For his final act as dean of Fordham College at Rose Hill (FCRH), Michael Latham, Ph.D., showed he can croon along with the best of them.

In his last address at FCRH’s Encaenia annual awards night on May 15, before his departure for Grinnell College, Latham quoted Jackson Browne’s version of “Stay”—in which even as the road crew dismantles the stage, the rapture of performance still resonates and the musician pleads with his audience not to let it end.

“Now the promoter don’t mind. And the union don’t mind. If we take a little time. And leave it all behind, and sing. One more song—You know how it goes,” he said.

“Oh, won’t you stay? Just a little bit longer? Please, please, please …” Latham sang to applause.

“But … we really can’t stay, can we? Because in less than 48 hours I will hand each of you a diploma and this wonderful celebration of your accomplishments, experience, and growth here at Fordham College will draw to a close. My own time here will also end.”

Latham, a professor of history who joined the faculty in 1996 and was appointed interim dean in 2009 and then dean, encouraged students to embrace gratitude for the family and friends who have contributed to their successes. He also encouraged them to pursue a life of solidarity and engagement.

“As Dorothy Day argued in her classic autobiography, ‘We have all known the long loneliness and we have learned that the only solution is love and that love comes with community,’” he told the graduating class. “‘The deepest, existential questions about who we are, and what our purpose is cannot be answered alone.’”

Instead, he said, they require engagement in “the kind of hard, challenging, giving love that bridges knowledge and experience. This is something, moreover, that you can certainly take with you from your education at Fordham.”

The annual awards ceremony also recognizes student accomplishments. Valedictorian Kristen Cagnino, a chemistry major, singled out Shahrokh Saba, Ph.D., associate professor of chemistry, as a teacher who made a marked difference in her time at Fordham.

“The thing about Dr. Saba was that he truly cares about his students. And not only how [we’re] doing in his class but also … in life. I can’t tell you how much that means to a student,” she said.

On the lighter side, Lord of the Manor Stephen Ross poked fun at campus food and social media (“my ‘Fordham Constructive Criticism’ Facebook page failed to capture the attention of my peers”) and explained employment prospects at the CIA and the FBI—where many Fordham graduates, including current CIA Director John Brennan, FCRH ’77, end up. Some say it is because students from Catholic schools are more likely to follow the orders of superiors, Ross said, but he attributes it to the wealth of acronyms.

“After four years of RHA, CSA, USG, OSLCD, NSO, FET, FNN, FCRH, GSB, SCC, CSS, CSJ, CSC, AMDG … give me a drone, Obama; I’m ready.”

David Zelaya, UGE ’64, was in a theology class at Fordham’s 302 Broadway campus when he learned that President Kennedy had been shot. Fifty years later, after reading “The Kennedy Legacy,” an interview with Michael Latham, Ph.D., dean of Fordham College at Rose Hill, Zelaya composed the following reminiscence. “For me,” he wrote by way of introduction, “the names of the 35th president of the United States and that of my beloved alma mater will be forever linked.”

In the mid- to late 1950s, my parents, my sister, and I fell under the spell of the Kennedy family. Like legions of our coreligionists across the country, we were proud of the prominent, attractive Catholic couple: the charismatic John F. Kennedy, his charming wife, Jacquelyn, and their lovely children, Caroline and John-John. We were beguiled by the young senator’s winning personality, his erudition, his oratorical skills, and his war hero status. We followed his career as senator, published author, presidential candidate, and commander in chief, and we regularly watched his televised press conferences—many of which my sister taped on a reel-to-reel tape recorder. To this day, I can recite from memory lengthy snippets of his famous inaugural address.

True, in later years we would learn of the man’s flawed character, of his illnesses, of his reliance on steroids, painkillers, and stimulants, and of his often risky behavior. In our innocence, however, for the all-too-brief “Camelot” period, we basked in the sunshine of President Kennedy’s radiant smile. He was a hero to millions at home and abroad.

