“I was always really interested in migration and movement—why people move and what happens when they move and how they form community,” said Maddox, an associate professor in the African & African-American Studies department.

In her new book, A Home Away from Home: Mutual Aid, Political Activism, and Caribbean American Identity (University of Pennsylvania Press), Maddox explores those ideas, as well as the influence of organizations that supported Caribbean immigrants as they arrived in the U.S. around the early 1900s.

How did you come up with the idea for A Home Away from Home?

I knew that I wanted to work on some aspect of immigration or migration history for my Ph.D. [which she earned in 2016]. I started going to the Schomburg Center [for Research in Black Culture]in Harlem, and I found these records of Caribbean-American mutual aid societies. There were so many of them. I thought, “They’re really important. We should be talking about this.”

What did you learn from studying these mutual aid societies?

I realized that the societies were important for lots of reasons: helping migrants form community with each other and taking care of them in a time where there weren’t many outlets for Black immigrants.This is when we have a lot of segregationist laws in the U.S. toward Black people … and they’re not OK with that. They become really politically active. They’re fighting against anti-lynching laws. They’re fighting for better living conditions within New York City, better education. This is also the time where we have a lot of xenophobic immigration laws.

What were some of the surprising parts of your research?

[These immigrants] are also still heavily involved in the politics of home—the political climate of the Caribbean, and what’s happening there. Globally, they’re also really invested in what’s happening in Africa. One of the key points that I look at is 1935 when Italy invaded Ethiopia; at this time, Ethiopia is the only country on the African continent that’s not colonized by European power. The whole African diaspora and all Black people around the world are looking at Ethiopia. And so these groups are raising money to send to Ethiopian troops. They’re sending supplies there. Some people are actually going to fight for the Ethiopian army. So not only are they invested in what was happening where they are, but they see themselves connected to Black people throughout the world.

How did you see those connections form through your research?

One of the things that I was really interested in is how Black identity is formed—even with my own family, we’re all Black, but there were differences. So how did they become Caribbean, because they start off as someone from Antigua or Jamaica, but then they become Caribbean in the U.S. At the same time, they’re also becoming Black, and they’re becoming African American. They’re living in the same neighborhoods with African American people, they’re in the same job positions.

What do you hope people take away from reading your book?

There aren’t a lot of books that study this early period of Caribbean immigration. We tend to talk about the period after 1960 when there’s this boom of migrants, but I’m really interested to show that there are Caribbean immigrants who were coming prior to that, who are part of the fabric of New York City history, of U.S. history. I’m excited this book is coming out during Black History Month, because we don’t always talk about Black migrants as part of that history. But they are. For instance—no one ever talks about Malcolm X’s Caribbean heritage and what that meant for him as a Black political leader in the U.S. I’m hoping that this helps people feel seen and represented in ways that they hadn’t been before.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.

In her debut memoir, Dionne Ford takes readers along for an emotional ride as she crisscrosses the country to find her enslaved ancestors—and herself.

The day Dionne Ford turned 38 years old, she came across an old “family” photo on the internet, a picture she’d never seen before. It shows her great-great-grandfather Colonel W. R. Stuart, a wealthy Louisiana cotton broker; his wife, Elizabeth; Ford’s great-great-grandmother Tempy Burton, who was given to the Stuarts by Elizabeth’s parents as a wedding present; and two biracial-looking young women, assumed to be Tempy and the Colonel’s children.

The discovery prompted Ford to embark on a yearslong journey from New Jersey to Louisiana to Virginia and back again, searching for clues into the life of Tempy and her six children, plus whoever else she could find to uncover (and understand) her roots. Last April, she published Go Back and Get It: A Memoir of Race, Inheritance, and Intergenerational Healing, a compact yet expansive look at her trek back in time to search for her family history. And a trek it was.

“If you are going to look for your enslaved ancestors,” Ford writes in the book’s prologue, “you will have to look for the people who enslaved them. … This is a study in contrasts. Shadow. Light. Black. White. Joy. Pain. Victim. Perpetrator. You will find ephemera—editorials, photographs, wedding announcements—and atrocities—lynched uncles, your people as property in someone’s will, deed, or mortgage guarantee. You will also find the living— third cousins once removed, fifth cousins straight up, and descendants of the family that forced your family into slavery.”

The book’s title refers to a kind of pilgrimage, called sankofa by the Akan people of Western Africa. “It is not wrong to go back for that which you have forgotten,” writes Ford, who earned a B.A. in communications and media studies from Fordham College at Lincoln Center in 1991 and an M.F.A. in creative writing from New York University in 2016. As she digs deep into the 19th century, she also contends with personal trauma: the childhood sexual abuse she suffered at the hands of a close relative and the alcoholism that helped her cope. And she evokes a riot of emotion for readers, perhaps particularly Black readers, as she grapples with the history of slavery and the ways in which its aftermath affects generation after generation.

At the beginning of the book, you talk a bit about wanting your older daughter, Desiree, to embrace her roots. Did she? How did your research affect her, your other daughter, Devany, and your husband, Dennis?
This definitely affected my family. I took my girls with me on research trips, so they were a part of this journey. I do think that they both had a certain pride in just knowing about this side of their family’s history, and particularly about the enslaved women.

My cousin made this game for the kids to play that had all the ancestors on cards, and everybody always wanted to be Tempy. I felt like they already were positively internalizing their female ancestors’ lives. I think it’s always grounding for people to know as full a story as possible.

Throughout the book, you write about how language can fall short when you’re doing this kind of research—and writing about it. What advice would you give to other Black people who want to investigate their own family history? How should they get started?
Talk to your elders. Find a respectful way to let them know that you’re interested in your shared history, and you’d like to set aside time to just ask them some questions about it. They’re gone before we know it, so it’s so important.

Then get yourself some kind of group because it’s painful and hard if you’re dealing with people who were enslaved or oppressed, so working with other people who are also in earnest, who can be a support to you and you can support them, is great. The group AfriGeneas is for people who are of African descent. And if you also can find a research partner in your family, that’s really wonderful. Don’t be in a hurry, and be open-minded because you’re probably going to find a lot of things that you didn’t expect—and maybe that you didn’t want to, either.

Beyond personal reasons, why did you write this book?
James Baldwin wrote, “Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced.” In my experience, not only can nothing be changed until it’s faced, but somehow the more I try to avoid a thing, the more power it has over me. Something fundamentally shifted in me through this process of confronting my family’s history and my own. So, by organizing my experience into a narrative, I hoped to offer that to readers: the possibility for some fundamental shift by facing whatever it is in their life they would rather avoid.

Is there a particular ancestor that you now feel most connected with as a result of your research?

How did you choose what research to cite and discuss?
I chose to include things, in the end, that were specific to my story—if they were specific to Louisiana slavery, women in slavery, or my own story—but it was hard.

