Fordham News

What does it take to be a true leader in troubling times? Fordham Law School Dean Matthew Diller recently sat down with Tania Tetlow, Fordham University's new president, to discuss their own unique styles of leadership, the crucial role lawyers have in solving the hard problems of our democracy, and how to prepare law students for a career “in the service of others.” An edited and condensed version of this interview appears in the latest issue of Fordham Lawyer alumni magazine, but we wanted to make their full, wide-ranging conversation available to the entire Fordham community.

Just 26 years ago, President Bill Clinton signed the anti-gay Defense of Marriage Act into law. Today, gay marriage is legal in all 50 states, and the idea that gender is more than a simple binary is gaining acceptance around the country. Efforts to lift up and support people who identify as non-binary are very much ongoing though, and so over the last few months, Fordham News spoke to members of the community who have had insights to share on the topic of gender, either because of their work, their personal experience or both.

The concept of artificial intelligence has been with us since 1955, when a group of researchers first proposed a study of “the simulation of human intelligence processes by machines.” At the same time, it seems like not a day goes by without news about some development, making it feel very futuristic. At Fordham, it's the purview of professors from a variety of fields. Damian Lyons is a professor of computer science on the faculty of arts and sciences. R.P. Raghupathi is a professor of information, technology and operations at Gabelli School of Business. And Laurie Goldkind is a professor at the Graduate School of Social Service.

As summer arrives, and the trend lines for vaccinations and Covid deaths in the United States head in opposite directions, it feels like freedom is finally within reach. But let's face it: The pandemic has taken its toll. We're not the same people we were 15 months ago. So now, what? To help us use the lessons of the recent past to move forward in the future, we sat down with Kirk Bingaman, a professor of pastoral mental health counseling at Fordham's Graduate School of Religion and Religious Education .

On March 23  the Ever Given, a ship the length of the Empire State Building, ran aground in the Suez Canal, causing a traffic jam of epic proportions in one of the busiest shipping routes on the planet. When it did this, it revealed a $20 trillion sector of the worldwide economy that otherwise functions behind the scenes. The Ever Given was freed after six days, but Lawrence Brennan, a retired U.S. Navy Captain who served aboard the USS Nimitz aircraft carrier and now teaches admiralty and international maritime law at Fordham Law, said the snafu illustrates just how dependent we are on a system we often take for granted—one that has real vulnerabilities worth considering.

To say these are challenging economic times is an understatement. As Covid-19 vaccines are slowly being distributed, the promise of a revived economy seems closer than ever. Not so fast, though, as experts warn that life in the United States will probably not return to normal until the fall. And yet in spite of all of the uncertainty, entrepreneurs are still founding new companies. The Fordham Foundry, a business incubator based at the Gabelli School of Business, has continued to stage contests for burgeoning ideas. Its most recent one, the “Ram’s Den,” took place on February 6, and a second one, a pitch challenge geared toward less developed business plans, will take place on March 27. So what is life like for a small business owner these days? We sat down with Brandon Adamson, a Gabelli MBA graduate whose company Beauitmaps won the 2019 pitch challenge, and Ozzy Usman, a current EMBA student who won second place in this year's Ram's Den with his small business lending company Equiduct.

On January 21, 900,000 Americans filed new unemployment claims, adding to the 16 million who were claiming benefits at the beginning of the month, and a sign that the COVID-19 pandemic is still very much a threat to the economy. A second round of stimulus checks was issued by the Federal government in December, and a third round of checks is possible now as well. Closer to home, former presidential candidate Andrew Yang is hoping his embrace of universal basic income, or UBI, will help him become the next mayor of New York City. The idea behind UBI is that government sends every adult a set amount of money regularly, which ensures that when they enter the job market, they do so not from a level of destitution, but from a basic, secure level. Thomas Massaro, S.J., a professor of moral theology, has given all of this quite a bit of thought. He’s a frequent contributor to Catholicethics.com and the author of the 2018 book Mercy in Action: The Social Teachings of Pope Francis.

