forge – Medium, 2020
A Look Back At Trayvon Martin’s Death, And the Movement it Inspired, Karen Grigsby Bates, Code Switch – NPR, 2018
Blackness as Disability? Kimani Paul-Emile, Fordham Law Archive of Scholarship and History, 2018
The Intersection of Policing and Race, Danyelle Soloman, American Progress, 2016
The Cost of Balancing Academia and Racism, Adrienne Green, The Atlantic, 2016
The Politics of ‘Looting’ and ‘Violence’, Eric Draitser, CounterPunch, 2015
“The White Space,” Elijah Anderson, Sociology of Race and Ethnicity, 1(1), 10-21

Books

How to Be an Antiracist, Ibram X. Kendi, (One World/Ballantine, 2019)
Multiracials and Civil Rights: Mixed-Race Stories of Discrimination, Tanya K Hernández, (NYU Press, 2018)
So You Want to Talk About Race, Ijeoma Oluo, (Seal Press, 2018)
When They Call You a Terrorist: A Black Lives Matter Memoir, Patrisse Khan-Cullors, (Canongate Books, 2018)
The Sin of White Supremacy: Christianity, Racism, & Religious Diversity in America, Jeannine Hill-Fletcher, (Orbis Books, 2017)
Invisible No More: Police Violence Against Black Women and Women of Color, Andrea Ritchie, (Beacon Press, 2017)
Nobody: Casualties of America’s War on the Vulnerable, from Ferguson to Flint and Beyond, Marc Lamont Hill and Todd Brewster, (Simon and Schuster, 2016)
Between the World and Me, Ta-Nehisi Coates, (Spiegel & Grau, 2015)
Racial Justice and the Catholic Church, Bryan Massingale, (Orbis Books, 2014)
Citizen: an American Lyric, Claudia Rankine, (Graywolf Press, 2014)
Savage Portrayals: Race, Media, and the Central Park Jogger Story, Natalie Byfield, (Temple University Press, 2014)
Whistling Vivaldi: How Stereotypes Affect Us and What We Can Do, Claude Steele, (WW Norton & Company, 2011)
The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness, Michelle Alexander, (The New Press, 2010)
Everyday Antiracism: Getting Real About Race in School, Mika Pollock, (The New Press, 2008)
Racism Without Racists: Color-Blind Racism and the Persistence of Racial Inequality in the United States, Eduardo Bonilla-Silva, (Rowman & Littlefield, 2006)

Multimedia: Documentaries and Conversations

The Bronx COVID-19 Oral History Project Fordham University. Carlos Rico, Veronica Quiroga, and Bethany Fernandez.
13th (2016) [Film]. Netflix. Duvernay, A. (Streaming for free)
Just Mercy (2019) [Film]. Warner Bros. Cretton, D. D. (Streaming for free)
Black vs. White: Protesting & Riots (2020) [Interview] Christina Greer & Jason Johnson
Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor on How Racism & Racial Terrorism Fueled Nationwide Anger (2020)[Interview] DemocracyNow!
Decade of Fire (2019) [Film]. GoodDocs. Hilderbran, G., Vazquez, V.
When They See Us (2019) [TV Mini-series]. Netflix. Duvernay, A.
Angela Davis – “Freedom is a Constant Struggle” (2019) [Lecture] The University of New England
Dr. Robin DiAngelo discusses ‘White Fragility’ (2018) [Book Talk] Seattle Central Library
The Urgency of Intersectionality (2016) Kimberlé Crenshaw, TED
The Black Power Mixtape (2011) [Film] PBS Independent Lens. Göran Olsson
Color Blind or Color Brave (2014) Mellody Hobson, TED.
The Power of Vulnerability (2010) Brené Brown, TED.
Intersectionality Matters [Podcast] Kimberlé Crenshaw
Code Switch [Podcast] NPR
Pod Save the People [Podcast] Deray McKesson

Get Involved

The Bronx Freedom Fund
#8cantwait
8toAbolition

Additional Resources

Jesuit Resources on Racism: Ignatian Solidarity Network – Racial Justice

So when Fordham ceased face-to-face instruction at 1 p.m. on Monday, March 9, due to the threat posed by the COVID-19 outbreak, faculty were faced with the challenge of providing quality instruction that was true to their mission of supporting students and continuing to foster their potential. On March 13, the decision to suspend face-to-face classes was extended through the end of the semester.

As they begin to deliver instruction remotely, faculty have turned to online tools such as Zoom, WebEx, Blackboard, and Google Hangouts to continue students’ education. And they have turned to each other for support, guidance, and tips.

Planning for the transition began in earnest during the last week of February, when Joseph M. McShane, S.J., president of Fordham, and Dennis Jacobs, Ph.D., provost and senior vice president for academic affairs, briefed members of the Faculty Senate at its monthly meeting on February 28. Administration officials had been monitoring the spread of the virus in China, and once a case had been reported in Washington state in January, they thought it might spread throughout the United States.

Jacobs said that at that time the University was already making plans to offer online instruction to students who’d been recalled from study abroad programs and who would need instruction while self-quarantining.

