“Fordham is blessed—a word I do not use lightly—with an exceptional Board of Trustees,” said Joseph M. McShane, S.J., president of the University. “Our eight new trustees typify the generosity, wisdom, and dedication of Board members. I, and the University, are indebted to them for the time, treasure, and care they bring to Fordham, and especially to our students. I look forward to working with them as we navigate this most challenging of years.”

In the past decade, former and current board members have helped establish endowed chairs and endowed or current-use scholarship funds, fund the construction and renovation of buildings on campus, and guide University policies and initiatives. Recently, the board helped develop the University’s anti-racism action plan and mandated annual anti-racism training for all faculty, administrators, staff, and students—including the president’s cabinet and the board itself. Below are the condensed bios of this year’s newly elected trustees. 

Meaghan Jarensky Barakett, GSS ’16

Founder and Executive Director, One Girl

Barakett is the founder and executive director of One Girl, Inc., a nonprofit that develops young women into leaders through charity, advocacy, and community organizing. She is also a two-time beauty pageant winner; she won the Miss New York USA title in 2005 and Mrs. New York America in 2010. An unusual obstacle in her courtship with her husband, Brett Barakett, led her to become an anti-cyberbullying advocate who has pushed for passage of the E-Impersonation Prevention Act, New York Senate Bill S5871-A, which would elevate the crime to a felony. Barakett graduated from Fordham’s Graduate School of Social Service with a master’s degree in nonprofit leadership in 2016. That same year, One Girl and GSS’s Institute for Women & Girls hosted its first “Women in Charge” conference, which became an annual event for several years. More recently, Barakett served as a panelist in Fordham’s 2018 Women’s Philanthropy Summit and a member of the President’s Council. The Baraketts are finalizing plans to establish an endowed scholarship fund at Fordham in loving memory of their son, Lincoln.

Ulderico Calero Jr., FCLC ’90

Head of Banking and Lending, BNY Mellon

Ulderico “Rick” Calero Jr. is a financial services executive with more than two decades of experience. Before joining BNY Mellon Wealth Management, he spent six years at TIAA, where he served as senior managing director in institutional financial services and president and CEO of TIAA-CREF Trust Co. FSB. He has also held various senior executive roles at Umpqua Financial Holdings, Citigroup, and Regions Financial. In addition, he is a fellow of the Aspen Institute’s Finance Leaders Fellowship, a member of the Aspen Global Leadership Network, and a board member of the Bank Administration Institute. For nearly 12 years, he served in the U.S. Army in various positions, including as a Green Beret. He earned a bachelor’s degree in economics from Fordham College at Lincoln Center and an MBA from Southern Methodist University’s Cox School of Business. As a Fordham student, he received an ROTC Scholarship. He is a past member of Fordham’s President’s Council, where he mentored current students and helped fund key initiatives. Calero and his wife, Nancy, whom he met in the sixth grade, have three children. 

Denny Chin, LAW ’78 

Judge, United States Court of Appeals – Second Circuit

Chin is the first Asian American to win a federal judicial appointment on the East Coast and an award-winning circuit judge who has presided over many notable cases in his judicial career, including the sentencing of infamous Ponzi schemer Bernie Madoff. A Hong Kong native, Chin graduated magna cum laude from Princeton University and earned his law degree from Fordham Law School, where he served as managing editor of the Fordham Law Review. Over the next four decades, Chin climbed the ranks in the U.S. courts and private firms, from law clerk, to associate, to assistant U.S. attorney, to partner, to U.S. district judge, to his current position. He is the recipient of multiple awards, including the Spirit of Excellence Award from the American Bar Association, the Edward Weinfeld Award from the New York County Lawyers Association, and the Medal of Achievement from the Fordham Law Alumni Association. At Fordham, he is an adjunct professor of law who has regularly taught first-year legal writing since 1986. Chin and his wife, Kathy Hirata Chin, have two children. 