For example, I kept From Slavery to Freedom, [John Hope Franklin’s classic history of African Americans], because it dealt with the Sterling family, who had enslaved some of my family. There were so many wonderful texts that did help me get a better understanding.

What would you say has been the most unexpected response to your memoir?
I have had a couple of strangers—and friends, too— say that they really appreciated me talking about the sexual abuse. One woman, in particular, said that had happened to her and that after she read my book, she actually sought out a survivors group and went for the first time in her life. That was very humbling and moving, and I felt so grateful that anything that I could write might actually help somebody find a bit more peace or serenity.

What’s next for you?
I’m working on adapting my book into a limited series. There are things you can do visually that you can’t do on the page—things that I didn’t feel comfortable doing because it was a memoir, and I really wanted to stick to as much of the truth that I was able to back up as possible. Now I’m having a little bit more fun and envisioning what it would’ve been like for them living at that time. I’m also going back to the novel that I was supposed to write as my MFA thesis at NYU but had ditched so I could work on my memoir.

I’m a member of the New Jersey Reparations Council, too. The state has been dragging its feet on passing a bill to just study reparations, so the New Jersey Institute for Social Justice just said, “You know what? We’re not waiting for you. You guys take too long. We’re convening our own council.” And they invited me to participate. I’m really excited.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity. Sierra McCleary-Harris is an associate editor of this magazine.

That’s the beginning of the first episode of End Book Deserts, an Apple podcast created this past summer by Molly Ness, Ph.D., an associate professor in curriculum and teaching at Fordham’s Graduate School of Education. 

She started the project, she said, to shed light on the fact that in low-income areas, books are often scarce. 

“We have all this academic work [on book deserts], but most people don’t read academic journals. So I started the podcast as a way to raise awareness around this reality,” Ness said. “We can create a nationwide conversation about this.”

Since July, the podcast has grown to 26 episodes and featured several famous guests, including Newbery Medal awardee Jason Reynolds and Major League baseball player Sean Doolittle. The listenership on End Book Deserts, which is found on Apple Podcasts, has been growing by up to 20% month-on-month, Ness said. In a recent interview with Fordham News, she spoke about book vending machines and school bus libraries, how she was able to collect 10,000 books for donation, and an inaugural conference she plans on hosting in Chicago later this year. 

What inspired you to create End Book Deserts? 

I’ve always been interested in book access. But the statistic that 32 million American children today don’t have access to books in their homes, schools, and communities really made me angry. That anger turned into action with the podcast and the work around it.

And you mentioned there was another statistic that spurred you into action. 

Last summer, I read a number of research articles by Susan Newman, a former U.S. assistant secretary of education and current professor at New York University. Dr. Newman found that in Washington, D.C.’s Anacostia neighborhood, which has a poverty level of 61%, 830 children would share a single book, whereas children in Capitol Hill had 16 times as many books. The huge disparity between book access in a high-income area and a low-income area really shocked me. Our goal in literacy education is to develop kids as lifelong readers, and that’s almost impossible if one of their most important tools isn’t available to them.

Who are some of the featured guests on your podcast? 

I have interviewed New York Times best-selling author Jason Reynolds, who is now the National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature. A couple of weeks ago, I interviewed Sean Doolittle, the closing pitcher for the Washington Nationals, who won the World Series last year. He is now the national ambassador for independent bookstores and really brought reading to the forefront of a lot of people’s visibility. 

What are some of the creative ways your guests have brought books into low-income communities?

Every summer, JetBlue Airlines chooses a low-income portion of a city and creates these book vending machines. They buy tons of brand new books—the top reads, the most popular ones for kids—and put them in a particularly high-traffic area. Kids can go up and take as many books as they want. I’ve also featured educators who have transformed dilapidated school buses into libraries and then spent their summer weekends driving into low-income areas and giving books to kids in their homes and communities.

More people are doing this work than we originally thought, which is a good thing. But we have to get their stories out there so that other communities can take their approaches, learn them, modify, and replicate programs all across the country.

Tell me about the power of a book. How can it change a person? 

We know how they build our vocabulary and our comprehension. But more importantly, books build us as human beings. As we visit characters, stories, times, and places that are different than our own, we build the social skills of empathy and understanding and compassion—which, goodness knows, our world needs now more than ever. Books inform us and they transport us. Books shape our paths. So, the power of a book—and the power of the right book at the right time in the hands of the right reader—is transformative.

Growing up in Baltimore, you were an avid reader. So were your parents. 

They had book clubs—they’re still in the same book group that they’ve been in for 40 years. This is long before Oprah made book groups cool. I remember the nights that they would have a book club, complaining that the adults were making a whole lot of noise past my bedtime, but secretly eavesdropping and getting the extra desserts they would sneak up to me. I also remember my mom dropping me off at the public library in the family Volvo station wagon and the name of the librarian from my elementary school. Libraries and books were second nature to us. Unfortunately, that’s not the case for too many kids today. 

What is the one book that really transformed you as a person?

A book I read in college: Savage Inequalities by Jonathan Kozol. It’s an expose about the condition of American public schools. Before I read that book, I was going to go to law school. After I read that book, it started me on the path of education. I, out of college, joined Teach for America because that book made me so angry about the condition of public schools that I wanted to do something about it. Had I not read that book, I wouldn’t be at Fordham, almost 15 years as a professor in literacy.

This August, you’re hosting “Literacy Warriors United,” the first-ever conference on book access as a topic of social justice, at a book bank in Chicago for two days. 

We are bringing together people from all over the country who are doing this work, including Dr. Newman. The hope is to foster collaboration, conversation, and to push forward a national conversation about book access. So far, we’re expecting around 300 people. 

Since 2019, you’ve distributed 10,000 used books to Title 1 schools and community projects in Westchester and the Bronx. How did that happen? 

Last August, I posted on my local Facebook group that I was collecting gently used children’s books through a recycling bin on my front porch. We call it the Porch Project. My fourth-grade daughter and I go through every single book and check it for readability. We want books that are attractive, engaging, relevant, and high quality. We have about 20 different Tupperware bins that we use to sort the books. We’ve donated these books to about five different community centers, schools in the Westchester area that are low-income.

How can people who read this article help increase book access? 

Connect with the book banks that are out there. Make a $20 anonymous gift on DonorsChoose to, for example, a fourth-grade teacher in Kansas who can’t afford a classroom library. If you don’t have the money, you can donate time to sort books and bring books into schools.

Sometimes when we look at the world and see there are so many issues—the environment, society issues, poverty—it can become very overwhelming. You think, how can one person do anything? But the issue of book access is addressable.

Visit https://www.endbookdeserts.com/ to find out how you can get involved. 

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.

Although many of Reilly’s tours include visitors from around the world, the Fordham group skews local, with most attendees hailing from the tri-state area. The person who has traveled the farthest for the occasion is Marjorie Taylor, who says she drove from Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, the previous day and stayed overnight in her daughter’s McMahon Hall dorm room on Fordham’s Lincoln Center campus.