I was a Fordham senior in the fall of 1963, and almost all of my classes were taken at 302 Broadway. That year, the renowned Father Ralph Tapia had designated me as the “beadle” of his theology class. One of my responsibilities in that capacity was to lead the class in prayer at the beginning of each session. So it was that just before 2 p.m. on Friday, November 22, 1963, I entered the classroom to find my distraught classmates nervously mulling over rumors that the president had been shot. It was the first I had heard of it. I mounted the podium and led the class in a Hail Mary “for a special intention.” Once the students were seated, an ashen, visibly shaken Father Tapia entered the room, said a few words to comfort us, informed us that he had no reliable information to pass along, and promptly dismissed the class.

The subway ride home was an eerie experience. The car I was in was crowded but no one spoke. The only sounds to be heard were the screeching of the wheels and the squeaks of the cabin. Some people had glazed looks in their eyes while others were openly weeping. It was during the hour I spent on my way home that the president was officially declared dead.

Once home, I joined my disconsolate family. We embraced, tried to comfort each other and tried to hold back tears. Like millions of Americans, we were glued to the television for three consecutive days. As if the events of that awful Friday were not enough, we returned home from Mass on Sunday to learn—and to see videotape—of Jack Ruby walking up to Lee Harvey Oswald in a Dallas police station and shooting the president’s assassin in full view of police and other law enforcement personnel. That three-day period has been described by CBS’ Face the Nation moderator Bob Schieffer as “the weekend we lost our innocence.” Others have declared that the events of that awful period marked the end of the 1950s and the beginning of the tumultuous ’60s.

It has become a truism that members of a rapidly diminishing generation remember where they were when Pearl Harbor was attacked in 1941. Most of us remember where we were when terrorists attacked the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on September 11, 2001. My contemporaries remember all too well exactly where we were when we learned of the assassination of President Kennedy. I was in theology class at my beloved Fordham University.

—David Zelaya, UGE ’64

Q&A: Dean Michael Latham, Fordham College at Rose Hill

Michael Latham, Ph.D., dean of Fordham College at Rose Hill and professor of history, is the author ofThe Right Kind of Revolution: Modernization, Development, and U.S. Foreign Policy from the Cold War to the Present (Cornell University Press, 2011) and Modernization as Ideology: American Social Science and “Nation Building” in the Kennedy Era(University of North Carolina Press, 2000). Latham spoke with Inside Fordham about the John F. Kennedy presidency, reflecting on the upcoming 50th anniversary of the JFK assassination.

Q. What was the vision that enabled Kennedy to win the 1960 presidential election?

A. It’s important to remember that he came into office following a very narrow election; he barely squeaked by. As a Catholic, he was an outsider in some ways, but coming from Harvard certainly helped him. He was also a comparatively inexperienced politician, although he was well connected among American intellectuals and strategic thinkers.

Regarding foreign policy, he was very much a creature of the Cold War, and subscribed to its ideological constructs, including the imperative of global containment and the domino theory. If you read his inaugural address, what you see is not only a soaring idealism and inspiration but a determination to, as he put it, let every nation know “whether it wishes us well or ill, we will pay any price, we will bear any burden in the defense of freedom”—making it clear to any adversary that the United States would not fail in this obligation. If you look at the Bay of Pigs invasion in Cuba, he didn’t ask the tough questions. He took the advice and guidance of the CIA and Defense Department officials who were convinced that they could remove Fidel Castro, and things went badly wrong.

But you also see a president who learns from these mistakes. You could argue that his worst failures and his greatest accomplishments were both in foreign policy. The Bay of Pigs was a complete disaster; on the other hand, his management of the Cuban missile crisis paints a different picture. Despite tremendous pressure from the military for a more aggressive response, he instead tried to slow the crisis down, and in doing so he opened the space for a diplomatic solution. That was a significant step.