Emanuel Chirico, GABELLI ’79 

Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Phillips-Van Heusen

Emanuel “Manny” Chirico is chairman and CEO of PVH Corp., the world’s second-largest apparel company and parent company to brands like Calvin Klein and Tommy Hilfiger. He has received numerous accolades for his work, including being named to the NRF Foundation’s List of People Shaping Retail’s Future in 2020 and induction into the Business of Fashion 500 Hall of Fame in 2019. Born and raised in the Bronx, Chirico serves on the boards of Montefiore Medical Center, Save the Children, United Nations Global Compact, and other organizations; he has previously served on the Fordham Board of Trustees. This year, Fordham and PVH entered a new partnership: PVH will donate $1 million to the Gabelli School of Business to enhance sustainability curriculum and support speakers, visiting scholars, and academic conferences. Chirico and his wife, Joanne, have supported other University initiatives and incorporated lessons from Fordham into their daily work. Two of their three grown sons are Fordham alumni. The couple will be honored at the Founder’s Dinner on March 22, 2021.  

Darlene Luccio Jordan, FCRH ’89 

Executive Director, The Gerald R. Jordan Foundation

Jordan is the executive director of the Gerald R. Jordan Foundation, a nonprofit named for her husband that champions education, health and medical research, youth services, and the arts. She is a former assistant attorney general of Massachusetts, where she served in the insurance fraud division from 1996 to 1999. Previously, she was an assistant district attorney in the Norfolk district attorney’s office. She served as a national finance co-chair for Mitt Romney for President in 2008 and 2012, and was the state finance chair for Florida Gov. Rick Scott in 2014. At Fordham, Jordan and her husband established the Darlene Luccio Jordan, Esq., and Gerald R. Jordan Jr. Endowed Scholarship, which gives preference to undergraduates from Boston high schools. Jordan served as co-chair of Excelsior | Ever Upward | Campaign for Fordham and Faith & Hope | The Campaign for Financial Aid, the University’s most recently completed campaign to help finance opportunities for Fordham students. She has previously served on Fordham’s board. Jordan and her husband, Jerry, live in Florida with their daughter, Charlotte. 

Armando Nuñez, GABELLI ’82 

Adviser and former chairman, Global Distribution Group, ViacomCBS

Nuñez is adviser and former chairman of the global distribution group and chief content licensing officer for ViacomCBS, where he oversaw all content licensing for ViacomCBS-owned programming to third-party platforms and monetization of the industry’s largest library of film and television titles. Nuñez, who has held senior leadership roles in international media for more than two decades, also directed CBS Television Distribution, which produces and distributes industry-leading franchises including Entertainment Tonight and Jeopardy!. He has been recognized by multiple organizations for being a major television influencer. In 2014, he was No. 7 on The Hollywood Reporter’s list of the top 25 Latinos in entertainment. Nuñez graduated from the Gabelli School of Business with a bachelor’s degree in marketing and management. In 2012, he established the Nuñez Family Scholarship Fund for full-time Gabelli students, with preference given to students who are economically disadvantaged or part of underrepresented populations. He has previously served on the Fordham Board of Trustees.

Thomas J. Regan, S.J., GSAS ’82, ‘84

Rector, Jesuit Community at Fordham 

This past summer, Father Regan became the leader of the Jesuit community at Fordham. In 1980, he began his academic career at Fairfield University as an instructor of philosophy and went on to become associate professor and chair of its philosophy department and associate dean of the College of Arts and Sciences. His work at Fairfield earned him the Most Influential Educators award, given to five faculty members, every year from 1990 to 1995. He also spent nearly a decade at Loyola University in Chicago, where he served as an associate professor of philosophy, academic dean at St. Joseph College Seminary, director of the Jesuit First Studies master’s program, and dean of both the College of Arts and Sciences and the Graduate School. From 2010 to 2011, he was a visiting associate professor of philosophy at Fordham. Father Regan also served as Provincial for the New England Province of the Society of Jesus for six years. He has served previously on Fordham’s board. He is the new co-chair of the Mission and Social Justice Committee with Trustee Anthony Carter. 

Richard P. Salmi, S.J.