Once introductions are made, Reilly leads the group to the museum’s fourth floor, which he says “tells the story of the evolution of vertebrates.” There, they stop in the Hall of Saurischian Dinosaurs, one of the museum’s most popular rooms and home to the skeletons of both the Tyrannosaurus rex and the huge Apatosaurus, the herbivore often incorrectly referred to as the Brontosaurus.

“Fred Flintstone was actually eating an Apatosaurus,” Reilly jokes, referring to the 1960s cartoon character and the so-called Brontosaurus burgers that were a staple of his diet.

Reilly describes various dinosaur extinction theories that scientists have posited over the years, including the widely accepted one—that an asteroid crashed into what is today Mexico’s Yucatán Peninsula and caused massive climate disruption—as well as the disproven claim that pollen caused them to sneeze themselves out of existence.

Next, he leads the way to the Akeley Hall of African Mammals. The hall, decorated with green marble and Art Deco flourishes, represents “the apex of taxidermy,” Reilly says. It is filled with lifelike recreations of lions, giraffes, gazelles, and other mammals in dioramas depicting scenes of the wildlife eating, drinking, and hunting in their natural habitats. Recreated from field scientists’ observations of specific locations in the early 20th century, as well as from the sketches and photographs of the artists who accompanied them, the dioramas consist not only of taxidermy but also meticulously crafted plant models and painted backgrounds.

Reilly dispenses several bits of trivia about Akeley Hall. The live versions of the African elephants that form the room’s centerpiece have 50,000 muscles in their trunks, he says; the mountain gorilla diorama depicts the supposed gravesite of the hall’s namesake and conceiver, Carl Akeley, who is considered the father of modern taxidermy; and each of the 28 dioramas in the hall would cost $1 million to create today.

From there, it’s off to the Birds of the World exhibit hall, where Reilly, standing in front of a diorama of king penguins in South Georgia, surprises the group by telling them that the largest bird population in New York City is not, as several of them guess, the pigeon. In fact, it’s that nemesis of beachgoers, the seagull.

Reilly leads the way to the Hall of North American Forests, which he later says has become one of his favorite rooms in the museum.

“In recent times, the most interesting to me is the Hall of North American Forests,” he says, noting that he tries to get across to museumgoers the importance of forests and trees to the Earth. Plus, he says, “The beauty of every individual tree makes just walking down the street a treat no matter where you are.”

Finding Common Ground Between Social and Environmental Justice

Reilly began his undergraduate career at Fordham as a biology major, and although he switched to political science, earned a Fordham Law degree, and spent more than three decades as an administrator at Fordham Law School, he has always been deeply interested in environmental science.

When asked to explain the connections between his career—especially at Fordham Law’s Feerick Center for Social Justice, where he was engaged with social justice issues from a legal and academic perspective—and his role as tour guide who encourages stewardship of the natural world, Reilly points to the link between the Jesuit values he lived at Fordham and the specific topic of environmental justice.

“The Hall of Biodiversity is really completely devoted to environmental issues,” he says. “About 1,000 species go extinct every day of the year, 365 days a year, and that’s because of activities that our species is doing. What does that mean for us? What does that mean for our children? What does that mean for our grandchildren?

“Pope Francis recently had an encyclical about environmental issues and about our respect for the Earth and our understanding of our relationship to all other living things. Those elements all sort of tie together … in understanding social justice.”

Upon leaving the Hall of North American Forests, Reilly encourages everyone in the group to go home, choose a tree that they could observe over time, and become intimately familiar with it. “Every tree is a perfect tree,” he says.

The next stop is the ever-popular Milstein Family Hall of Ocean Life, with its 94-foot-long model of a blue whale suspended from the ceiling. Reilly, noting that this model is not taxidermy because its skin is artificial, tells the group that for the first 100 days of their lives, blue whales put on 100 pounds a day.

Finally, Reilly leads everyone to Theodore Roosevelt Memorial Hall. There, he provides some history of the 26th president of the United States, a conservationist and champion of the National Park System. As part of New York state’s official memorial to Roosevelt, the hall is a fitting place for the group of mostly tri-state residents to reflect on the important lessons the museum—and Reilly—had taught them about the natural world.

Fordham and AMNH: A Deep History with Enduring Connections

Fordham’s connections to the American Museum of Natural History go beyond Reilly. Not only do several graduates currently work at the museum—in departments ranging from youth initiatives to genomics operations—but one of the key figures in the institution’s modern history was an alumnus.

Thomas Nicholson, Ph.D., GSE ’53, ’61, a self-described “sailor-turned-astronomer-turned museum director,” helped the museum navigate tough fiscal issues in the early 1970s and emerge stronger. He got his start at the museum’s Hayden Planetarium in 1952 while earning a doctorate in science education at Fordham. He rose to the museum’s top spot in 1969 and served as director until 1989, during which time the museum’s research staff was doubled and attendance increased from 2.1 million to 3.1 million visitors per year. Today, the museum draws around 5 million visitors per year, as pointed out in a new history of the museum—The American Museum of Natural History and How It Got That Way, by Colin Davey with Thomas A. Lesser—published last year by Fordham University Press.

The museum’s growth is easy to understand when witnessing the enthusiasm of the Fordham group after their tour’s completion. One couple enjoyed the tour so much that they plan to become members of the museum, while another attendee went even further, emailing Reilly to tell him that he was inspired to apply to become a volunteer tour guide himself.

Perhaps the most surprising response to the tour came from Carolyn Pagani, GSS ’91, a native New Yorker who revealed that the Fordham tour was her first time ever visiting the museum.

“I’m embarrassed to say [it]!” she joked. “I loved it. I’m definitely going back.”

While not every tour group gives him the chance to expose a lifelong New Yorker to the museum’s magic, Reilly, who also leads occasional group tours of the Church of St. Paul the Apostle and Fordham’s Rose Hill and Lincoln Center campuses, gets plenty of joy from witnessing attendees’ reactions to the exhibitions.

“To see their faces as they get excited about something, that’s a wonderful thing,” he says.

As he leaves the group, he reminds them that the things they learned on the tour are invitations to further discoveries.

“Finishing a visit to the American Museum of Natural History is not the end of a journey,” Reilly says. “It’s the beginning of one.”

The tour of the American Museum of Natural History was one of many cultural events regularly held in the New York area and around the country by Fordham’s Office of Alumni Relations. Upcoming events include concerts, theater performances, and more.

“It was very humbling and … certainly an acknowledgement of what I had done, but for me, it was like, ‘OK, so now what?’” Jerome said. “I figured, if I’m going to represent Bergen County in this capacity, I need to know what’s going on in Bergen County.”