Q. Did serving in the office alter Kennedy’s vision?

A. By 1963, Kennedy was actually starting to make an overture to the Soviets. He made a famous speech in August of ’63 where he began talking about “making the world safe for diversity,” including the co-existence with the Soviets, and a tolerance for the nationalism of newly emerging countries. He slowly began to question the limits of an ideologically driven vision of the Cold War.

He also shifted on civil rights. Kennedy did not want to become involved in the civil rights struggle, especially not in a first term. But in April of 1963, when Martin Luther King and others went to Birmingham and segregationist violence erupted, and the nation witnessed children being hit by fire-hose water strong enough to take the bark off of tree trunks, Kennedy realized he had to engage. And so he went on national television and declared that this was fundamentally a moral question. “It’s as old as the scriptures, it’s as clear as the U.S. Constitution.” Once he did that, he took civil rights out of the realm of political compromise and infinitely deferred negotiation and he elevated it to a matter of principle. You don’t call something a moral question if you are about to cut a piecemeal deal on it. That was a pivotal moment.

Q. The assassination on Nov. 22, 1963, less than three years into his presidency, shocked the nation. How did America and beyond grapple with such a loss, much of it televised?

A. Certainly those tragic images were devastating. There was tremendous sorrow. Many around the world saw him as someone with potential who was capable of shifting away from some of the older ways of thinking about American power. Kennedy was viewed and respected by people like [Jawaharlal] Nehru, by other leaders around the world—in Latin America, for example—as somebody who understood that nationalism, and the desire for these counties to find their own way in the world, was something that had to be taken seriously. With the assassination, Kennedy came to embody the symbol of idealism lost, or betrayed.

Q. With his death, was sixties idealism really lost or betrayed?

A. For some people that outlook changed. To be honest I am not sure it changed the overall direction of American [foreign]policy. I don’t think Kennedy was about to walk out of Vietnam. I don’t see him escaping the mistakes that [Lyndon] Johnson ultimately made there. Historians disagree on this, by the way.

What I do see is a growing recognition on the part of the Democratic Party that some fundamental questions—about inequality, about injustice, about the nature of civil rights—had to be addressed.Lyndon Johnson’s presidency is in many ways the amplification of these trends. Johnson marched into Vietnam wholeheartedly. At the same time,he launched his Great Society program and a determined campaign for civil rights.

One could argue that the seeds of these were ultimately planted in the turn that Kennedy began to make. And Johnson made the most of this by talking about Kennedy’s legacy.
While still caught in the Cold War, Americans were recognizing that these fundamental structural injustices had to be dealt with.

I think that, for all of the mistakes he made, Kennedy captured a certain idealistic moment. [And] it was quite awfully the beginning of a chain of devastating assassinations, be it John Kennedy, Bobby Kennedy, or Martin Luther King, Jr., which seemed to steal the promise of something much, much better.

Q. Do you see parallels between Kennedy and President Obama?

A. There are a lot of parallels. Both entered the White House comparatively young, comparatively inexperienced politically, remarkably articulate and eloquent, capable of inspiring large numbers of people, running on the campaign of change. Obama was not the first person to [talk]about hope and change. Kennedy was talking about the same thing, about a departure from the Eisenhower conservatism, about a version of liberalism in which citizens will be made more active and can pursue these sorts of idealist goals. And yet they are both limited by serious constraints, and they both learn in the process.
The difference is that we will have the full legacy of Obama to evaluate. With Kennedy we are always left with that question of what might have been.

(Interview conducted by Joanna Klimaski and Janet Sassi.)

JFK’s Legacy
Visit soundcloud.com/fordhamnotes/fordhams-michael-latham-on-jfk for interview highlights.

Encaenia recognizes FCRH seniors who have been inducted into Phi Beta Kappa and other academic honor societies, received awards in their disciplines, won prestigious scholarships and fellowships, or are graduating from the honors program.

In his address, Michael Latham, Ph.D., dean of the college, shared his reflections on Fordham students’ dedication to service in such places as El Salvador. The small Central American country is nothing short of a tropical paradise, Latham said—but one scarred by the effects of poverty and a decade of brutal civil war.