Rector, Jesuit Community at Loyola University Chicago

Father Salmi, previously the head of Fordham University’s London Centre from 2014 to 2020, is currently the rector of the Jesuit community at Loyola University Chicago. A native of Cleveland, Father Salmi has served in various roles throughout his life, including director of community service programs; coordinator of spiritual counseling for people with AIDS, their families, friends, and caregivers; and vice president of student affairs at Loyola University Chicago. From 2009 to 2013, he served as president of Spring Hill College, where he oversaw the opening of a center in Bologna, Italy. Father Salmi has been a member of nearly a dozen boards, including Cristo Rey Jesuit High School in Chicago and the Association for Student Affairs at Catholic Colleges and Universities. Among other degrees, he holds a Master of Divinity degree from the Jesuit School of Theology of Santa Clara University and a Ph.D. in higher education administration from Boston College.

Many students at Hayes—as the school is known—are potentially the first in their families to attend college. Most are Hispanic and African-American, and many come from single-parent homes in the South Bronx whose families struggle financially, said the school’s principal, William Lessa. 

Four years ago, Fordham developed a partnership with Hayes that began with a mentoring program and has expanded to include work with WFUV, the Gabelli School of Business, the Graduate School of Education, and Fordham-based Jesuits. The collaboration has evolved into a symbiotic relationship between two schools that share similar missions and values, said staff from both institutions. 

“Our partnership with Cardinal Hayes is a critical one,” said Joseph M. McShane, S.J., president of Fordham. “Students cannot aspire to a life they do not know exists, and they cannot achieve that life unless they are taught that it belongs within their grasp. If that were the only reason for the partnership, it would be enough. But engagement with the Hayes students, their families, and their community also enriches Fordham. We are wiser, better grounded in the lives of our neighbors, and the beneficiary of great talents that would otherwise go untapped, were it not for this partnership.”

The ties between the two schools have given Fordham students a window into what life in the South Bronx looks like, said Roxanne De La Torre, FCRH ’09, GRE ’11, director of campus and community leadership for Fordham’s Center for Community Engaged Learning. 

“For our students to get more exposure to the Bronx—the South Bronx, in particular—for our students to get out of our campus and meet people who live and work and go to school here in the Bronx, is a huge positive,” said De La Torre, who helped drive the partnership between the two schools. 

And for many young men at Hayes, exposure to Fordham’s staff and students has broadened their horizons and opened doors. 

“Our kids are fascinated by them … They have no idea who lives out there,” said Lessa, adding that the partnership is also important to his students’ families. “I think our parents have decided to invest a considerable amount of money into their sons’ education in the hopes that they’ll be the first person in their homes to go onto college. Education is transformational and can be a change agent in their lives.” 

‘The Best Tutor’ 

Several days a week, Fordham students visit Hayes and tutor students in an after-school academic support program called Period 9. 

“Although [the Hayes students are]  tired from a full day of classes, they attend Period 9 so they can get that extra help they need in a particular subject,” said Emily Padilla-Bradley, the school’s dean of studies. “Throughout the years, I’ve realized that the students have learned to appreciate, more and more, the help from the tutors from Fordham.” 

One of those tutors is Manuel DeMatos, a Fordham College at Rose Hill senior who will be studying adolescent education at the Graduate School of Education next year. 

“Just knowing that you’re having a positive impact and that these kids are improving their potential life—not just in high school, but into the future—is super rewarding,” said DeMatos, who wants to become a high school social studies and French teacher. 

The Cardinal Hayes students in Period 9 are an eclectic bunch. There’s Calvin Lanier, a junior who plays football. There’s Leonel Nepomuceno, a senior who sings in the school choir and loves animals—including his three pets, Hailey the miniature poodle, Joshua the orange tabby cat, and Rango the turtle—so much that he’s considering studying veterinary science in college. Then there’s Albert Alexander Almanzar, a self-described class clown who often played around instead of focusing on his studies. But his years at Hayes—and a Fordham student named Thomas Bradley—changed him, he said. 

Almanzar called Bradley, a student at the Gabelli School of Business, “the best tutor.”

“[He] gives me more motivation to want to do better in my classes because it shows me somebody that cares,” Almanzar said of Bradley, who tutored him in U.S. history and writing. “All day in school, people show that they care. But somebody that’s a little younger, I feel like I could relate to more… that means more to me.”