Jerome, who earned a bachelor’s degree in history at Fordham College Rose Hill in 2007 and a master’s degree at the Graduate School of Education two years later, had an idea that she would visit teachers from each of the 76 public school districts in Bergen County, New Jersey. She wanted to learn about some of the innovative projects they were bringing to their classrooms, and share their insights and creativity with the community.

The question was, how?

“I can’t just bombard a teacher and say, ‘Hey, can I come visit you?’ I have to bring them something,” she said. “Then it came to me—coffee, everybody likes coffee or some variation of a warm beverage.”

That’s how the idea for the web series Teachers in Classrooms Drinking Coffee was born—inspired by the Jerry Seinfeld show Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee.

Visiting 76 School Districts: #Mission76

Putting the idea into practice took some logistical planning, she said, but she managed to secure a sponsorship from Dunkin’ Donuts, and she hasn’t had a hard time finding teachers willing to talk with her on camera.

By late January, Jerome was already up to her 34th interview in the series.

Her plan is to finish visiting all 76 districts by May, when she is scheduled to deliver the keynote speech at the County Teacher of the Year Luncheon, where she plans to share some of the success stories she’s heard from her fellow teachers.

“I want to celebrate what I’ve seen going on in the county, and I think then I will have served the position well if I can report back on what’s actually going on in Bergen County schools,” she said.

On January 29, she stopped to visit Tara Mizzoni, a fourth grade teacher in Rochelle Park, a district about 20 minutes away from Pascack Valley.

Mizzoni was happy to tell Jerome of her experience working with 49 other teachers across the United States to launch a postcard project to help fourth graders learn from each other about the geography, culture, and fun facts of other states.

“We wrote to them and we introduced New Jersey,” she said, and so far, they’ve heard from students in about 40 other states.

Besides teaching the students about each of the states, the project has introduced some of them to letter writing and receiving mail.

“Every day [the students ask], ‘Do we have mail, do we have mail?’” Mizzoni said. “And it’s so interesting because they don’t get mail at home really, because of technology, so there’s now this huge passion” for the project.

In addition to wanting to understand what was happening in school districts across Bergen County, Jerome thought the project might help shine a light on the lessons teachers put together to help enhance the learning experience for their students.

So far, her journey has brought her to classrooms all over the county and showed her lessons on how “Carpool Karaoke” can be used to teach students about the intersection of history and music; how beekeeping can help students understand sustainability practices; and how a “student of the month” program, displayed near the school’s main entrance, can help boost confidence and productivity.

“The idea is to elevate the profession,” she said. “We’re trying to say, ‘Magic goes on in these classrooms.’”

Jerome said learning about other teachers’ projects inspires her in her own work. One of the ideas she came across that she’s planning to implement at Pascack Valley is a tribute to military veterans who attended the school.

Her own innovative lessons, however, helped her gain the recognition in the first place.

In January, to help her students understand the “forces of revolution,” including nationalism, and feminism, that were brewing across the globe in the early 20th century, she had her AP World History class write biographical poems about some of the key historical figures involved in these movements and present them to the class.

She’s also very involved outside of the classroom, serving as the adviser to the Asian Culture Club and One Spirit, a service club that visits South Dakota’s Cheyenne River Reservation to both volunteer with the Cheyenne River Youth Project and learn about Native American culture and history. She also runs the school’s National History Day.

In addition to being named Bergen County Teacher of the Year by the New Jersey Department of Education, Jerome has been recognized by the New Jersey Council for Social Studies, which selected her as its Secondary Teacher of the Year for 2018–2019. In 2013, she earned a James Madison Fellowship, which she used to attend Drew University to study early American history and the Constitution.

It’s this work that impressed both the school and the officials at the Department of Education, according to Pascack Valley Regional High School District Superintendent P. Erik Gundersen.

“We are proud of Leah’s compassionate, innovative, and progressive spirit,” he said in a statement. “I believe it is her work both in and out of the classroom, her dedication to her school and individual students, and her passion for social justice and history, that makes her such an exceptional educator.”

A Jesuit-Inspired Passion for Teaching

Jerome said her passion for teaching was kindled while she was still an undergraduate at Fordham.

“Fordham gave me [a]forum to explore my love of history, to be taught by true experts in their field, and to be surrounded by a community of students who shared in that passion,” she said, “to a point where I went back to Fordham for my master’s in education.”

She also credited the University for helping to form compassionate teachers, professionals who care about their work and their students. The previous teacher of the year for Bergen County, Christine Esola, FCRH ’98, is also a Fordham graduate, Jerome noted.

“Fordham’s doing something exceptional … [creating]teachers who love and value education,” she said, “and for me, Fordham was a big part of that development and growth.”

Watch Teachers in Classrooms Drinking Coffee: An Interview with Fordham Alumna Leah Jerome

They were married in 2007. Though they never overlapped at Fordham—Trevor graduated in 1999 and Antoinette in 2003—they agree that there was a comfort in being with someone who “shared the same passion and pride for the place we attended college.” In fact, for their second date they chose to see Man on Fire. “The reason,” says Trevor, “is because Denzel Washington [the film’s star]went to Fordham!”

“Trevor was the first person I met who understood the importance of my staying connected to Fordham and my high school volunteer work,” Antoinette says. “People wearing ‘F’ hats and shirts are popular in our lives.”

Fordham Beginnings

The couple first came to Fordham from opposite coasts. An Astoria native, Antoinette says the University has always been a presence in her life. She grew up knowing family members, neighbors, and teachers who are Fordham alumni. But it wasn’t until she toured the Rose Hill campus during her senior year of high school that “I knew I’d found my home,” she says.

“At Fordham, I was not just a number but an actual person,” says Antoinette, who commuted to campus. When her parents would pick her up at the Bathgate Avenue entrance, Joseph A. O’Hare, S.J., then president of Fordham, “would come over to say hello and have a conversation,” she recalls. “I don’t think presidents at other schools do that.”

Growing up in Novato, California, Trevor didn’t know much about Fordham until he was recruited for the water polo team. Now a managing director at Signature Bank, he says that Fordham “turned out to be a tremendous call” in terms of his experience as a student-athlete, financial aid support, and an education that “set me up for success in the world of finance.”

Giving Back

Together and individually, Antoinette and Trevor have spent a lot of time supporting Fordham causes. They were both longtime active members of the Young Alumni Committee—an advisory and programming board for graduates of the past 10 years—and advised students through the Fordham Mentoring Program. Trevor still supports the water polo team. And together they’ve supported HEOP, the Ailey/Fordham BFA in Dance program, and Founder’s scholarship students; participated on Jubilee reunion class committees; and supported several athletics programs.

A newer family tradition is attending Fordham games on campus as well as regional alumni chapter events around California, on Long Island, and in Westchester with their daughter, 3-year-old Aria. Antoinette is a self-employed accountant who works from home to be with her.