“How is it that in so many cases, whether in El Salvador, post-apartheid South Africa, or right here in the Bronx, that young women and men from Fordham learn to transcend differences of culture, race, class, gender, and religion to find a deeper, more meaningful level of engagement? What allows that profound level of human solidarity to take hold, emerge, and grow?”

In response, Latham cited the late Dean Brackley, S.J., a former Fordham theology professor who spent two decades serving the Salvadoran people.

According to Brackley, encounters such as the ones between Fordham students and citizens of developing countries raise profound questions: “If this is how the world is—if this is an average country—then how do I want to live my life?”

“I believe that these are the questions that you all, as graduates of Fordham, are especially well-qualified to answer,” Latham said. “No matter which profession you ultimately pursue, and where you ultimately do it, I hope you will continue to move beyond the boundaries of the familiar and the comfortable, and allow yourself to be transformed through service to a larger, human cause.”

Colleen Taylor, valedictorian of the class of 2012, related an experience she had while studying abroad in Ireland. One weekend, she and her family traveled to a small coastal town to visit a castle—where, to her surprise, she discovered a Fordham banner hanging. The owner of the castle, she found out, was a Fordham alumnus.

But the discovery was twofold: After finding out the Taylor was a Fordham student, someone else in the group revealed that she, too, was an alumna.

“The fact that a small maroon banner on the wall of a castle basement could make strangers into acquaintances, and local townspeople and American tourists into friends, proved to me the immeasurable value of a Fordham connection,” she said.

“Fordham is a place that makes fierce friendship. Fordham is more than a university—it is an identity and it is a home.”

“Lord of the Manor” Peter Sanneman gave the salutatory address. Alluding to the Lord of the Manor tradition’s English roots, Sanneman swapped his graduation cap for a jester hat, since, in the Shakespearean tradition, “it is the court’s fool who uses wit to speak truth to power.” Photo by Michael Dames

“I propose that instead of making ourselves upset over the end of our undergraduate careers, that we remember to celebrate this end,” she said. “. . .that we commemorate the school that gave us an identity, a home, and invaluable friendships.”

In addition to the various academic awards, two special awards were given: Matthew Cuff received the Claver Award, which recognizes a senior who “exemplifies in an outstanding manner Fordham’s dedication to community service;” Caitlin Meyer received the Fordham College Alumni Association Award for her exemplification of the Fordham spirit.

To read more about this year’s prestigious award winners, read the article in Inside Fordham.

Stacey Barnaby, FCRH ’11, Julianne Troiano, FCRH ’11, and current senior Rebecca Triano recently won National Science Foundation (NSF) Graduate Research Fellowships. These prestigious fellowships are awarded annually to foster scientific research and support outstanding graduate students in the fields of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics.

Fellows are awarded a three-year annual stipend of $30,000 along with $10,500 in education allowance toward the graduation institution of their choice. The allowance funds fellows’ tuition and fees, opportunities for international research and professional development, and the freedom to conduct their own research.

Since its creation in 1952, the highly competitive fellowship has been awarded to less than 9 percent of more than 500,000 applicants.

“The fellowship award is based on intellectual merit, but also the broader impact of your research,” said Triano, a chemistry major. “They place emphasis on what you can do beyond the scientific community.”

For Triano, that broader impact is targeted toward helping the environment. As part of her application, Triano submitted a research proposal that combined research she conducted at Fordham and the University of California, Berkeley. Working with Amy Balija, Ph.D., assistant professor of chemistry, Triano performed organic synthesis research on molecules that remove pollutants from water. Her research at UC Berkeley, meanwhile, focused on developing certain catalysts that help to convert methane into usable energy.

In her application, Triano proposed to use the molecules she develops in Balija’s lab to transform methane.

