Vidal, a native of Caracas, Venezuela, who is majoring in economics and political science, first joined a Model U.N. club when he was just 11, and it’s been a part of his life ever since.

“You really find a community of very knowledgeable, nice, and warm people striving to find solutions in this world,” he said of the organization, which has chapters in middle schools, high schools, and colleges.

“You have people [in the world]who like to criticize, but you also have the problem-solving kind of people. We’re trying to be those kinds of people, actively participating in solving issues like climate change, human rights violations, wars or conflicts, things like that.”

Last month, the Model U.N. team at Rose Hill which Vidal is a member of scored a big victory, winning the equivalent of a third-place prize at HNMUN, the annual competition at Harvard University that is the field’s most prestigious.

Next week, eight members of the club, which first formed in 2015, will head to Paris, where they will compete in WorldMun, the World Model United Nations. They will be part of a mock delegation at that conference, “representing” the nation of Togo. This is the first year that the club has been able to attend a full slate of four conferences per semester, after the Covid-19 pandemic restricted travel.

Lara Petrunis, a sophomore from East Brunswick, New Jersey, who is majoring in political science and is also part of the club, said she joined Model U.N. in high school as a way to expand her horizons.

“I don’t know if a lot of other high schools were like this, but they were  focused a lot on American history where I was, and I wondered, ‘Where’s the other history?’ I wanted to learn more about the rest of the world and not just have an American-focused perspective,” she said.

At Model U.N., Petrunis has had to learn about issues such as the economy of Singapore, on whose behalf she once advocated at an economic and social commission for Asia and the Pacific. At another event at Boston University, she attended a committee representing the African National Assembly and made a case for how to reduce the national debt of Djibouti.

“It’s great to meet people from other schools because there are people from all around the world,” she said.

“I really like debating these various issues with people, gaining new ideas and perspectives, and coming up with solutions.”

The team’s Honorable Mention award—which is the equivalent of third place—in February was for the performance of Alex Yankovsky, a junior, and Jimena Perez, a sophomore, who represented Canada on a mock NATO committee.

Diplomacy, research, and rhetoric are key to success, said the group’s advisor, Melissa Labonte, Ph.D., an associate professor of political science.

“It’s all about how you work with others. It’s about the negotiations that you engage in, and it’s about the tone that you set,” she said.

“Just to go back to Ignatian principles. It’s all about being men and women for others and cura personalis. This is a great example of our students going out there and engaging in a realm where those Jesuit principles can really be an added advantage for them.”

Beyond the death toll, millions of people have been injured and displaced. The United Nations said that the earthquake had affected as many as 5.3 million in Syria alone. And for Turkey, the situation is all too familiar: Turkey sits atop two major fault lines and has suffered major earthquakes before. In 1999, a 7.6 magnitude earthquake was blamed for an estimated 18,000 deaths.

Complicating the current crisis is the fact that the area of Northern Syria impacted by the earthquake has been riven by violence for the past decade due to the county’s ongoing civil war. The war, which grew out of the wider Arab Spring protests of 2011, has left northern sections of the country in the hands of rebels opposed to Bashar al-Assad, the country’s leader.

To shed light on the complexities of this ongoing catastrophe, Fordham News spoke with experts in international humanitarian aid, the Middle East, and mental health.

Politics and Aid

Anjali Dayal, Ph.D., associate professor of political science and a senior scholar in residence at the United States Institute of Peace in Washington, D.C.

The aid situation in Syria is deeply dependent on United Nations Security Council politics because the region in Syria that was hardest hit has been part of complex international negotiations about the passage of aid. The U.N. is an intergovernmental organization, and under the terms of the U.N. Charter, the Syrian government has ultimate authority over the area–but the northwest part of the country remains locked in an ongoing civil war, where the Syrian government’s authority is contested on the ground. The politics of U.N. aid passing into this part of Syria have become really complicated, as a result.

Over the years, the negotiations in the Security Council, where Russia has veto power, narrowed down the number of open crossings to a single one in northwest Syria, Bab al-Hawa, which was badly hit by this earthquake.

Thankfully, after a closed-door U.N. Security Council meeting on Monday, U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres announced that the Syrian government has agreed to allow two more border crossings between Syria and Turkey to open up for three months [to allow for]  humanitarian relief to the earthquake-struck zones.

This is important because it means that the international community [including the U.N.]  can get aid to a part of Syria [run by the anti-al-Assad rebels]  where the Syrian government is more than happy to let people die. There are local organizations on the ground that cross through other crossings, but nobody really has the scale or reach that the U.N. does for the volume of aid that’s necessary at this moment in particular. That’s why this has become so contentious.

So a huge crisis like this really highlights how important it is to have concerted multilateral abilities to respond right away in the service of people who really need the best assistance that they can get.