“That was the call to action, to say, ‘Let’s begin preparations,’” he said.

“No one would have chosen this as a normal transition path, but these are extraordinary times, and our options were limited,” he said.

“Everyone was committed to serving our students and allowing them to progress towards their academic degrees. It was not just an option to shut down the campus, we had to come up with a continuity plan.”

Technology and Pedagogy

Making the transition required overcoming challenges both technical and pedagogical. Steven D’Agustino, Ph.D., Fordham’s director of online learning, is helping faculty figure out how to best use that technology to deliver their coursework. He’s offered videos and documentation on the University’s Official Online Learning Page and his blog, Learning at a Distance.

D’Agustino said he was impressed at how seriously faculty have put students’ well-being and peace of mind first and foremost. Many are using this week, which happens to be spring break, to explain to their students how they plan to move forward with the rest of the semester and taking steps like telling them exactly what times of the day they’ll be checking their emails. Faculty are establishing virtual office hours when they’ll be available for in-person consultation, and giving serious thought to whether future classes should be held synchronously, when everyone meets together, or asynchronously, which enables students to access material on their own schedules.

D’Agustino encouraged faculty to evaluate their methods as they go, and to draw on the experiences of peers across the country who face the same situation.

“I would say reflective practice is really valuable. This about what you’re doing, and reflect upon it after you’ve done it, and try to include your students and your colleagues in those reflective spaces. Because I think there are a lot of good ideas and support out there, and we’re not alone.”

A Quick Turnaround

Eve Keller, Ph.D., professor of English and president of the Faculty Senate, said she was astonished at how quickly faculty, who teach nearly 2,000 courses a semester, were able to work together to make the transition.

“Faculty had 36 hours to convert their classes online. Some people have done this, and some people had never heard of Zoom, but from what I’ve seen, it’s been an unequivocally congenial, collegial effort to make it happen,” she said.

The transition has not been without occasional hiccups. Anne Fernald, Ph.D., a professor of English and special adviser to the provost for faculty development, emailed fellow arts and science faculty for thoughts on pedagogy on March 11, and after receiving 20 replies, she felt prepared.

Still, when she attempted to teach her first class on Thursday with WebX, she didn’t realize the program’s default volume setting for the program is mute. She ended up recording a podcast for it with the information she planned to share, and is confident she’ll be able to make it work next week, when spring break ends and classes resume.

“I felt like the University did everything it could in this emergency to support us. And I think that the decision to be closed on Tuesday and give people time to prepare was huge. I had colleagues all around the country who didn’t have anything like that. Fordham did it in a way that was as compassionate as it could be,” she said.

Striking the Right Balance

On March 12, Mark Conrad, an associate professor of law and ethics at the Gabelli School of Business, taught three courses—Legal Framework of Business, Sports Law, and Law and the Arts—using the Zoom platform, and was happy with how it came together.

“I’ve been pleasantly surprised at how easy and accessible it has been. I had a number of questions from students. I wasn’t just talking to a computer,” he said, noting the ease in which he was able to share power point slides with students.

“We’re seeing future possibilities. It deals with something I’ve been thinking about which is, let’s say the professor is ill or has a sprained ankle. One could do classes like this, and it could actually minimize absences.”

Nicholas Tampio, Ph.D., a professor of political science, taught two classes on March 11 using WebX seminar after department chair Robert Hume, Ph.D., arranged practice sessions for the department. While they went off without a hitch, he said it was hard to read the mood of a room, as many nonverbal communication cues were lost in translation.

“When you teach online, you can’t see feet shifting, or if they have another browser open where they’re checking email. Their parents could be in the room, there could be a car going by. It’s not a controlled environment in which students are only there for the experience,” he said.

“I think I’m going to get better over time at being able to call on people, and I think I’m going to get better at organizing my slide show to make it more entertaining,” he said. But he acknowledged that face-to-face learning will always be preferable.

Edward Cahill, Ph.D., a professor of English, had never used Google Hangouts before and turned to it to teach Shakespeare’s sonnets and John Milton’s Paradise Lost. He found it to be similar to the normal classroom experience, although he said he plans to try different approaches to keep things interesting when the semester resumes, including splitting the class into both synchronous and asynchronous sessions.

Cahill’s new familiarity with online learning comes not only from his work as a professor, but also a student. His experience as a student in an entry-level Spanish class taught by Guillermo Severiche has given him hope that success is possible in the online realm, he said. Severiche, an instructor in the department of modern languages, moved their class to Zoom as well.

“We share documents, we used the e-textbooks. He managed the whole thing flawlessly. So that inspired me to think maybe I can do more.”

Cahill noted that he’s trying to be mindful of the challenges inherent in asking students to complete studies in the midst of a worldwide pandemic.

“There are so many balances to strike between rigor and flexibility, generosity and intensity. I don’t know that anyone has figured it out, and I guess as long as we can stay alert to all of those tensions, we’ll probably find our way through it,” he said.

Doing Lab Work Without the Lab

In some fields, resuming instruction is trickier than just establishing online connections. Stefanie Bubnis, interim managing director of the Fordham Theatre Program, said that while mainstage productions have halted, faculty have bolstered instruction on Google Hangouts and Zoom with old fashioned phone calls and FaceTime.