“For three students to win this prestigious award from the same, small undergraduate department in a single year is truly remarkable,” said Michael Latham, Ph.D., dean of Fordham College at Rose Hill. “It also speaks to the great generosity of our faculty in supporting students in undergraduate research.”

Both Barnaby and Troiano are currently pursuing their doctorate degrees at Northwestern University. Barnaby primarily researches macromolecular, supramolecular, and nanochemistry, while Troiano researches sustainable chemistry.

Triano will begin a doctoral program in organic chemistry at UC Berkeley in the fall.

Those were among the high points in Latham’s “State of the College” address given to alumni on Nov. 17 at the New York Yacht Club.

The Class of 2015 is the strongest in the history of the college, he said. Forty percent of the students graduated in the top 10 percent of their high school class, while 80 percent were in the top quarter.

Their average high school grade point average is 3.5; their combined SAT score is about 1250; and 20 percent come from unrepresented minority groups in higher education.

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“As the college continues to raise its academic profile and improve its standing nationally, we are remaining faithful to the vision of the institution,” Latham said.

“We remain a college in which a significant number of students are the first in their families to experience higher education, and we remain a place that has a significant number of students coming from working-class families,” he said.

FCRH students also do well after they graduate. In fact, 83 percent who applied to medical schools gained admission, and 85 percent of applicants were admitted to law school.

“What we continue to do is bring in students with tremendous potential, help them discover their intellectual gifts, help them realize what they’re truly passionate about, and then help them do wonderful things upon graduating,” he said.

Latham highlighted three areas of emphasis: undergraduate research, the sciences, and international studies.

He said that undergraduate research opportunities were “frontiers of discovery.” He told the audience that when FCRH began pursing them in 1996, it did so with $50,000 in alumni donations. This year, the college funded 200 student research projects with a $300,000 budget.

As a result, 23 students co-authored articles in academic journals last year. Latham pointed out six faculty/student pairs who were in attendance, noting that the work they are doing is both advancing their careers and contributing to society.

“Social good is something our students really take to,” he said. “It gives them a different sense of investment in their own education and in what they’re able to accomplish.”

In the sciences, Latham touted the college’s Bronx location, noting that partnerships have been established between FCRH and the New York Botanical Garden, the Wildlife Conservation Society at the Bronx Zoo and the Albert Einstein College of Medicine.

In addition, new areas of interdisciplinary study have been added to the curriculum, such as an environmental science major and a minor in bioinformatics. A program in neuroscience, which will link psychology, biology and computer science, is being developed.

“Most of the crucial scientific problems that we face, after all, do not remain confined within disciplinary walls,” Latham said. “They require us to amalgamate knowledge from several fields.”

Finally, he said that international education is at the core of the college’s Jesuit identity. In addition to increased study-abroad programs, new minors in Mandarin Chinese and Arabic have proven so popular—with 40 students minoring in each field—that it is only a matter of time until they become available as majors.

“Can you imagine a student who is about to graduate with a double major in International Political Economy and Development and Mandarin Chinese? That student is going to be in a pretty good position,” he said. “We’re capable of building those kinds of opportunities for our students.

“The college is doing really well,” he added. “The generosity of our faculty, the accomplishments of our students, and the resources and support of our alumni have allowed us to continue to bring the college forward, to help us become a truly superior liberal arts college that will continue to serve students for years to come,” he said.

For video of the Dean’s address, click here.

You’re invited to the second annual State of the College Address, hosted by dean Michael Latham, Ph.D. Join us for breakfast from 8-10 a.m. on Thursday, Nov. 17 at the New York Yacht Club in midtown Manhattan. Click here to RSVP and for more information.

Latham, a professor of history, joined the faculty in 1996 and was appointed interim dean of FCRH in March 2009.

“In the course of his tenure as the interim dean of the college, Michael Latham has devoted himself to enhancing and strengthening the college’s efforts in the areas of international studies, science education and student advisement,” said Joseph M. McShane, S.J., president of Fordham.