“I know how important it is to help our future leaders of tomorrow, and I love volunteering with people and collaborating to improve,” Antoinette says. 

Shared Roots

Besides being passionate about similar causes, the couple shares a certain Fordham mentality that they say brings strength to their marriage.

“A Jesuit education and the Fordham experience definitely provides us with a core of our relationship. We choose to live and lead by example,” Antoinette says. “Marriage is a mix of individual and teamwork. That’s why I say you should find ‘the partner,’ because ‘the one’ is not realistic. Find someone who supports you, helps you be happy, and is open to you and the inevitable change that happens.”

Trevor agrees. “I think one of our strengths is that we both realize when something is important to the other person, and we support that,” he says.

“Plus, we are both big Star Wars and Marvel fans.” 

Fordham Five

What are you most passionate about?

Antoinette: I love being a mom to a toddler. I recognize that I’m her role model, even her caped crusader—sometimes I wear a cape! I set an example for her in the only way I was taught—through volunteerism and advocacy work on social justice projects. It’s the change for the greater good. Yes, I’m also an accountant. But I say I do accounting for fun and my real job is volunteering. I like knowing that Aria can look back and see results of what I did to make the world better for her generation.

Trevor: I’m most passionate about my daughter, Aria. The best part of my week is watching her progress in swimming, and now mixed martial arts. She is only 3 and has been promoted into a swim class with 5-year-olds! She has zero fear of the water and can already swim about five yards by herself if I let her go. If I tie a noodle around her, she can swim an entire length in a 25-yard pool.

What’s the best piece of advice you’ve ever received?
Antoinette: Jeff Gray, my former work-study boss at Fordham [who is now senior vice president for student affairs], once told me that sometimes when you become overwhelmed by everything happening, you focus on one thing and forget to see how things work and affect each other—the big and little pieces. You need to learn to step back and then look in at the big picture, he said. Only then can you fully see what you are missing.

Trevor: My junior year of high school, my water polo coach told me that a big shot is just a little shot who kept shooting. I know it is a famous quote [by writer Christopher Morley], but that was the first time I had ever heard it. Playing sports teaches you a lot of things, but for me the most important is to never be scared to shoot your shot.

What’s your favorite place in New York City? In the world?
Antoinette: In New York, it’s Rockefeller Center and the tree. I’m probably biased since it’s where my first full-time role was after graduating from Fordham. It’s also where my husband picked me up for our first lunch date. It’s a place that everyone in the world is drawn to visit. Now we take our daughter to visit the tree annually. It’s a nod to how places that are so chaotic or crowded can still be symbols of faith in the holidays, togetherness, and our own true wish that something better will come in the next year.

My favorite spot in the world is walking the beach and watching the sunset in Waikiki. They have fireworks on Friday nights at the Hilton Hawaiian, and I think it’s gorgeous to sit in the sand and watch the waves hitting the beach while the cool air gently blows. Trevor’s grandparents lived there for more than 30 years, and we would go every summer when we first got married. Hopefully we’ll return this fall for the Fordham football game.

Trevor: My favorite places in New York are Astoria and Fordham. Both places just kill it from a restaurant standpoint. I would say that Bahari Estiatorio in Astoria is hands down the best Greek restaurant on the planet, and Omonia is the best bakery in New York City; its baklava cheesecake is ridiculous. Fordham obviously always means a lot to me. I love the campus; it just always seems warm and inviting. Being a water polo player, the uniqueness of having a 38-meter pool is now something I smile about as well. Most pools are either 25-yard short-courses or 50-meter long-courses. NCAA Division I and international water polo are played at 30 meters, so Fordham’s unique pool still works.

Like Antoinette, my favorite spot outside of New York is Hawaii, specifically Waikiki. My Oma and Opa lived there for basically my entire childhood and through my early adult years. Perfection is sitting with a Mai Tai in the beautiful Hawaiian sun!

Name a book that has had a lasting influence on you.
Antoinette: Gone with the Wind shows how you can go from rich to poor, poor to rich, but still have faith and a fire within to excel. Life is full of trials and tribulations. It’s not life if you can’t take the ups and downs. It takes perseverance to stay focused and overcome in order to build or rebuild. You always need to be able to self-reflect and be grateful for who and what you have in your life. Sadly, Scarlett was not able to find balance between work and life. She was always focused on someone else, but he was not worth all of the effort she spent trying to win his love. Scarlett had everything and lost the one who loved her the most. But with conviction, she concludes that she will get him back.

Trevor: I read a lot of books, but this is a tough question. It’s not my favorite, but the book I read as a kid and read again recently that probably stuck with me the most is Great Expectations by Charles Dickens. I think as you rise up the ladder, it’s important to keep the lessons that Dickens tried to impart in the back of your head.

Who is the Fordham grad or professor you admire most?
Antoinette: Joseph Cammarosano, longtime professor of economics. He taught us that “it’s not about making a living, but making a life worth living.” He helped New York state create the Higher Education Opportunity Program (HEOP) for academically and economically disadvantaged students, an invaluable program to those who qualify. I credit much of my passion for volunteerism, philanthropic efforts, and even political focus, especially in education, to Dr. C’s teaching. I don’t think you can get more Jesuit than him inspiring others to follow the core principle of men and women for and with others. I also love and admire Donna Rapaccioli [now dean of the Gabelli School], not just as my former accounting professor but for the exemplary woman she is ethically and for all of the amazing relationships and advancements she has created and continues to grow (work in progress). I hope to see more women in business, especially finance!

Trevor: Another tough question. My favorite professor at Fordham was a history professor named Robert Jones. While my concentration was finance, I have always loved history. I think I took all of my electives in classes that he taught.

Khan, who goes by the pronouns they, their, and them, began their Jan. 23 talk by telling a travel story that illustrates how embedded racism and bias can impact day-to-day interactions.

“I am late for a connecting flight, and I’m rushing through the airport and I get there and I just happen to be in first [class]this time,” Khan, who is now based in Los Angeles, said to a standing-room-only crowd of students, faculty, and community members in a Fordham Law lecture room. The event was part of Fordham’s week of programming in honor of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

“And right above my head the overhead space is full. So I look behind and there’s one, there’s an empty space, and I’m late enough where everyone is settled in. And as I’m about to, in a very practiced way, swing my bag up there, an older man pops up and he goes, ‘Uh, I’m sorry, ’scuse me, do you belong here?'”

Khan said that they paused for a few seconds and stared back at the man who they said didn’t have “a malicious bone” in his body.

“You know it’s funny … I’ve read all the books, I’ve had all the conversations, I’ve been on the frontlines … I have had all the debates that you could possibly imagine, and still there’s never a way to respond to these things,” Khan said. “There’s no set way to know how to unpack this exchange that’s happening between us in 10, 15, 30 seconds, and so I just stare at him.”