Consequences of Corruption and Civil War

Melissa Labonte, Ph.D., associate professor of political science and a faculty affiliate of Fordham’s Institute of International Humanitarian Affairs

I would describe this as sort of a tale of two humanitarian crisis responses. In Turkey, you have a capable state, but it’s a state that is sclerotic and has been plagued by corruption. Anyone who has traveled to Turkey in the last few years has seen huge construction projects that have been doled out as political favors to loyalists of president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s AKP party. You have buildings that have not been built to code, in areas that are very close to the fault lines. This was a recipe for disaster.

The other is Syria, where prior decisions stemming from the Civil War mean that in an area with about 11 million people in it, more than half are internally displaced persons from other parts of Syria.
Most people understand that the Syrian Civil Defense Force, or “white helmets,” have been working in this area for a really long time with very little assistance from the outside world.

You’ve got millions of people who are now living in structures that were decimated by the war. They have no food, no shelter, no medicine, and no water. It’s that last element that is going to turn that part of the post-earthquake crisis into one where the death toll is going to start to mount catastrophically. Because what’s going to happen next is there’ll be a massive outbreak of cholera.

As an international community, we have to come to the recognition that things are so deeply interconnected. Our failure to deal with crises like Syria and our failure to cultivate a more responsive democracy in Turkey are the antecedent conditions that lead to the inability or the unwillingness of regimes to respond effectively to their populations.

‘Recovery Will Take Time’: The Importance of Ongoing Donations

Selin Gülgöz, Ph.D., assistant professor of psychology who lived in Istanbul from 1993 until 2009, when she moved to the United States for graduate school. Her family still lives there today.

Istanbul wasn’t affected directly by this earthquake, but we did live through the major earthquake back in 1999, where the epicenter was a little bit outside of the city. I was very fortunate at that time that our family was unaffected, but it’s hard to remain unaffected even if your close ones are not hurt. I was 11 at the time, so it was quite traumatizing.

It’s estimated that this earthquake has impacted roughly 15 million people. Turkey as a whole country has about 80 million. So that’s a huge percentage of the population.

Most of my efforts so far have been trying to raise awareness of some of the local organizations that have been there from day one, and are often faster than governmental organizations.

There are two that have a proven record of trust and professionalism, are reliable, fast-acting, and have networks in Turkey on the ground: Turkish Philanthropy’s Turkish Earthquake Relief Effort; and Bridge to Turkiye’s Earthquake Relief Fund.

Right now, 30,000 people have died and the number is expected to rise. Even more have been displaced, including children who have lost their families, so monthly contributions are encouraged, as healing and recovery will take time.

An Event That Affects the Whole Region

Samantha Slattery, FCRH ’15, GSAS ’19, Regional Programmes Officer for Jesuit Refugee Service in Beiruit, Lebanon. Slattery earned an M.S. in humanitarian studies at Fordham.

I work with projects addressing the crisis in Lebanon, which has the highest refugee population per capita in the world. Our office supports JRS teams in Syria in Aleppo and Homs, and right now they’re helping with emergency distributions, especially winterization materials because it’s very cold here right now. Anyone who wants to help our teams can do so by donating here.

The difficulty that all organizations are experiencing right now in Syria is that a lot of aid workers and volunteers there have also already experienced multiple traumas from the war. Now they’ve survived this earthquake, and many have suffered their own personal losses.

In Lebanon, the earthquake woke us up from our sleep here, and luckily, it missed us. But people are still affected here. So many of the people we work with have lost loved ones in Aleppo. It affects the whole region.

A concern that I have is that international attention could wane. Right now there’s a big effort from the international community to respond to these crises, but once crises become protracted, the eyes of the world look away to new emergencies.

Focusing on Mental Health

Lynne Jones, child psychiatrist and course director for the program on Mental Health in Complex Emergencies at Fordham’s Institute of International Humanitarian Affairs

I hope that this will shake people into their senses and realize that human beings are human beings, and they need their basic needs addressed. I would add to that list the emotional need for connection. Whether somebody has died or not died, everybody has experienced loss. If it’s compounded by the loss of a loved person, of course, it’s much worse, but even if you haven’t lost a person, you’ve lost the environment in which you’ve lived. You’ve lost any sense of security, you’ve lost all your belongings.

Imagine you’re standing there and everything around you has been destroyed. What you need is to be reconnected with people that are familiar to you and reestablish as quickly as possible some kind of structure and routine in your life. And, these two things will really help you address the other issues of maintaining your physical health.

I’ve written guidelines with others for both the COVID pandemic and the Ukraine crisis on how we can support children who have suffered a bereavement. We’re adapting them now. The key points are, to tell the truth in a way that’s appropriate to a child’s developmental age and to make sure that they have continuous loving care.