Finding A Passion for Public Radio 

For the past three years, members of WFUV, Fordham’s public radio station, have paid an annual visit to Cardinal Hayes and, in a conversation with the entire junior class, shared what the students can learn at the station. 

“There is this station that is right within their borough, within the University, that offers the kind of opportunities that they’re not going to find at other colleges and universities across the United States,” said Chuck Singleton, general manager at WFUV, which is ranked among the top 20 college radio stations by the Princeton Review. 

Those visits have led to three paid internships for Hayes students, including Ramon Liriano, a senior who worked in the sports department last summer. Like many of his high school peers, he’s potentially the first in his family to complete a college degree. Thanks to his internship at WFUV, he said, he’s also discovered a potential career in sports broadcasting. 

“I’ve seen my family struggle, especially my mother, who works two jobs [as a housekeeper]. I’ve seen her come home looking tired, especially late at night—sometimes, 1 or 2 o’clock in the morning,” said Liriano. “She’s put me in a Catholic school, pushed me to become better than what she has done in her life … I want to take this opportunity to study something really good in the world that can help provide for my family.”

Giving Students A Voice

Last year, a dozen Hayes honors upperclassmen took a corporate communications course through the Gabelli School of Business. From fall to spring, they learned how to deliver the perfect personal elevator pitch and put together an engaging presentation. They analyzed a Fortune 500 company that experienced a diversity-related crisis, like Starbucks, and presented a new diversity plan to their classmates. But perhaps most importantly, they learned how to become better communicators.

“The difference in how the students presented their work in class, how confident they were in their verbal responses, how confident they became in their social circles, all based on the communication competencies they learned in class … that, to me, was the most rewarding thing,” said Clarence Ball, lecturer and interim director of diversity, equity, and inclusion at the Gabelli School of Business, who teaches the course at Cardinal Hayes. 

Five students from the initial cohort of Ball’s course are now first-year students at Fordham, including the 2019 Hayes valedictorian, Andy Lin. 

Lin described himself as a shy student, who, as a high school freshman, used to read his speeches word-for-word from a piece of paper. Instead of making direct eye contact during presentations, he would look down. But by the end of Ball’s program, he saw a huge change in himself. 

“Before I went up on stage to give my [valedictorian]  speech, I did the exercises that Professor Ball always had us do,” said Lin, now a first-year Fordham College at Lincoln Center student who plans on studying computer science. “I messed up a few words here and there, but I was able to recompose myself and keep moving on.”

These relationships that Fordham professors and students are fostering in the community are something the University hopes to build on, said Michael C. McCarthy, S.J., vice president for mission integration and planning, who helped found the Center for Community Engaged Learning. Using its Hayes relationship as a model, Fordham is now working on a similar partnership with Aquinas High School, an all-girls Catholic high school in the Belmont section of the Bronx. 

“My hope is that our partnership with Cardinal Hayes is one of many such partnerships with institutions in the Bronx, where students can engage their community more effectively,” said Father McCarthy. “We want to help faculty leaders to connect with community leaders to build up student leaders.” 

Trading Teachers Across the Bronx

Several Hayes teachers have studied at the Graduate School of Education, thanks to the support of a Fordham scholarship that almost halves tuition costs for full-time professionals in faith-based non-public schools, said principal William Lessa.

And in the past three years, three Fordham-based Jesuit scholastics have volunteered at Cardinal Hayes. These young Jesuits who have just finished novitiate are deepening their faith through local community service, said Joseph O’Keefe, S.J., GSAS ’80, a current scholar in residence at the Graduate School of Education and Fordham trustee who was just chosen to lead the new USA East Jesuit province. 

“The idea is to work in the Bronx community and to reflect on that as part of their preparation to become priests,” Father O’Keefe said. 

At Hayes, the scholastics have counseled students dealing with tough situations at home, taught religion classes, and helped seniors navigate the college admission process. 

“They’re there to help. But they also learn from people’s experiences,” said Father O’Keefe. 

An Alumnus from Both Schools 

At the heart of the partnership between the two schools is Donald Almeida, Fordham trustee and retired vice chairman of PwC. 