Khan said that they saw something happen on the man’s face and he quickly apologized, lifted the carry-on onto the rack, and retrieved it after the plane landed.

“I tell this story because the word ‘belonging’ is something that keeps coming up for me and in this work,” they said.

Khan was the keynote speaker for Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. week, which aimed to honor King’s legacy and explore the impact of his work—and that of the civil rights movement—on today’s civil and human rights agenda.

They said that they told the story from the plane because it embodies their work on pushing for equality and justice for people of color, those who are LGBTQ+, those who some consider “outsiders.”

“It was in that moment that so many other things make sense—a black kid selling lemonade on the corner who gets the police called on them, a black man walking down the street who has the police called on him, a cookout with a group of black people and they have the police called on them,” they said. “We come up with these amazing memes and they’re so funny—BBQ Becky and all that—but ultimately there is a reason why these people feel like they need to regulate space. When you are taught to believe that you have more ownership of a space, of a society, of a country, of an institution, whatever it is, then it becomes your job to keep those who don’t belong out.”

Khan called on those in the audience to actively seek to build bridges to others who are different, as a way to combat supremacy.

“If you don’t seek me out, and I don’t seek you, we have accepted the terms of white supremacy in this country,” they said. “We have accepted its conditions. We have accepted its parameters. When you decide that my life is of lesser value than yours, when we do not take personally the things that are happening to the populations of other people, understanding that if they’re coming for me tonight, they most assuredly will be coming for you tomorrow morning, if we aren’t beginning to take these things personally, we aren’t going to win.”

The office of Rafael Zapata, Fordham’s chief diversity officer, sponsored the lecture and the rest of the week’s Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. events. Zapata said that Khan “embodied this spirit” of King, which included pushing back on “norms” that are wrong and fighting for social justice and equality.

“When the movement went from the Deep South, and the unambiguous repudiation of racist acts and hatred, to systemic racism in the North and segregation, he lost many friends and I think that courage and that evolution is lost,” he said.

Zapata said that activists like Khan have helped to keep the movement alive and the work ongoing. “When I read some of the writings of Janaya Khan, I think of Black Lives Matter in that longer trajectory of slave rebellions, of abolitionist movements, of post-reconstruction communities, of literary movements—W.E.B. DuBois, Ella Baker, Audre Lorde, and so many nameless others—and we’re thankful that they’re here today.”

Joseph M. McShane, S.J., president of Fordham, said that Khan’s speech, which also included a call for economic justice, as well as social justice, encouraged those in attendance to examine their own selves and work for change they want to see in the world.

“It’s an invitation rather than a lecture,” Father McShane said. “You took us through one of the difficult conversations, which is a necessary conversation, and it’s necessary because it’s a prophetic conversation and you did it in a masterful way. I can’t tell you how moved I was by what you did.”

Over the past year, Stewart, a doctoral candidate in counseling psychology at Fordham’s Graduate School of Education and an adjunct lecturer in Hunter College’s psychology department, interviewed 16 women who said they had experienced sexual assault during their college years. Stewart wanted to see how the current climate affects the way they’ve processed their own assaults and how they might feel about reporting them. 

“Jen’s work is very timely and poignant,” said her mentor, Fordham professor, and psychologist Joseph G. Ponterotto, Ph.D. “This is an intense, qualitative long-interview study, and the results are riveting.”

The 16 women are anonymous college students across the U.S. who spoke with Stewart through Skype, FaceTime, and, if possible, face-to-face. Their conversations, typically an hour long, are currently being transcribed and analyzed, but conclusions are starting to take shape, said Stewart. 

The work has formed the basis for her dissertation. Before conducting research for the project, she also completed a pilot study, for which she interviewed eight sexual assault survivors about their recovery process.

Last year, she was invited to present her pilot study at the American Psychological Association’s annual convention. In a recent interview, Fordham News spoke with Stewart about what she’s learned so far. 

How is your research different than what’s already out there? 

There’s a lot of research on how sexual assault can psychologically and physically affect victims, but there isn’t much research on what’s happening with sexual assault victims right now. We’re in a time period in American history that’s quite different. We’re talking about sexual assault in a nationwide conversation. It’s in the news, it’s on social media, it’s in the political world. So it’s everywhere you turn, and I was really curious to see how that’s affecting survivors.

Tell me about your research. 

I do qualitative research, which is interview-based. You interview people until you have what’s called a saturation, where the same themes are coming up over and over again. Like, this is coming up so much that we can assume it’s an experience a lot of people are having. When they start to come up in three-quarters of the interviews, you’ve hit saturation. 

You spoke with 16 different women. How did you find them? 

Facebook, actually. I recruited through Facebook college groups. I joined a lot of groups, posted, and people reached out to me. 

What did your interviews focus on? 

How #MeToo has affected how they understood [their assault]  and how their assault has affected how they view #MeToo in general. 

What were the biggest themes from those interviews? 

It seems like sexual assault survivors are in support of #MeToo and feel more comfortable talking to friends and on campus about their experience because there’s this open dialogue that’s been happening. 

But they are significantly less likely to report to authorities in the context of #MeToo after seeing all the people who stood up and reported, but nothing happened. Many of the women I spoke to were like, why would I talk? What’s the point? I’m going to go through all this legal hassle, I’m going to get put in the spotlight and questioned on whether or not what happened was real, and nothing’s going to come of it. So what’s the point of reporting anything, legally?

This April, you’ll be defending your dissertation. Outside of Fordham, what do you hope to do with it? 

Using this to inform policy would be great. I don’t know what that will look like yet. But there’s always an implications section in a dissertation. Now I have this research—cool. What does it mean? Let’s use this to help make a change somewhere.

What are some key takeaway points from your research? Something that could help a loved one dealing with sexual assault?  

Reporting [to authorities]  is really triggering for a lot of people. It can be helpful to recount stories for healing, but usually not immediately after. Imagine going through a car crash and barely surviving and then someone saying, “Can you tell me all about the details of the car crash?” 

Social support is really, really important in terms of how somebody will react after a trauma. A lot of research has shown that positive social support is better [than no social support or negative support]  in terms of reducing PTSD symptoms. [Many pilot-study participants] said the best reactions they had gotten were someone saying, I’m so sorry this happened. I’m here for you if you need me. If you want me to go with you to report, to get some health tests done—whatever you need, I’m here. I think that often times, we hear about sexual assault a lot, but don’t really know what to do when someone tells us it happens. You can’t change that it happened. You can’t fix it. But you can support people, whatever that looks like for every person. That’s something I’d love for more people to know. 

I think we need less victim-blaming and more listening to people when they speak out about things like this. The number of people who falsely report is so small, but those are always the cases that get publicity. Then people are like, oh, well, look at all of these women trying to ruin men’s lives. We need to be more open to hearing what survivors have to say and believing them.