Stovall is currently the dean of the Humanities Division and a distinguished professor of history at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Before he joined UCSC in 2015, he was dean of the Undergraduate Division of Letters and Science at the University of California, Berkeley. From 2016 to 2017, he served as president of the American Historical Association, the oldest and largest society of historians and professors of history in the United States.

“I am thrilled to come to Fordham, a great university in a great city. I look forward to working with our graduate students in arts and sciences as well as the other deans of the university,” said Stovall.

“Most of all, I look forward to learning more about what makes this university so special; getting to know its faculty, staff, and students; and becoming a part of the Fordham community.”

Fordham Provost Dennis Jacobs, Ph.D., praised Stovall’s scholarship, leadership, and dedication to lifting up minority scholars and calling out injustice.

“In Dr. Stovall, Fordham has found a world-renowned scholar, an experienced administrator, and a public intellectual with a fierce commitment to social justice. A key theme in his professional life—as both a historian and an administrator—has been equity and inclusion,” Jacobs said in an announcement to the Fordham community. He noted that Stovall has challenged not only racial barriers but also those that separate academics from the broader society.

“Among the first African Americans in the U.S. to achieve prominence in European history, he has provided encouragement and mentorship for other minority scholars to follow in his stead,” Jacobs said.

Stovall earned a Ph.D. in modern European/French history from the University of Wisconsin, Madison. He is the author of 10 books and numerous articles in the field of modern French history, with a specialization in transnational history, labor, colonialism, and race. His latest book, White Freedom: The Racial History of an Idea (Princeton University Press, 2021), is forthcoming from Princeton University Press. Others include Transnational France: The Modern History of a Universal Nation (Westview 2015) and Paris and the Spirit of 1919: Consumer Struggles, Transnationalism, and Revolution (Cambridge University Press, 2012).

In his new role as dean of GSAS, Stovall will serve as chief academic officer of a school that offers degrees in 29 different fields of study. He’ll work in close partnership with the dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, the dean of Fordham College at Rose Hill, and the dean of Fordham College at Lincoln Center.

Stovall will succeed Melissa Labonte, Ph.D., associate professor of political science, who has served as interim dean of GSAS since January 2019. Former GSAS Dean Eva Badowska, Ph.D., now serves as dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences.

But thanks to a recently created named research fund, Chandra, an economics Ph.D. student in the Graduate School Arts and Sciences (GSAS), will be able to continue the research for her dissertation, which focuses on the causes of education gaps in her native India.

Good Motivation

Speaking from her hometown near New Delhi, Chandra said the Donna Smolens Summer Research Fellowship in Economics, of which she is the second recipient, will help her manage her living expenses so she can continue to pursue her research without getting a paid job.

“I was checking my email almost every day since I came home, and it was really exciting to get some good news,” she said, noting that she has all the data she needs to work on what will be a chapter in her dissertation.

“It’s good motivation to get it done.”

Summer Funding Is Critical

Chandra’s is a story that is becoming more common, as GSAS has expanded its summer funding opportunities with the help of generous benefactors like Smolens. Melissa Labonte, Ph.D., interim dean of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, said that because most Ph.D.-level programs are only funded in nine-month intervals, summer fellowships are critical. GSAS currently has 24 endowed scholarships and fellowships that benefit students enrolled across 35 doctoral and master’s degree programs.

“Every single internship or opportunity a student might otherwise avail themselves this time of year is drying up very quickly because of the pandemic, so right now we’re in the midst of enhancing the support we provide students in the summer,” she said.

“We want to them be able to continue to make progress on their research, and we also want them to get mentoring support.”

‘It Made My Career’

Smolens said she funded the fellowship because the help she received as a Fordham student was instrumental in her success. After graduating from Fordham College at Rose Hill in 1979 and GSAS in 1981, she embarked on what would become a long and thriving career in finance. She retired in 2020 as a senior adviser with Insight Partners, a leading global private equity and venture capital firm.

Her undergraduate studies at Fordham were made possible with a partial scholarship and she attended graduate school with aid from William Hogan, S.J., the founder of the Fordham Industrial Economics Research Institute. Father Hogan hired her to be his research assistant, and when it came time to look for a job, career services arranged for her to interview with the bank Manufacturers Hanover Trust.

“I think I was the only Fordham person to get an offer, and it made my career, no question,” she said.

“How did I do that? The maturity and experience I got from working with Father Hogan those years allowed me to stand out against other students. Fordham really prepared me really well, and this is why I wanted to give back.”

Investigating Bitcoin

In addition to the Smolens fellowship that was first offered last year, this spring GSAS offered for the first time a Dominick Salvatore Summer Research Fellowship in Economics, named for Dominick Salvatore, Ph.D., currently a Distinguished Professor of Economics. It was funded by Sherif Assef, FCRH ’81, GSAS ’82, ’94, Luca Bonardi, GSAS ’99, and Selena Schneider, GSAS ’01.