Almeida, who grew up in Yonkers, New York, is a ’69 Hayes and ’73 Fordham alumnus who now serves on the boards at both schools. Over the past several years, he has spearheaded the partnership between his two alma maters and, with his wife, supported many students—including young men who have experienced homelessness.

Among his mentees is a Hayes student whom Almeida chose not to identify by name. The student plays basketball so well that he will likely receive many Division I offers, said Almeida, who has attended his sports games and cheered him on from the sidelines. He’s also occasionally taken the student and his mother out to dinner. 

“I’m his ‘bro,’” said Almeida. “That’s what he calls me.”

A while back, Almeida learned that the student was considering leaving Hayes and attending a prep school, in hopes of being recruited by better college sports teams. But Almeida said he was more focused on getting the student into the best academic college program. 

Almeida recalled the day he sat in his Rhode Island home, gazing at the ocean, when his cell phone rang. It was the student’s father. For two hours, they debated whether or not the student should stay at Hayes. 

“Thirty seconds after I hung up the phone with his father, [the student]  calls me to tell me he’s staying at Hayes,” said Almeida, noting that the student is not the only one benefitting from their relationship. “The more you impact their lives, the more satisfaction you get.”

“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.

PCS Dean Anthony Davidson, Ph.D., said the conference was designed to lay out harsh realities and find solutions.

“Sports stands as the great unifier, it completely breaks the ice and creates opportunities to bond,” said Davidson.

Speakers came from a variety of sports backgrounds, including American football, rowing, horse racing, fencing, and soccer. They also came from a variety of ethnic backgrounds and spoke on all forms of prejudice.

“By focusing on issues surrounding anti-Semitism, we can talk about all forms of racism,” he said. “We also want to understand how we use sports to move the needle, but in order to do that we need to know where the needle is.”

Sports and Society

From the start, speakers reflected on how sports mirrors society at large and how star players, with their outsized power of image, can help curb prejudice simply by speaking out.

In prepared remarks delivered by Davidson, Joseph M. McShane, S.J., president of Fordham, referred to the event as a “landmark summit.”

“I do not have to tell any of you here that the playing field has for some time been a battleground against ugly anti-Semitic and racist language and behavior,” McShane said, noting in his remarks that he regretted that he couldn’t be there in person. “I want to say to you unequivocally and bluntly that anti-Semitism is not a Jewish problem—it is a sin, a mortal sin, against the Jewish people and a crime against the human family.”

In an opening keynote address, Kenneth Jacobson, deputy national director at the Anti-Defamation League, agreed with Father McShane. He noted a growing “loss of shame” about anti-Semitism reflected both on and off the playing fields in America and Europe.

Jacobson said that off the field, both sides of the political spectrum foster prejudice. He said it can come from the right, the left, majority communities, and minority communities. As an example, he labeled the United Kingdom’s Labor Party as “institutionally anti-Semitic.” In France, he said, there has been an internal migration away from certain areas of the country that has led to a “re-ghettoization of Jews.”

“The denial of the left is, ‘It can’t possibly come from us,’” he said. “That allows denial and nuance to enter the mainstream. “We see it with members of Congress. The worry is that this kind of ‘soft anti-Semitism,’ if you will, now becomes much more mainstream.”

He noted that Jewish students in Europe often go to school under far tighter security than is necessary in the U.S., due in part to long-standing prejudices and contemporary radicalization of Islamic fundamentalists.

“The fact that it’s happened in Europe shouldn’t be shocking considering the long history [of anti-Semitism]; in America it is shocking,” Jacobson said. “There were so many instances at ADL where people in the Jewish community ask us, ‘What are you bothering with anti-Semitism in America it’s no longer a problem, we have a comfortable life, we’re treated as equals?’ and we said, ‘Don’t be complacent about it.’”

He said this new burst of anti-Semitism coming from different sources has pushed security issues in the U.S. to come to the fore, particularly after the violence in places like Charlottesville, Pittsburgh, and even in Brooklyn, where he said Hassidic Jews are attacked “almost every day.”

When Digital Hate Spills onto the Playing Field

The way hate speech enters the mainstream—and by extension the sports arena—is primarily via the internet, said several panelists over the course of the day.