The vaccines are here! This month, residents of long-term health care facilities and frontline workers such as nurses and doctors began receiving the first COVID-19 vaccine approved by the FDA, and a second vaccine is expected to be rolled out in the coming weeks as well. That’s the good news. The bad news is, the coronavirus pandemic will still be with us until spring, as authorities work to distribute the vaccines to the nation’s 300 million-plus residents, some of whom may not be receptive to taking them. Just as the pandemic forced us to adjust to a reality that once seemed unfathomable, ending it will require a coordinated effort unlike anything we’ve experienced since World War II. Troy Tassier, a professor at Fordham who studies economic epidemiology, has been focused on the pandemic since it first struck the United States in March. He’s dismayed by the recent exponential rise in infections and deaths but says there are some lessons from the spring that can serve as a guide for going forward.

Dean McKay, a professor of psychology at Fordham, specializes in anxiety, obsessive compulsive disorder, and the connections between anxiety and disgust. With winter approaching and potentially leading to more isolation, we thought it would be a good time to talk to him about what we can do to cope effectively during what is likely to be a traumatic time.

The 2020 presidential election was always going to be challenging, and then the COVID 19 pandemic added a new wrinkle to the mix. Mail-in voting has been embraced as a way to keep voters safe from the pandemic, and although many States have successfully held elections via mail and vote, there are real questions about how to expand it to the rest of the nation. Monika McDermott, a professor of political science and the director of Fordham's Master's Program in Elections and Campaign Management, explains why it's essential that we make plans to vote right now.

On July 29 of this year, President Trump bragged on Twitter that he had "rescinded the Obama-Biden AFFH Rule," a reference to the Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing rule, which was passed by the Obama Administraton in 2014. With that, the issue of housing in American suburbs became an issue in the 2020 presidential campaign. Although the suburbs of today bear little resemblance to their cookie predecessors like Levitown, Long Island, they are still, in important ways, resistant to diversity and change. To explore why that is, and how it happened in the first place, we sat down with Roger Panetta, a recently retired professor of history at Fordham and the author of Westchester: The American Suburb, and The Tappan Zee Bridge and the Forging of the Rockland Suburb. He also co-wrote Kingston: The IBM Years, which came out in 2014.

Of all the honors a business professor might snag, an Emmy would seem to be one of the least likely. But Clarence Ball III did just that in 2014, when he won one for the documentary “Looking Over Jordan: African Americans and the War.” That same year, he joined the faculty of the Gabelli School of Business as a lecturer in communications and media management, and in addition to teaching communications theory and corporate communications, he has worked as the college’s interim director of diversity, equity and inclusion. We recently sat down—virtually, of course—with Ball, an award-winning competitive speaker and speech coach, to talk about we can better understand each other during these turbulent times.

Last year, a full 35 percent the United States population was 50 years old or older. And when it comes to jobs, crossing that Five-O mark brings some very unwelcome challenges. In 2018, a survey by the AARP found that nearly one in four workers 45 or older have been subjected to negative comments about their age, and 3 in 5 workers have seen or experienced age discrimination in the workplace. Carole Cox, a professor at Fordham’s Graduate School of Social Service, has spent her career studying gerontology and social policy. Ageism remains the last form of discrimination that’s widely accepted in our culture, she says, and it’s critical that we overcome it if we want to grow and thrive as a society.

The 25th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution is probably best known for what is in the fourth and final section, which spells out the way the president of the United States can be removed from office if they’re alive but unable to fulfill the duties of the office. But the second section—which clarifies the process for replacing a vice president—is actually worthy of consideration as well, now that President Trump has become the third president in the country’s history to be impeached, and is facing a trial in the U.S. Senate. John D. Feerick, Dean Emeritus and the Norris professor of law at Fordham Law School, was instrumental in getting the amendment passed. In October, 1963, Feerick, then a recent graduate from Fordham Law, published an article in the Fordham Law Review on the subject, and just a month later, President John F. Kennedy was assassinated, prompting members of Congress to revisit the subject. Four years later, in February, 1967, the amendment was passed. We sat down with him to learn more.

In this bonus track, Daniel Alexander Jones explains what the term Afromystical means, and why it's so important to understanding his alter ego, "Jomama Jones."