While Chandra’s research is focused on analyzing a unique dataset from India on factors affecting education, such as family and school inputs, Janhavi Tripathi, the recipient of the Salvatore Fellowship, is training his sights on global cryptocurrency markets. Because currencies such as Bitcoin are still relatively new, there are still questions about whether market prices for the cost of individual units of the currencies reflect all publicly available relevant information and would be considered “efficient.”

In addition to measuring whether markets are efficient, Tripathi also researches how Blockchain technology can be used to make global remittances fast and more reliable. The movement of money from wealthy nations such as the United States to developing countries like India is expected to increase to $1.03 trillion by 2022, he said.

“Financial inclusion is one of the big gains from this. If Blockchain technology can be used to help global remittances, a lot of time that can be saved and a real gap can be bridged,” said Tripathi, who is also using his grant to cover living expenses.

Retired Professor Gives Back

Bridging gaps is something that Terrence Tilley, Ph.D., understands as well. Tilley, a professor emeritus and retired chair of Fordham’s Theology Department, has for the past year funded the Theology Graduate Student Development Fund. Rather than fund summer research, it funds travel for graduate students to either conduct research or present findings at academic conferences, such as the annual Leuven Encounters in Systematic Theology conference in Belgium that Fordham theology students have traveled to over the years.

Tilley has first-hand knowledge of the value that travel adds to research. In 1974, he traveled to England to do archival research and interviews as part of his doctoral dissertation, while his wife, the late Maureen Tilley, Ph.D., stayed at home with their daughter.

“Maureen and I were very poor grad students, but we scraped together as much money as we had, and I flew to England, where I found a manuscript that supposedly never existed, or had been lost,” he said.

The manuscript, an essay titled “On Revelation,” was written by Ian T. Ramsey, who was Bishop of Durham from 1966 to 1972. Tilley was able to cite it in his well-received dissertation and would go on to publish 10 books and nearly 100 academic papers over a career spanning four decades. But he noted that on one occasion while he was away, Maureen and their daughter had to settle for popcorn dusted with parmesan cheese for dinner until payday came the next day.

“I hadn’t thought of that adventure in terms of funding this graduate fellowship, but it may have been in my subconscious,” he said, laughing.

“Ramsey’s widow not only let me interview her for 10 hours but put me up overnight. I encountered such generosity on this trip, not only from her, but from other people. It was a remarkable experience, and to be in a position to be able to contribute to others being able to travel and doing research, it makes me feel good,” he said.

Labonte noted that all the donors who funded the fellowships did so before the COVID-19 outbreak.

“I don’t know if they even understood how incredibly impactful their gifts were going to be, especially this summer,” she said.

“It brings into stark relief the value of having engaged philanthropic leaders for your school in good times and bad. Certainly in times like these, students really need that support more than ever.”

Some of Fordham University’s brightest master’s and doctoral students showed that the possibilities are boundless at the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences’ second annual Three Minute Thesis competition March 13 at the McNally Amphitheatre on the Lincoln Center Campus.

The Three Minute Thesis competition, founded at the University of Queensland in Australia in 2008 and now held at over 600 universities across more than 65 countries, gives participants just three minutes to explain their research to a non-specialist audience—and tell them why it matters.

Seventeen GSAS students gave engaging and informative talks explaining their thesis or dissertation research, covering a diverse array of topics ranging from Latin American monetary policy to anxiety disorders in HIV-positive youth.

The challenging exercise places students outside of their academic comfort zones, but the skills required to relate complex topics to a generalist audience are extremely useful, said Melissa Labonte, Ph.D., GSAS interim dean.

“It’s not just about presenting for this competition; it’s about using the skills of good communication to be able to clearly explain the value of your work,” Labonte said. “That’s a self-advocacy tool that doesn’t diminish the value of your work—in fact, it amplifies it.”

Far from “watering down” their subject matter, several presenters said they found great value in the process of distilling their work to its essential elements.

“History is all about building up context,” said Louisa Foroughi, a Ph.D. student in the Department of History who won third place for her lecture on the status and identity of yeomen in medieval England. “But this kind of work is about stripping away and thinking about what are the really key moments and events and themes that have to come through in order for my topic to make sense.”

Ana Rabasco, a psychology doctoral student, won first place for her presentation “Risk Factors for Suicidal Behaviors Among Transgender and Gender Non-Binary Individuals.”

Rabasco’s research explores the underlying dynamics behind high suicide rates among transgender and gender non-binary, or TGNB, individuals—40 percent of whom attempt suicide at some point during their lifetime, as compared with roughly 4 percent of the general population. Her survey of TGNB individuals found that current victimization is the most salient risk factor for future suicide attempts, ranking higher than past victimization, body satisfaction, and even depression.