“In the process, he has established an admirable reputation as a consultative and effective administrator. Therefore, I am confident that he will lead the University’s oldest and largest academic unit with real distinction,” Father McShane said.

With his promotion, Latham, a noted scholar of American foreign relations and 20th century American political and intellectual history, becomes the 42nd dean of Fordham’s founding college.

In addition to his own scholarship, he has worked on behalf of fellow faculty members as part of the Faculty Senate, the senate’s executive committee, and its committee on salary and benefits.

“As a professor and interim dean at Fordham, I’ve developed a deep commitment to the University’s mission. The chance to lead such an outstanding college is a great honor, “ he said. “We have terrific opportunities. We have outstanding faculty members and tremendous students. We have the potential to take dramatic steps forward, so for me, to have this position is very satisfying.”

Latham said he has set three preliminary areas of emphasis for FCRH:

• undergraduate research across all academic disciplines,
• development of the sciences
• and international education.

Undergraduate research is highlighted at a rapidly growing spring symposium. This year, a newly launched research journal will coincide with the event.

“To not only acquire knowledge, but actually to help create it gives our students a much greater sense of investment in their own educations,” Latham said. “It gives them a sense of excitement about the fields they study, and it has some terrific benefits as they apply to professional schools in law and medicine and graduate schools in the arts and sciences.”

With regard to the sciences, Latham said that FCRH students have had impressive success with comparably modest resources, and that the college has the potential to make exciting advances, especially in interdisciplinary programs.

International education, he noted, is an obvious priority for the Jesuit University of New York.

“If we’re really serious about preparing students to be leaders in a society that is increasingly connected globally, we must acknowledge that our students are likely to live outside of the United States at various points in their careers,” he said.

“Whether it’s the study abroad program, or the ability to learn lesser-known languages, or the opportunity to intern with NGOs in New York City that deal with human rights or economic development—providing these international opportunities is an important part of the mission of the institution.”

Even with his new administrative duties, Latham, who earned a bachelor’s degree from Pomona College and master’s and doctoral degrees in history from the University of California at Los Angeles, plans to stay involved in research.

He has recently taught a graduate tutorial and an Ignatian education seminar. His latest book, The Right Kind of Revolution:  Modernization, Development, and U.S. Foreign Policy from the Cold War to the Present (Cornell University Press) was published this month.

He is also the author of Modernization as Ideology: American Social Science and “Nation Building” in the Kennedy Era (University of North Carolina Press, 2000), co-editor of two scholarly volumes and the author of many articles that have appeared in respected peer-reviewed journals and edited volumes.

Latham opened “Coffee and Lunch with the Dean” by outlining three areas he has targeted for development: undergraduate research, international education and science programs.

According to Latham, increased funding for undergraduate research and the continued development of the annual undergraduate research symposium are crucial to getting students involved not just in absorbing information, but in producing it themselves.

On the subject of international education, Latham laid out a threefold plan, which included:

– more financial support for study abroad;

– more diversity in foreign language study to reflect future business, political and economic needs; and

– expanded student participation in internships with non-governmental organizations, such as the United Nations, UNICEF and World Vision, which are aligned with the Jesuit mission in their work to promote human rights and end poverty and hunger.

Some key areas of interest and concern raised by students included: grade deflation, research resources, advising, national ranking, language courses and funding for travel abroad.

A spirited debate arose when Latham asked students for feedback regarding the core curriculum, which is the center of the FCRH education. While some students felt that taking required courses across disciplines helped them to define their interests and expand their background, others felt the program was restrictive or repetitive.

Latham encouraged students to see the value in their diversified requirements. “In many fields an employer can train you in how to do a specific job, but they can’t teach you how to write, they can’t teach you how to think, they can’t teach you how to analyze,” he said. “But a liberal arts education can do that, and something like the core curriculum can help do that.”

“Coffee and Lunch with the Dean” was sponsored by United Student Government, the Dean’s Office at FCRH, Rodrigue’s and Fordham Club.