If you visit the Fordham Theatre webpage, you'll find classes with titles such as acting; theater history; flying solo; and young, gifted and black, all offered by one Daniel Alexander Jones. And indeed, if you sign up for these classes, Jones, a member of the faculty since 2008, will artfully guide you through your paces in these aspects of stagecraft. If, however, you visited the Connelly Theater, Joe’s Pub, or any of the myriad theaters where Jones has performed over the last decade, you’d have encountered a very different person: Jomama Jones. Since her debut in 2011, Jomama, a radiant soul diva with her own distinct backstory and career, has been a vehicle for Jones to explore profound questions of race and gender. In 2011, the New York Times described Jomama’s performance as “glowing, making it hard not to surrender to this sequin-encrusted earth mother’s soulful embrace.” And in 2015, Jones won a Doris Duke Artist Award, which featured a $225,000 unrestricted, multiyear grant. So what has Jomama been up to these days? Fordham News tracked Daniel down to find out.

These days, there’s almost no aspect of commerce that hasn’t been radically transformed by technology. Uber lets you summon a privately driven car to chauffer you, Seamless let you order takeout without ever speaking to a soul, and thanks to Airbnb, you can sleep in another person’s bed. But the shift to having everything at your fingertips at the tap of an app hasn’t been without its bumps. Ride-sharing apps have been blamed for worsening traffic congestion, Amazon has been accused of subjecting its warehouse workers to brutal working conditions, and Airbnb has been a source of great debate in places like New York City. To learn more about online marketplaces today, we sat down with Apostolos Filippas, an assistant professor of information systems at the Gabelli School of Business.

In 2016, more countries experienced violent conflict than any time in the previous 30 years. From Yemen, Syria, and Venezuela to Myanmar, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Ukraine, violence has become a more common answer to resolving disputes, and one of the consequences has been that more people are displaced around than globe since World War II. Needless to say, the world needs more peace makers. The United Nations is one organization that tries to fill the void; it currently maintains 14 different peace keeping operations, and mediates negotiations for many other conflicts. Anjali Dayal, an assistant professor of political science at Fordham says that as flawed as the U.N. is, it’s still an absolutely necessary bulwark against spreading chaos.

In 2009, Fordham and the FBI committed to bringing together the world’s best and brightest experts on law enforcement and computer science. Every 18 months, the International Conference on Cyber Security, or ICCS as it’s known, has convened leaders from academia, the private sector, and government to the University’s Lincoln Center campus. Past conferences have featured the heads of the CIA and the NSA, and this year’s gathering, which took place from July 22 to 25, concluded with remarks by FBI Director Christopher Wray. Anthony Ferrante, a former FBI agent who was director of cyber incident response for the National Security Council from 2015 to 2017 and is currently global head of cybersecurity and senior managing director at FTI Consulting, participated in this year’s panel “The Tipping Point: Cyber Risks to Election Systems.” Fordham News caught up with him during a break in the action.

The connection between criminal justice and brain chemistry can sometimes seem like science fiction, but it's very much a part of the court system today. In 2015, Fordham established the Neuroscience and Law Center, to explore how advances in neuroscience have prompted the legal profession to question long-held notions about criminal culpability, free will, thought, behavior, and pain. Deborah Denno, the center’s director and a professor of law, recently sat down with us to talk about her work with the center.

If greenhouse gas emissions continue at the current rate, the Earth’s atmosphere will warm up by as much as 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit by 2040, leading to flooded coastlines, intensifying droughts, and human suffering and poverty. This was the stark conclusion of a landmark report issued in October by the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. To avoid such dire consequences, activists have proposed that the United States embark on what they’re calling a Green New Deal. Most recently New York congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Massachusetts Senator Edward Markey introduced a congressional resolution calling for the implementation of one. To make sense of it all, we recently sat down with Marc N. Conte, an associate professor of economics whose expertise includes the economics of climate change.

Jacqueline Reich, a professor and chair of Fordham’s department of communication and media studies, talks about her involvement with the Bronx Italian American History Initiative, and how she's embraced community-based scholarship.

In the last year, the phrase “me too” has become shorthand for survivors of sexual assault and harassment speaking out against their assailants. At the same time, the term “toxic masculinity” has also entered the public conversation, as a potential culprit for unrestrained, unresolved hostility toward women. Jacqueline Reich, a professor and chair of Fordham’s department of communication and media studies, was one of the first scholars to explore the subject of masculinity, most recently through a 2015 book, “Stars: Masculinity in Italian Cinema.” We sat down with her to talk about how shifting attitudes in both the United States and Italy have affected her own work.