“What this tells us is that TGNB individuals attempt suicide in large part because of dangerous, toxic, and harmful environments that they’re living in,” Rabasco said. “And therefore, if we can improve those environments, we can help to reduce that high rate of suicide among TGNB people. We have to do more than just bring suicide out of the margins, although that’s really important too. We also, as a collective community, have to come together to create an environment that’s accepting, respectful, and kind to all people, regardless of gender identity.”

Alexander Elnabli, a philosophy doctoral student, won second place for his presentation on teaching students to thoughtfully explore the

tensions between secular education and traditional religious values, which drew on his experience as a sixth-grade English teacher in Cairo during the Egyptian Revolution.

At the conclusion of the program, audience members voted for their favorite presentations. The “People’s Choice” prize went to Elle Barnes, a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Biological Sciences, who explained her research on how urbanization is leading to changes in the bacteria present on the skin of New York City salamanders, impacting their vulnerability to disease. She hopes her work will also expand knowledge about how microbes in humans impact our own susceptibility to disease.

“What can we learn from these tiny worlds? And can we use them to our advantage? These are the types of questions I’m answering with my dissertation,” she said.

– Michael Garofalo

Fordham is one of 28 colleges and universities to win a Next Generation PhD matching grant, which aims to overhaul doctoral programs in the humanities to better prepare students for 21st-century job prospects within and outside of academia.

“The future of doctoral training in the humanities depends on innovative models that will deliver the competencies and skills that doctorate holders need to succeed in a variety of career pathways, in addition to traditional faculty lines,” said Eva Badowska, PhD, dean of GSAS and grant director, alongside co-director, Matthew McGowan, PhD, associate professor of classics.

“As a graduate school within a Jesuit university recognized for its strengths in the humanities, GSAS is uniquely situated to ask what it means truly to prepare our doctoral candidates for the fast-changing world of higher education and for the new knowledge economy,” Badowska said.

Historically, doctoral programs have prepared graduates solely for work in academia. However, with a 30 percent decline in academic job postings in the humanities since 2008, this singular focus is no longer realistic for students graduating from these programs.

“Thousands of professors are currently in the business of preparing thousands of graduate students for jobs that don’t exist,” Leonard Cassuto, PhD, professor of English and a collaborator on the project, said in his recent book, The Graduate School Mess: What Caused It and How We Can Fix It (Harvard University Press, 2013).

The $25,000 planning grant, to be matched by an additional $25,000 from GSAS, will not only propose rethinking Fordham’s five doctoral programs in the humanities (classics, English, history, philosophy, and theology), but will also examine what a 21st-century PhD program at any institution should encompass. For instance, what advanced transferrable skills should be taught at the doctoral level? Should skills such as collaborative teamwork and advanced digital proficiency be treated on a par with traditional emphases, such as mastery of field-specific knowledge and independent research skills?

In addition to Badowska and McGowan, the project includes a Core Planning Group and Constituent Advisory Group comprising GSAS faculty, current doctoral candidates, alumni, and community leaders who would benefit from hiring graduates with doctoral-level expertise.

At the end of the academic year, the group will produce a white paper detailing the proposed model.

“We want to rethink how we deliver the PhD at our University, but also make it scalable to other institutions and humanities programs,” said Melissa Labonte, PhD, associate dean of GSAS and associate professor of political science. “To do right by the students in these programs, we need to rethink the entire model. This planning grant will allow us to begin this process.”

A key part of the grant will address making doctoral programs in the humanities more inclusive of underrepresented, underserved, and marginalized communities, Labonte said. Within these groups, the percentage of students who enroll in a doctoral-level program has dropped precipitously in recent decades.

“We’re trying to find ways to counter this trend,” Labonte said. “This part of the grant falls very much in line with Fordham’s mission. If we’re going to embrace progressivism and social justice models, then we have to think about how PhD programs in the humanities will address the needs of people from underserved communities.”

The NEH announced the Next Generation PhD grants winners on Aug. 9 as part of $79 million in grants for 290 humanities projects and programs across the country, an initiative the group undertook to mark its 50th anniversary year.

The first conference, “Human Rights in an Age of Ambiguity,” will take place June 13-15. Fordham is co-sponsoring the event with the International Studies Association and three other groups. The conference will address recent trends in the global human rights landscape, such as the emerging trend of pushbacks against human rights, the global refugee crisis, and transnational threats to human rights.

Following that, “Meeting the Challenges of Development and Dignity” will take place June 16-18. The conference serves as the annual meeting of the Academic Council on the United Nations System and is co-sponsored by Fordham’s Institute of International Humanitarian Affairs. It will focus on the role of education as an engine of development, how to best achieve gender equity to ensure development and dignity, and the role of faith in development and dignity.