Panelist Oren Segal, director of the Anti-Defamation League’s Center on Extremism, tracks and monitors hate speech for the group. He sat on a panel titled “The Impact of Hate on Society.”

“Nothing is more in the service of casual hate speech than this phone right here,” he said, holding up a cell phone.

Segal used the example of 13, 14 and 15-year-olds who think it’s ironic or humorous to make a joke of murderous behavior, sometimes defacing websites set up to memorialize victims of neo-Nazi violence. He noted that even though such behavior is gravely problematic, if examined, solutions can begin to be addressed.

“We should be looking at incidents and how the community responds,” he said. “The sense of community provided through sports, that could be a great remedy.”

How Fandom Becomes Hate

On a panel titled “The Realities: Anti-Semitism and Sports,” Andrei Markovits, Ph.D., the Arthur F. Thurnau Professor and Karl W. Deutsch Collegiate Professor of Comparative Politics and German Studies at the University of Michigan, said that the majority of sports fans are not troublesome, though the tribal aspects of sports culture can be fertile ground for repressed prejudices.

“Affinities to sports teams connote an identity, that means they become tribal by being an identity,” he said. “In Europe, these identities are not only a sports team—these sports teams evolved out of the club system, which was part of a church, part of a party, part of a neighborhood.” That makes them even more tied to identity, he said.

He divides sports fanatics into five circles of fandom: awareness, affection, allegiance, attachment, and a fifth he calls affliction/addiction. It’s in the affliction/addiction category that the bigot can come to the fore.

“Sports fandom creates a tribalism that permits a language that otherwise would not be used,” he said, adding that within the affliction/addiction category it can manifest as extreme prejudice.

Hate at Yankee Stadium

As panelist Christian Araos, a freelance journalist covering professional soccer, has reported, the stadium can also become a forum for neo-Nazis. He has written about skinhead groups that have infiltrated the fanbase of New York City Football Club (NYCFC) matches at Yankee Stadium.

“They immediately alarmed their other fans though their chanting and symbolism,” he said, noting that “everyone tried to downplay it and tried to not think about it. What we need is leadership to eradicate it or it’s going to linger there; you need to cleanse it somehow.

Tibi Galis, executive director at the Auschwitz Institute for Peace and Reconciliation, warned that mass atrocities begin with very simple things, like hate speech at sporting matches.

“Sports is often one of the very first spaces we hear the manifestation of dangerous speech,” he said. “The question is, ‘How we can make the sports environment the better one?’”

Araos reported that NYCFC management has a zero-tolerance policy toward racists and a tweet in his article suggested NYCFC security has responded to quell violence before it starts. He said that he’s become optimistic because a majority of fans have mobilized against the threat.

“It just goes to show there are ways for fanbases to fight back and do so in ways that are nonviolent and nonconfrontational to educate society,” he said. “I’m optimistic these are ways we can build a better future.”

Solving the Problem in the Arena

In London, the Chelsea Football Club has a highly sophisticated way of dealing with racists. Panelist Rola Brentlin, head of special projects at Chelsea FC, leads the club’s efforts to combat anti-Semitism. She said that a combination of factors helps management hone in on troublemakers. First, identification is required to purchase tickets. Second, fans concerned with bad behavior can text management at the first signs of trouble. Third, closed-circuit TV monitors the entire stadium, section by section.

Between panel sessions, Bruce Buck, chairman of Chelsea FC, said that the club has hired people to focus specifically on anti-Semitism. He said the effort goes beyond influencing Chelsea fans. The hope is that other clubs may join in the effort, which was spearheaded by the club’s ownership.

“Our owner, Roman Abramovich, noticed that no one in the sports club area was focusing on anti-Semitism, and he said, ‘Don’t take away from all the other things we’re doing about discrimination, let’s add to that with this special project,” said Buck, referring to a campaign the club announced last year to raise awareness and educate players, staff, and fans about anti-Semitism in football. With a range of partners that include the World Jewish Congress and London’s Jewish Museum, the club goes so far as to have their foundation facilitate equality and diversity workshops in primary schools.

“There’s definitely been a rise [in anti-Semitism]; I personally believe a lot of it is due to the anonymity that social media provides, and I think that’s been a sea change,” Buck said. “Unless we can do something about that, we’ve got a real problem. That’s why we decided to make it a special project.”