Two years ago, you earned an M.S.Ed. from Fordham, and by 2021, you’ll also have your Ph.D. What’s one of the biggest things that the Graduate School of Education taught you? 

There’s a big focus on multiculturalism and social justice in my program, which I love—and that’s what I chose Fordham for. It’s taught me to be curious about other people’s experiences, to never make assumptions. Even though I’ve worked with a lot of sexual assault trauma, everyone’s experience is different. 

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.

The fellowship was created to help train future leaders in public service. Fellows spend nine months focusing on civic engagement within various organizations, and develop a final independent project in cooperation with an agency of their choice.

Patterson, who majored in women, gender, and sexuality studies and took both pre-med and pre-law classes at Fordham, said she plans to use the fellowship to learn cross-sector approaches to eradicating health disparities in New York City.

Growing up as a Jamaican immigrant in Mount Vernon, New York, Patterson saw many of these injustices firsthand. At Fordham, she dedicated much of her time outside the classroom to fighting or bringing awareness to these inequities. As a senior she was president of ASILI—Fordham’s black student alliance—and she participated in several Global Outreach projects. She credits her Fordham Fund Scholarship with allowing her to immerse herself in the full Fordham experience.

Patterson became especially passionate about issues of racial injustice through her work with Urban Plunge, an optional pre-orientation program run by Fordham’s Center for Community Engaged Learning.

Over a three-day period at the beginning of her first year at Fordham, Patterson participated in one of several community-enriching programs offered throughout the Bronx and Manhattan. She loved the program so much that she became an Urban Plunge assistant for the next three years.

“It was a transformative experience that I think … planted the seeds in my mind for all of this,” she said. “It allowed me to become more social justice oriented as I was looking into a career in the health profession. I started to understand the racial inequality and health disparities within our current system.”

Patterson wrote her thesis on the relationship between African American women and the American health care system. “My Fordham education has helped guide my decision-making,” she said. “Fordham allowed me to follow my passions and has challenged me to become my best self.”

Now through the Coro Fellowship, Patterson is working with the executive vice president for strategy and innovation at the New York City Housing Authority, more commonly known by its acronym, NYCHA.

“Coro is providing me with inquiry tools, leadership training, and exposure through hands-on learning that I don’t think I would have gained elsewhere,” Patterson said. Next, she plans to apply to law school or pursue a master’s in public health.

“With this fellowship, I do feel like I am closer to achieving my goal,” she said.

Gregory Donovan, Ph.D., assistant professor in the Department of Communication and Media Studies and co-founder of the Fordham Digital Scholarship Consortium, organized the conference with department chair Jacqueline Reich, Ph.D.

Instead of paying a fee, conference-goers were asked to send donations to Goddard Riverside at Lincoln Square Neighborhood Center, which offers services to the Amsterdam Houses across the street from Fordham’s Lincoln Center campus.

Digital mapping is a process that merges data with maps to create a virtual online image that can be static or interactive. Donovan said focusing on social justice issues through the lens of digital mapping allowed for a cross-disciplinary approach that wouldn’t ordinarily be found at a typical geography conference. Professors came from a variety of disciplines, including history, art history, urban planning, Latinx studies, psychology, social work, and education.

“Spatial media have politics, these are not neutral things,” said Donovan, who teaches a course of the same name as the conference for the Masters in Public Media.  “We need to look at how our subjects are using digital mapping in their own lives and not just use this technology to study them from afar, like a scientist with a clipboard.”

In panel titled “Mapping the Local: A Focus on New York,” Jennifer Pipitone, Ph.D., assistant professor of psychology at the College of Mount St. Vincent, and Svetlana Jović, Ph.D., assistant professor of developmental psychology at SUNY Old Westbury, presented research that essentially handed the digital “clipboard” over to the Bronx Community College students they were teaching —and studying. At the time, the two were writing fellows at the college.

In an effort to map what “community” meant to the students, the researchers used geo-locations of photos taken by the participants “in order to illustrate and make sense of their experience of belonging in the city,” they wrote in the abstract. The maps revealed that students restricted their movements to above Central Park, “delineating participants’ lived boundary of race and class.” The method is referred to as “participatory action research.”

Throughout the conference, dozens of examples were given on how mapping technology can be used to heighten consciousness and problem solve. Adam Arenson, Ph.D., associate professor of history at Manhattan College, also on the Focus on New York panel, talked about how he worked with his students to help map slave burial sites in the Bronx, many of which sit unmarked on New York City parkland.

“These are all ways to memorialize the injustices of the past, to map them in the landscape and to be aware of them,” he said. “Though the information is incomplete, and we must do what we can to fill out the map, make the connections, and demonstrate how the injustices of slavery still shape New York City today.”

In her keynote address later that day, Sarah Elwood, Ph.D., professor and chair of geography at the University of Washington, took a theoretical look at how mapping with communities through participatory methods helps “unprivilege the map,” thereby making it less of a colonial process.

As one of the early theoretical thinkers in the field of geographic information systems, known as GIS, she said she is still learning how to infuse her work with “critical race thought” that has surged in academia over the past five years. After the lecture, she recalled a moment at a mapping justice conference in Baltimore when she noticed the diversity of the participants.

“I looked around the room and I realized that it was a different room than one that I had ever been in, in this critical mapping world,” she said. “It was full of activists and young scholars and people of color, queer folks, thinking and theorizing in ways that were not part of my first 20 years in this field.”

She called the moment an “epiphany.” She said while she continues to incorporate Marxist critique that allows her “to get at some structural processes of inequality” in mapping, her work is now heavily informed by black feminism, queer theory, and Latinx studies.

“Once you’ve had an epiphany like that, it’s like, ‘Well, duh, obvious!’ but yet, you’re also embarrassed that it’s taken so long for this epiphany to happen,” she said. “I always think, in those moments, ‘Thank God we have our whole life to become ourselves.’”

“African and African American Studies is not merely for Africans or African Americans; African and African American studies are American studies, studies of who we are, who we wish to become,” said Joseph M. McShane, S.J., president of Fordham. “It is, I think, a great sin for people who really don’t want to listen to what the African American experience can and must tell us … We have much to learn and much to celebrate.”

Organized by Amir Idris, Ph.D., professor and chair of African and African American Studies, the day began with a panel of founding faculty members who discussed the challenges they faced forming the department in the early days amidst national strife. A group of Bronx African community members later testified to how research conducted by a Fordham professor has helped bring much-needed services to their community. Another panel on emerging scholars on Africa and the African diaspora from across the University debriefed the crowd on their latest research. And Farah Jasmine Griffin, Ph.D., chair of Columbia University’s newly formed African American and African Diaspora Studies, took a comprehensive look at the current challenges and hopes for the future.

By day’s end, Mark Naison, Ph.D., professor of African and African American Studies, the longest active member of the Department, who joined its faculty in fall 1970, was deeply moved by the panels’ trajectory. He spoke of the value research can have on communities of color.