Melissa Labonte, PhD, associate dean for strategic initiatives and associate professor of political science in the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, said the topics were ideal to address so closely together.

“Development and dignity are two sides of the same coin in creating a stable, more peaceful world where people can realize their own human potential and do it within frameworks that are responsive to their needs,” she said.

“Those frameworks can be governmental, global, or they can be community-based.”

Among the highlights of the week will be talks by Jan Eliasson, deputy secretary-general of the United Nations, who will deliver the keynote address on Thursday, June 16, and Ibrahim Gambari, Co-Chair, Commission on Global Security, Justice and Governance; former Permanent Representative of Nigeria to the U.N. and  former Foreign Minister of Nigeria, who will speak on Friday, June 17.

Gambari was a member of the U.N. Security Council in 1994, when the Rwandan genocide was unfolding. Labonte said he “almost singlehandedly” persuaded other council members to reinstate a lapsed peacekeeping mission to Africa—a move that saved many lives during the rampant killing.

“Had he not been there, it probably would have been worse,” Labonte said.

“Those speakers are the two anchor events for that program, and we’re thrilled that we have both of them with us.”

For more information on the conferences, visit http://www.isanet.org/Conferences/HR-NYC-2016 and http://acuns.org/am2016/

What happens when a global health crisis leaves the Western media spotlight?

As he watched a patient he’d grown close to die at one of Mother Teresa’s homes for the terminally ill in Kolkata, Joseph Woodring, DO, FCRH ’98, felt overwhelmed by his inability to help the man—and he had an epiphany. “I’d been holding his hand, watching his chest rise and fall,” said Woodring, who first visited India in 1995 as an undergraduate in Fordham’s Global Outreach program. On that trip, he learned to connect with suffering and honor the human dignity of sick and impoverished people. But now, a few years out of college, he wanted to examine the bigger picture. “If I don’t get upstream and learn what these guys have,” he thought, “I’m not fixing anything. I want to be able to actually treat people.” 

Last year, during the Ebola outbreak in West Africa, Woodring deployed to Liberia as an epidemiologist for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. His job was to trace the spread of the virus and work with local people to arrest the contagion. By showing respect for the dignity and self-determination of people in the villages, he said, he was able to convince communities to adopt practices that stopped the spread of Ebola.

That kind of community-minded approach is still needed to fuel social and economic recovery in the Ebola zone and prepare for the next disaster, said Ellie Frazier, GSAS ’15. A recent graduate of Fordham’s master’s degree program in international political economy and development, Frazier was in Sierra Leone in June 2014, studying the role paralegals play in knitting the nation back together after its civil war, when Ebola emerged as a major problem.

Now back in New York, Frazier, an adjunct instructor at Fordham’s Institute of International Humanitarian Affairs, stresses that recovering from the outbreak will require sustained international attention and sincere collaboration with affected communities. Emergency Ebola treatment centers are being turned into permanent clinics. That’s good, Frazier said, but villages will also have to reintegrate stigmatized Ebola survivors, negotiate what to do with the land of families wiped out by Ebola, find a way to care for and pay school fees for orphaned children, and address other consequences not yet identified.

“The immediate emergency seems to have subsided, but now what? The tendency with media and some humanitarians is OK, done. But for there to be full-on economic recovery, it is going to take a lot of time,” she said, and “it needs to be bottom up.”

More than 11,000 people died. For eight months, the response was left to just two international charities: Doctors Without Borders and Samaritan’s Purse. While they did heroic frontline medical work, they and later arrivals were ill-equipped to halt the spread of the disease. They had a hard time convincing people to stop kissing or shaking hands, and to suspend traditional burial practices that involve washing and caressing the body—expressions of deeply held spiritual beliefs but also certain methods for communicating the disease.

Medical response teams full of foreigners wrapped in bright yellow plastic suits with shields over their faces arrived on trucks in remote villages to remove the bodies of the dead. They were met with resistance and fear. People hid their sick relatives and buried the dead secretly, allowing the disease to blossom. 

When he arrived in Liberia in October, Woodring realized a different approach would be necessary. He focused on communicating with people who could effect change. “It’s the village elders that made the impact,” he said, by enforcing quarantines and maintaining the 21-day observation of anyone directly exposed to the disease. “The village elders were at the apex of those societies, and [people]were roaring in and stripping them of their traditional role. We had to go to the elders and work with them. You’d inform traditional healers and give them due deference and tell them, look, this practice is very dangerous.” 