He said the club does ban fans, but does not want to ban people for years at a time. If a banned fan takes advantage of an educational opportunity with the club’s diversity officers, they will be let back in.

“The theory being that if we just banned them for life, we’re not going to change their ways. They’re going to be even more anti-Semitic,” he said. “So, the thought is, education, education, education. It can change behavior.”

“An institution is only as strong as the people who lead it,” said Joseph M. McShane, S.J., president of the University.

“I am pleased to say that Fordham is blessed with the leadership and support of immensely talented and dedicated trustees, upon whom I depend for their broad expertise and wise counsel. I—and the Fordham community—are grateful for their generosity in time, gifts, and expert advice. I know everyone at Fordham joins me in welcoming these new members to the board.”

Carolyn Albstein, GABELLI ’82
Retired, Finance Executive

Albstein received an M.B.A. from the Gabelli School of Business in 1982, attending the school as an evening student. From 1984 to 1997, she worked as a senior manager of pension investments at Unilever, and from 1997 to 2000, she served as director of pension investments for Bristol Myers-Squibb. She is married to Andrew W. Albstein, LAW ’81. Together with her husband, she has been very involved with the University. She is a former chair of the President’s Council, a former member of the Gabelli School of Business Advisory Board, a Fordham Law Cornerstone Founder, and a member of the Archbishop Hughes Society. The couple’s daughter Cindy is a second-year student at Fordham Law. In 1979, the Albsteins, along with Andrew’s sister, Iris Albstein, LAW ’78, established the Nathan H. Albstein Memorial Endowed Scholarship at Fordham. They created it in memory of Iris and Andrew’s father, who was an employee of the chemistry department at Fordham for many years.

Nora Ahern Grose, GABELLI ’84
Retired, Real Estate and Construction Manager

Grose earned her B.S. in architecture from Catholic University and an M.B.A. in finance from Fordham. She worked in commercial architecture at the Washington, D.C., firm Deupi and Associates before becoming project manager for Halpern Real Estate Development and the property development firm Olympia and York. Grose first joined Fordham’s Board of Trustees in 2011 and is returning for another term. She is a former member of the boards of Blair Academy and the Greenwich Land Trust. Grose and her husband, Madison Grose, support and volunteer at several schools as well as environmental, health, and children’s charities. During her prior term as a Fordham trustee, Grose served in the roles of vice chair of the board, secretary of the board, chair of the Facilities and IT Committee, and vice chair of the Board Strategy Committee and the Facilities and IT Committee. She serves on the Executive Committee for the Gabelli School of Business Advisory Board. She and her husband are members of the Archbishop Hughes Society.

Alexis Klemish, LAW ’93
Senior Corporate and Tech Transactions Counsel, GM Cruise, LLC

A 1989 graduate of U.C. Berkeley, Klemish began her legal career as a senior policy analyst for California Governor Pete Wilson. She was later appointed as first general counsel and assistant director for the California Department of Information Technology. In 1997, she left public service to pursue a career providing legal counsel in Silicon Valley. She began as a business associate specializing in technology licensing for Cooley LLP, and gradually moved into positions of greater responsibility. She served as associate director of legal at Twitter and general counsel and executive vice president of human resources and compliance at Digital Media Solutions Group. Most recently, she served as outside counsel to various technology and consumer product companies before joining Cruise, a self-driving vehicle company based in San Francisco.

Kevin O’Brien, S.J., GSAS ’01
President, Santa Clara University

After serving for three years as dean of the Jesuit School of Theology, Father O’Brien was appointed president of Santa Clara on July 1. He previously spent eight years at Georgetown University, the last five as vice president for mission and ministry. A native of Montreal, he graduated from Georgetown University in 1988 and became a naturalized American citizen at age 22. He practiced corporate litigation for two years after completing law school before a mini-epiphany led him to take up teaching social studies at Cardinal Newman High School in West Palm Beach, Florida. He joined the Society of Jesus in 1996, and in the course of his formation, he earned a master’s degree in philosophy from Fordham and a Master of Divinity and a Licentiate in Sacred Theology from the Weston Jesuit School of Theology, now part of Boston College. He was ordained a priest at Fordham’s University Church in 2006. His book The Ignatian Adventure, Experiencing the Spiritual Exercises of Saint Ignatius in Daily Life (Loyola Press, 2011) has been translated into three languages and has sold more than 40,000 copies.