Professors such as Ann Hamilton, an adjunct professor of theater, are learning on the fly as well. For her first online Acting for the Camera class, she asked students to upload the scenes they recorded of themselves to Hightail and Google Drive. She watched the videos during the designated class time and wrote feedback in a group email to the 17 students in the class. Ultimately it proved to be too time-consuming.

“For my next class I intend to use Zoom, so we are all conferencing together, but they will have sent me the recorded auditions first, so I can have them up on my desktop and we can all watch them together at the same time and actively participate in the feedback. I think the students felt as if they learned a lot today, so that’s a win, given the circumstances,” she said.

Stephen Holler, Ph.D., an associate professor of physics, was able to move the lecture for his General Physics 2 class exclusively to Blackboard, but that wasn’t an option for Experimental Techniques for Physics, a course where teams of students had been working on a single project all semester.

“Some of the work, they’re in the machine shop, they’re doing 3D printing, they’re doing electronics,” he said, noting that this work will have to be completed in a different way than planned.

“Since they’ve done half the project, and they’ve already written up progress reports, I’ll have them turn those progress reports into a paper. Normally I’d also have them do a presentation on a research project they’re interested in; instead I’ll have them write a short paper on that and we’ll do Zoom presentations.

A Big Shift for Information Technology

For Fordham IT, the switch required an unusually speedy response.

Alan Cafferkey, director of faculty technology services, noted that his team—which includes experienced technicians, a fine arts and digital humanities professional, instructional designers, a former math teacher, a librarian, adjunct professors, a media and accessibility expert, and an Ed.D. candidate—normally prefers to work with six months lead time to develop an online course.

“This, however, was everyone already two months into the semester with only a couple of weeks of realizing that something might happen, prepping, and then a sudden shift, with hundreds of people making the change,” he said.

He was especially proud that his team was so on top of responding to the multitude of individual faculty requests. In addition, in collaboration with the provost’s office, they created a Course Continuity site before the University shifted to online learning—as preparation for what might happen.

When the switch was made, IT as a whole simultaneously shifted its entire operation to function remotely—including the IT Customer Care help desk—while helping other offices do the same.

IT also rolled out an entirely new enterprise-wide system in Zoom, reinforced numerous systems, and conducted a multitude of workshops on topics such as teaching synchronously and asynchronously, setting up remote offices, and best practices for many popular web tools. Additional workshops will continue through the spring and can be found on the department’s blog.

Going forward, Cafferkey said the department will continue to field faculty questions and requests, work closely with vendors such as Blackboard, and support other University initiatives as needed. He credited the efforts of colleagues across IT, the provost’s office, the IT departments in the Gabelli School of Business and Fordham Law, the online learning teams at the Graduate School of Social Service and the Graduate School of Education, and the staff at Fordham’s library.

“I’ve been really touched at how kind most of the faculty have been about the support provided. I’ve gotten so many thoughtful notes and comments, it’s been really heart-warming. It’s helped that there are so many offices working collaboratively,” he said.

Looking at the Big Picture

Lisa Holsberg, a Ph.D. candidate in theology, found herself transitioning Great Christian Hymns, which she is teaching for the School of Continuing and Professional Studies (PCS), entirely online. But she was in some ways already prepared to do so, as she is also currently teaching an online course, Christian Mystical Texts, for PCS. She was already accustomed to using Blackboard extensively, as well as Screencast-O-Matic and Voicethread, which lets students listen to each other talk, in their own words, about a specific problem. But ultimately, technology is just one little piece of the story, she said.

“It’s really, what is your commitment to students and to learning and going forward in the midst of change? How do you rethink what it means to teach, what it means to learn in conditions you’re not used to? You have to really dig deep into what your fundamental commitments are to your teaching, your students, to yourself, to your topic, and then just use whatever tools you have in order to meet those goals,” she said.

The Path Forward

Going forward, D’Agustino said he thinks faculty will settle into a hybrid approach for the rest of the semester, making tweaks as they get feedback from students.

“They may say, ‘We’re going to do a synchronous session, so here are the slides in advance, here is the reading material, here’s the study guide, there are some questions you should be able to answer during the session,’” he said.

“So even if a student can’t attend or log in, they still have the notes, the readings, the study guides, and they can say, ‘Professor I couldn’t log in; its 4 a.m. for me. But here are the answers to those questions. And the faculty member can, if it’s part of their protocol, share those answers with the class so that student is part of it.”

Jacobs said that he’s hopeful that faculty will rise to the challenge in what is an extraordinary time of upheaval. He noted that online instruction will always have a place in graduate level and professional-oriented instruction, especially for students who are working or have family obligations. As such, the University will continue to evaluate it on a case-by-case basis. But face-to-face teaching and learning is at the heart of Fordham’s mission, he said.

“Jesuit education is really one of formation in context of community. We treasure that at Fordham, and we always will. It’s the reason why during the academic year, we have not, by intention, moved our undergraduate academic offerings into an online format. We’ve offered them face-to-face, and will return to that when it safe to do, when the virus has passed,” he said.