Collaborating with local social systems is key, experts say, both for effective containment of diseases and to lay the groundwork for recovery. Thousands of foreign nurses, doctors, and aid workers, among them several Fordham alumni and staff, aided their West African counterparts during the Ebola outbreak. A year later, the disease is nearly abated, and Western media, which fueled hysteria and panic in the United States during the outbreak, has shifted to other crises. But the affected countries are still struggling to recover, and humanitarian experts are studying the Ebola outbreak to learn how the world can respond sooner and better—and even prevent the next disaster.

The solutions are straightforward but terribly difficult to achieve, according to Alexander van Tulleken, MD, senior fellow at Fordham’s Institute of International Humanitarian Affairs. “The next pandemic is prevented by building a world where people are given the opportunity to get educated and thrive,” he said. It might sound trite, but he’s serious. A strong healthcare system, access to education, and a stable civil society are what ultimately protect against disease. 

The reason Ebola was so deadly and persistent in Liberia, Sierra Leone, and Guinea, while cases elsewhere were more quickly contained, has everything to do with the destabilizing effects of war and extreme poverty. “Diseases are opportunists,” Van Tulleken said. “They only thrive in certain climates. Like criminals and terrorists, they look for places where rule of law is broken down.” 

With national infrastructure—not just roads but electrical systems, healthcare, communication, and trust in government—broken apart by years of armed conflict and underinvestment, fighting Ebola was especially difficult, said Melissa Labonte, PhD, an associate professor of political science at Fordham, who has studied the region extensively. She said doctors focused on a medical and technical response, but social wounds allowed Ebola to fester, so a social response was also needed to beat it back. 

“You can’t go in and just do things. The imperative is to respond, I know, but you have to know what you are doing before you start acting,” Labonte said. “Local knowledge matters. It was undervalued. Once we started to listen to it and value it, things changed for the better.”

Because the virus is strongest at and even after death, people who care for the sick and prepare the deceased for burial are at highest risk for contracting the disease. One sick person could infect dozens of others, as Woodring learned when he traced the root of 65 cases in one rural county to a man who had cared for his Ebola-stricken brother in Monrovia. That man returned home, got sick, and went to a bare-bones clinic. A grandmother from another village cared for him, wiping up vomit and comforting the man as he died overnight. The grandmother returned home and grew ill. Because she was a central and beloved figure in her community, dozens of people attended her funeral, caressing her body, kissing her—and contracting Ebola. Forty-seven of the infected people died, a 72 percent fatality rate.

“Honestly, all our efforts were for naught if we couldn’t control the burial system,” Woodring said. “Even though there is a huge science to Ebola, if you didn’t get people’s respect from the beginning—by offering it—you were just another white guy coming in telling them what to do.” He hopes national governments can harness the training and funding that followed the Ebola crisis to build sustained healthcare systems in the affected countries.

It’s an approach Elin Gursky, GSAS ’13, considers essential. In April, when United Nations Secretary General Ban-Ki Moon named a high-level panel to study the global response to health crises and present a report by the end of the year, Gursky was appointed to the resource group of experts supporting the panel. Broad and deep international cooperation and political will to invest more money in strong public health systems are what’s needed to prevent and counter future disease outbreaks, she said. 

“You can bring in experts and surge capacities, but it needs to support, not supplant, local systems,” Gursky said. “It needs to start at the community level.” 

When Laura Sida, a pediatric cancer nurse and a graduate student in Fordham’s master’s degree program in humanitarian affairs, arrived in Sierra Leone last spring, she thought she’d be part of a treatment clinic. But the work quickly shifted to disaster recovery. After six months spent helping ministry of health workers improve clinic management and supervising psychological and social support teams for Ebola survivors, Sida said recovering after the disaster is just as crucial for long-term health as responding to the crisis itself. She’s found her master’s thesis topic: the challenges of rebuilding after a disaster.

A particular difficulty in the aftermath of Ebola is that the disease attacks precisely the people who might be relied on to lead a social recovery, she said. “It kills the caretakers, the people who are the most caring and compassionate. So who is left? Ebola clears the household.”  

How the countries build back, from the most immediate relationships in villages to the strength of national health systems—and what the international community learns from Ebola—will determine how the next global health crisis plays out. The world isn’t getting any less connected, as the few Ebola cases that emerged in the United States show, and there will inevitably be a next time, Van Tulleken said. “We need to understand that my life and the life of the poorest person in Africa are intimately linked.”

—Eileen Markey, FCRH ’98, is the author of a biography of Maura Clarke, one of the U.S. nuns killed in El Salvador in 1980, to be published next year by Nation Books.

The daylong event was sponsored by the Office of the Dean of Fordham College at Rose Hill. Faculty mentor awards went to Evon Hekkala, Ph.D., assistant professor of biology, Suzanne Hafner, Ph.D., assistant professor of modern languages and literatures, and Melissa Labonte, Ph.D. assistant professor of political science.