In education, few topics are more fraught with tension than school integration. A new plan being promoted in Brooklyn that does away with admissions screening processes for middle schools is being watched closely by experts and parents alike. For it to succeed, teachers will need to simultaneously teach students of different levels of academic proficiency in the same classroom. Akane Zusho, a professor of educational psychology in Fordham’s Graduate School of Education, says when students are properly motivated, it can be done.

In his upcoming book "League of Democracies," Fordham philosophy professor John Davenport notes that in many ways, the challenges the world's democracies face are similar to those that America's founding fathers faced in the 18th century. In this extended bonus track, Davenport delves into the ways in which game theory explains how.

In 2011, a series of uprisings known as the Arab Spring briefly gave the impression that democracy was on an unstoppable march across the globe. Seven years later, it hasn’t exactly turned out that way. Egypt has embraced authoritarianism, Libya is in a state of near anarchy, and Syria has been mired in a catastrophic civil war for seven years. Meanwhile, the international influence of authoritarian countries such as China and Russia has grown significantly. John Davenport, a professor of philosophy at Fordham, says these and many more developments are proof that NATO and the United Nations Security Council, the two bodies best equipped to promote human rights and peace, are no longer up to the job. In a book that will be published by Routledge this fall, Davenport makes the case for creating what he calls a “League of Democracies.”

It’s September, which means students are flocking back to campus after the summer break. At Fordham’s school of Professional and Continuing Studies, 300 of those enrolled this fall will be participating in the Veterans Administration’s Yellow Ribbon program, which covers tuition and fees for eligible post 9/11 veterans at select colleges. This past May, Mahlon Bailey, a subway mechanic for the MTA and Property Book Officer in the104th Military Police Battalion in the New York National Guard, joined the ranks of Yellow Ribbon graduates. He recently sat down to talk about how the degree he earned in organizational leadership helped him become an officer.

In this extra track, Gregory Acevedo, an associate professor at Fordham’s Graduate School of Social Service, talks about the mental health needs of Puerto Ricans affected by Hurricane Maria who are expected to move to areas such as Florida and New York City this year.

Few issues burn hotter on the worldwide stage today than immigration. In May, President Trump instituted a zero-tolerance policy for anyone arriving at the southern border, and the issue has rattled Europe as well. We sat down recently with Gregory Acevedo, an associate professor at Fordham’s Graduate School of Social Service and an expert on issues of immigration and globalization, and their implications for social work theory,

The day after a June 12 visit to Singapore for the first ever meeting between the leaders of the United States and North Korea, President Trump tweeted: “Before taking office people were assuming that we were going to War with North Korea. President Obama said that North Korea was our biggest and most dangerous problem. No longer - sleep well tonight!” Not quite, says assistant professor of political science Raymond Kuo, an expert on international relations and Asia begs to differ.

In a career spanning five decades, Father Daniel Sullivan, SJ, professor emeritus of biology, has traveled far and wide. His expertise in invasive species, particularly insects, took him far from his native Queens and from the Rose Hill campus, where he first set foot as an undergraduate in 1946. We sat down with him recently to talk about the ways his faith complimented his research, what it takes to make it in science today, and the importance of setting and sticking to the right priorities.

In this bonus track, we ask Mark Conrad, Director, of the Sports Business Concentration Fordham’s Gabelli School of Business, which sports league is the best, and which one is hte best.

The professional sports market in the U.S. was worth about $60 billion in 2014, and according to Forbes, it’s expected to reach $73 billion by 2019. We sat down with Mark Conrad, Director of the Sports Business Concentration at Fordham’s Gabelli School of Business, to get a sense of where leagues such as the NFL, Major League Baseball and the NCAA are headed.

The same day Distinguished Professor of Theology Elizabeth Johnson sat down to talk about her new book, Creation and the Cross, the death of renowned theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking dominated the headlines. In this bonus track, Johnson reflects on Hawking, an avowed atheist.