“It really makes you realize what we’re doing matters,” he said. “It makes a difference.”

Hurdles of Coming into Being

Moderated by Naison, the first panel featured the department’s founding faculty talking about incidents that are fairly well known in the University community, such as the student protests that led to the formation of the department at Rose Hill, when nearly a dozen African-American students refused to leave the office of dean of student affairs until an agreement was reached to create an African American studies curriculum.

Perhaps less known was the concurrent development of the department at the Lincoln Center campus. Three faculty from Fordham College at Lincoln Center (FCLC), Irma Watkins-Owens, Ph.D.; Fawzia Mustafa, Ph.D.; and Selwyn Cudjoe, Ph.D., recalled a department that had to make its way with little funding at the then-brand-new campus.

Cudjoe said it was a student movement that brought black studies to FCLC, adding that students were also very involved in the hiring of the faculty and selecting the courses. He said offerings were limited and students were recruited from Harlem, Bedford Stuyvesant, and the Bronx.

“There was no blueprint for building and sustaining a department like this,” he said.

Mustafa recalled that the formation of the FCLC department took place well before the restructuring that wove together faculty from the two campuses. Not only was the FCLC faculty autonomous from Rose Hill, but the African American studies department was less integrated with more established disciplines at FCLC as well. Resources were thin. Grant writing and fundraising became the only ways to bring some of the great black thinkers to campus. Watkins-Owens recalled relying on the library’s budget to build up the resources on African and African American content—a move that prompted an appreciative thank you note from the librarian for filling in a major gap in the collection. Watkins-Owens concurred with Father McShane on the importance of African American scholarship to all students.

“Black studies are for everyone, although some might try to lessen its importance in the current political climate,” she said.

Watkins-Owens said there is cause for concern for the discipline’s future, which may be reflective of overarching concerns for the survival of the liberal arts generally. She noted that there were more than 600 African American history programs in 2013 and that number has dipped to 361 programs nationwide. She urged “caution, vigilance, and activism.”

Research Affecting Communities

During a panel session with African community leaders from the Bronx, Sudanese native Jane Edward, Ph.D., clinical associate professor, moderated a discussion on how research could be used to help communities, not merely help researchers.

In 2006, Edward joined the Bronx African American History Project to engage the growing community. She and Naison went to events, schools, and organizations, eventually gaining trust. An ethnographer by training, she compiled a list of African establishments that contribute to the vitality of the city, including 19 mosques, 15 churches, 20 businesses, 19 markets, nine restaurants, six hair-braiding salons, six newspapers, four community organizations, two law firms, a women’s organization, a research institute, and a website.

Activist and community leader Ramatu Ahmet recalled how researchers often use her community to grab statements and data then never return to show them the results. Edward returned, again and again, to update the community on her progress, Ahmet said.

Christelle Onwu, a recruitment strategist with the New York City Commission on Human Rights, said that her background in social work helped her appreciate that little can happen on a policy level without good data, which she said Edwards’ paper, “White Paper on African Immigration to the Bronx,” provides.

“To convince an official you need to have numbers,” Onwu said.

“It is very difficult to make change without knowing what the needs are,” she said, noting the importance of research. But, she also warned, “It’s important that [researchers’] subjects don’t feel used, abused, or traumatized.”

To the Future

A forward-looking conversation among emerging scholars of the African diaspora prompted panelist Lauri Lambert, Ph.D., assistant professor of African and African American Studies, to state that she looked forward to when her fellow panelists will be referred to as “established scholars.” It was a fitting precursor to a keynote address delivered by Farah Jasmine Griffin, Ph.D., which examined the current state of the discipline, as well as the outlook for its future.

But first, she started by thanking Fordham for its past and expanded on other significant anniversaries that took place this year, including the 400th anniversary of the 1619 arrival of Africans in the Americas that laid the foundation for slavery in what would become the United States. She noted that while many of the year’s anniversaries were worth commemorating, Fordham’s was worth celebrating.

“This department represents the very best in the tradition of black studies, which through intellectual rigor and its commitment to social justice, seeks to do no less than transform the world,” she said. “And given that you all are one of the oldest and most successful departments you’ve served as inspiration for us at Columbia … [though]we are half a century late.”

She noted that she has been inspired by the work of early Fordham faculty, including writings by Watkins-Owens and Naison. She said that scholarship produced nationwide by African studies has enhanced traditional academic disciplines, especially history, anthropology, sociology. As she looked to the future she cited three sites of engagement for the discipline: in the classroom, in the world, and on the planet.

In focusing on the classroom, she spoke of a variety of contemporary theoretical perspectives including Afro-pessimism (how anti-black violence influences society), Afrofuturism (an Afrocentric intersection of science, history, and technology with utopian visions for the future), black feminism, black queer studies, and black performance studies.

“Now these are oversimplifications of these very rich and complex theories meant only to underscore their robust contribution to the original analyses of black life, culture, history, and the blessed nations,” she said after briefly explaining the theories. “Afrofuturism has been especially attractive to practitioners in technoculture, readers, and writers of science fiction, and some pop culture artists like Janelle Monáe,” she said.

And while she praised the new perspectives and the excitement they bring to students, she also raised concerns that they turn attention away from the dominant continental/European theories that can also serve to frame modern understandings of black life.

“One of the limitations [of the new theories]is the way that such students seem to strongly feel that there is little value outside what this body of work has to offer, resulting in, at best, a failure to appreciate earlier work or, at worst, a dismissal of it as theoretical or old fashioned,” she said.

In the speaking of the world perspective, she noted that few from the discipline were naive about racial progress expected after the election of Barack Obama.

“Nonetheless, in spite of this awareness, few of us, myself included, were prepared for the extent to which the pendulum swung backward in this nation,” she said. “The rise of right-wing, populist nationalism; naked white supremacy; and neo-fascism throughout the Americas, Europe, and Asia has been especially striking.”

When she focused on the planet and the role of Africana studies, she noted that climate change inordinately affects low-income communities of color around the world. She said too few lessons were learned from Hurricane Katrina, as thousands in Puerto Rico and the Bahamas remain devastated from storms there.

She called for a “greening” of Africana studies. “We need more work on the impact of climate change on poor communities and on Island nations, particularly in the Caribbean. And furthermore, we might explore ways that our own institutions can work with these communities on these urgent issues.”

Capping with Culture

While the majority of the day was filled with thoughtful dialogue, the panels and lectures were buttressed by performances of African percussion, singing, and dance by performers from Broadway’s The Lion King. During dinner, one could hear discussions about Muddy Waters coming from one table to Toni Morrison at another and Henry Louis Gates at a third. By the time the cake arrived, DJ Charlie “Hustle” Johnson had pumped up the music to bring the crowd to the floor. The evening was capped by a rap performance by Dayne Carter, FCRH ’15.