I don’t want to talk much about the poverty here; it feeds into the essentializing of the national image and, to be honest, I’ve seen similar things in other countries and even in my own neighborhood in Manhattan. But on Friday (May 21), I was stuck in a traffic jam getting into the city center and was struck by the image of two little boys, neither could have been older than five or six years old, walking by the roadside, nearly naked and barefoot, with water-filled jerry cans balanced on their heads. The jerry cans were as tall as they were and must have weighed 30 pounds or more. The sweat was pouring down the sides of their faces. But the minute they saw me passing by the car, they broke into huge smiles and waved. They didn’t ask for money, they didn’t rush to the car to see if I had candy. They just smiled. There’s a lot of dignity in the face of the crushing poverty here.

On Friday, I also spent a good part of the day interviewing staff at the Special Court for Sierra Leone, established in 2001 to try those “bearing the greatest responsibility” for war crimes and crimes against humanity during the latter portion of the civil war. The last of the “group” trials has ended here – the Court is now in the winding down phase – but the final trial it is responsible for involves former Liberian President Charles Taylor. The trial even had to be moved from Freetown to The Hague in the Netherlands for security reasons – and quite understandably, as Taylor is not popular here.

When I rocked up to the Special Court compound, the staff was all abuzz. International media were bombarding my colleague’s office in Public Affairs and Outreach. It seems that Mia Farrow (Darfur uber-activist and the former Mrs. Woody Allen) just turned over to the Court a photo of supermodel Naomi Campbell, who is notorious for assaulting her maid a few years ago, receiving a rough cut “blood” diamond from President Taylor when they both happened to be in South Africa a few years ago. Now, even assuming that Ms. Campbell didn’t understand why President Taylor would want to just “give” her a diamond, or even if she didn’t really know who he was, surely her moral compass would have signaled that there was something very wrong about this exchange? Is she in the habit of receiving massive diamonds from world leaders? Aye carumba!

In any case, the prosecution is now seeking to subpoena her to testify and she is having none of it, reacting most unpleasantly to media inquiries. Anger management has never been one of her strong suits, apparently. Ms. Farrow has already said she’ll happily testify. Lesson here: don’t get on Mia Farrow’s bad side.

All joking aside, Taylor single-handedly did more to destroy Sierra Leone than any other person. If this evidence helps ensure that justice is carried out, it can only be a good thing for Sierra Leoneans. I’m going back to the Court to interview the deputy prosecutor next week. By then, a decision should be rendered on whether Naomi will have to book a ticket to The Hague.

I arrive at Freetown-Lungi International Airport at 8:30 p.m. on Wednesday, May 19. IPED graduate and my former student, Jay Endaya, is due to meet me on the “Aberdeen side,” with the person who will likely be my part-time driver during my stay. The airport is very much what I expected — and it’s probably good that we landed in the dark because the photos I’ve seen of the airfield during daytime include abandoned aircraft wreckage.

Lungi Airport has to be the worst located airport on the entire planet. It sits on a peninsula and there are three ways to get into Freetown proper (and your hotel): car, ferry and taxi. The land route takes at least 4 hours. The ferry takes about an hour, but weather can complicate this and there is always the chance of too few life vests for too many passengers. The helicopter is expensive (relatively speaking) but fast (15 minutes). Each option has its risks, including the helicopter route; one crash in June 2007 killed all 22 people on board. So, you pick your poison and hope the travel gods are with you.

The neon sign telling us where we have landed read “F EETO N INTE NATIONAL A POR. ” The first thing to hit you when you leave the plane is the humidity. I’ve managed three summers in Richmond, Va., and have traveled a fair bit in tropical countries, but it’s not quite the same as the equatorial humidity here.

The second thing to hit you is the chaotic environment. Getting through customs was relatively straightforward, but it’s what’s on the other side that was a shocker. Dozens of porters (no clue if they are “official” or not) grab at your luggage, and beckon you to follow them here or there, either to the ferry or to the helicopter offices. They make a chalk mark on your luggage, which designates a temporary “ownership” and deters poaching by other porters. I took only two carry-ons for this trip, knowing this would be something I’d face. But Mohammed, the porter who eventually caught up with me, persisted and so I finally gave in and let him wheel my bag out to the helicopter office.

My helicopter ride was uneventful. The most unnerving thing about it was finding out that the Syrian pilot flying our Russian craft got his license in Nigeria. ‘Nuff said. We land. More chaos. My bag is nowhere to be seen and Mohammed is on the other side of the peninsula. Other passengers are similarly worried, and it takes about 30 minutes for them to “reappear.” By this time, Jay is in the parking lot with his colleague, Henry, and the driver, John. So we head to the hotel and. as I swat a few mosquitoes away from my ears and drift off to sleep, I realize I’ve finally arrived in Sierra Leone.