In her new book Creation and the Cross, Distinguished Professor of Theology Elizabeth Johnson, CSJ, challenges us to reconsider cosmic redemption. It's an ancient concept that fell out of favor in the 11th century, but is needed more than ever in a time of advancing ecological devastation.

This year, one of the ten films vying for the Best Picture Oscar award is The Shape of Water, a film by Mexican director Guillermo del Toro. It's safe to say this is the first year that a fishman/woman romance flick has been nominated for Tinselstown's top award, so we sat down with professor Miguel Garcia, an expert on both Mexican Literature and Cinema and Mexican Science Fiction. Spoiler alert.

Award-winning journalist David Gibson assumed the title of director of Fordham University’s Center on Religion and Culture on July 1. In a wide ranging interview, he discusses his vision for the center's future, including his dream panel discussion, and where Star Wars fits in it all.

Award-winning journalist David Gibson assumed the title of director of Fordham University’s Center on Religion and Culture on July 1. In a wide ranging interview, he discusses his vision for the center's future, including his dream panel discussion, and where Star Wars fits in it all.

Hope and faith are common threads in American pop culture, and Kathryn Reklis, an assistant professor of theology, often addresses both in a monthly column in the journal The Christian Century. Reklis sat down with with us recently to talk about how, after a year in which hope has been in short supply, it's still alive today.

The tax reform plan currently being debated in Congress is a complicated endeavor with so many moving parts, it can be hard to understand what it ultimately means for the average American. To help sort through it all, we sat down with Stanley Veliotis. Ph.D., an associate professor of accounting and taxation at the Gabelli School of Business.

Christina Greer, Ph.D., associate professor of political science, talks about how term limits, which were passed in New York City in 2010, have created a whole new set of challenges to the electoral process.

Christina Greer, Ph.D., associate professor of political science, weighs in on the issues at stake in the New York City 2017 mayoral election.

We sat down with Annika Hinze, an assistant professor of political science and director of Fordham's Urban Studies program, to talk about the love/hate relation that Americans, and much of the world has with big cities.

Molly Ness, Ph.D., an associate professor of curriculum and teaching at Fordham's Graduate School of Education, talks about her new book, Think Big with Think Alouds, and strategies for getting children to read.

The 1965 murder of Kitty Genovese in Queens first alerted people to what became known as the "bystander effect." The original reporting by the New York Times, that her death was witnessed by 38 witnesses who did nothing, was debunked a long time ago, but the story has still resonated as a sort of parable about the callousness of urban living. Harold Takooshian, Ph.D., a professor of psychology, talks about why the Genovese case continues to resonate today, and what psychologists have learned about the "bystander effect."

With the addition of Neil Gorsuch, the United States Supreme Court is back to being fully staffed. We sat down with Robert Hume, Ph.D., professor of political science, to get a sense of what that means for future cases.

If it's mid-May in New York City, you can be sure that pollen will be plentiful. To learn more about what's behind all our watery eyes and sneezing, we sat down with Guy Robinson, a senior lecturer of natural sciences. Robinson runs the Fordham Pollen Index, which is based on pollen collected from the air at the Lincoln Center campus and the Louis Calder Biological Field Station in Armonk, NY.

What is the future of retail in the United States? We sat down with Economics lecturer Giacomo Santangelo to find out.

The World Trade Organization meetings in 1999, the Iraq war in 2003, the Tea Party in 2009, Occupy Wall Street in 2011, Black Lives Matter in 2013—major protests in the United States took on a different feel at the turn of the century. And yet, 2017 feels as if something has changed yet again. Why do some protests succeed and some fail? Why is the Tea Party movement getting a fresh new look? And what is a "Black Bloc?" We recently sat down with Heather Gautney, Ph.D., associate professor of sociology, to learn more.

Celia Fisher, Ph.D., the Marie Ward Doty University Chair in Ethics, professor of psychology and director of Fordham's Center for Ethics Education, discusses the pitfalls of diagnosing a public figure with a mental disorder without having interviewed them in person.

Thumbs up or thumbs down? The day after Super Bowl 51, Timothy Malefyt, Ph.D., clinical associate professor of marketing at the Gabelli School of Business, weighs in on the advertising industry's biggest night of the year.