Joseph O’Keefe, S.J., GSAS ’80
Scholar in Residence, Graduate School of Education

An internationally recognized expert on Catholic education, Father O’Keefe is the editor or co-editor of 12 books and author or co-author of more than 40 articles and book chapters on Catholic education and educational leadership. In 2004, he was the recipient of the F. Sadlier Dinger Award for his contribution to Catholic education. Father O’Keefe entered the Society of Jesus in 1976 and was ordained in 1986. He received his bachelor’s degree from the College of the Holy Cross, and a Master of Divinity and Licentiate in Sacred Theology from the Weston Jesuit School of Theology, now part of Boston College. In addition, Father O’Keefe received a master’s degree in French from Fordham and a doctorate in administration, planning, and policy from the Harvard University Graduate School of Education.

Valerie Irick Rainford, FCRH ’86
Managing Director, Head of Advancing Black Leaders & Diversity Advancement Strategies, JPMorgan Chase & Co.

As a member of JPMorgan Chase’s human resources operating committee, Rainford works to attract, hire, retain and advance top black talent at all levels of the bank. In three years in the role, she has embedded transformative strategies that increased JPMorgan Chase’s black senior executive talent by over 70 percent. Prior to JPMorgan Chase, she served for 21 years at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, where she rose to become the most senior black woman and the first to achieve a senior vice president title. The author of the memoir Until the Brighter Tomorrow: One Woman’s Courageous Climb from the Projects to the Podium (Eloree Press, 2014), Rainford is the founding member of the Black Women for Black Girls Giving Circle; the co-founder and board chair of Black Women of Influence; and the recipient of numerous awards and distinctions, including Black Enterprise’s Most Powerful Women in Business and The Network Journal’s 25 Most Influential Women in Business.

Gualberto Rodriguez, FCRH ’95
Chairman, Grupo Navis LLC, Co-Founder and Managing Partner, Semillero Ventures LLC

Rodriguez has served as Chairman of Grupo Navis—the holding company of what is now a group of food companies with combined revenues in excess of $100 million, since 2017. He has held leadership roles in the company, which was founded by his grandfather in 1960 as Caribbean Produce Exchange, for the last 17 years. From 2005 to 2017, he served as president of the San Juan-based firm, which serves supermarkets, restaurant chains, wholesalers, and cruise ships and posts sales exceeding $84 million annually. He earned an M.B.A. from the Yale School of Management and has completed executive education programs at the London School of Economics and Harvard Business School. An avid surfer who has served on the Board of the Foundation for Puerto Rico and the Advisory Board of the Center for the New Economy, Rodriguez was recently honored by the Fordham Alumni Association Award for his commitment to social and economic development.

Dario Werthein, GABELLI ’91
Director of Grupo Werthein

Upon graduation from Universidad de Buenos Aires, Werthein earned an M.B.A. from Fordham. He began his career at Barclays Bank PLC in London and returned to Argentina in 1994, where he was appointed adviser to the National Industry Secretariat and joined Banco Mercantil Argentino as deputy general manager. Since 1996, he has held senior management responsibilities at various companies within the Werthein Group, a firm whose portfolio includes mass consumption, energy, insurance, agribusiness, real estate, and technology. As part of a commitment to improving society, Werthein chairs the Tzedaka Foundation, one of the largest social welfare organizations in Argentina. He has also participated on the board of Vida Silvestre, an affiliate of WWF. His book Pampas: Argentine Productive and Natural Field, (Sudamericana, 2018), makes the case for biodiversity for a balanced ecosystem and addresses how to achieve responsible production without destroying wildlife and the environment.

“I often like to refer to the justice as the other Sonia from the Bronx,“ began Manzano, getting a laugh from the crowd sitting in the sunshine on the Walsh Family Library lawn. Manzano, an actress and writer, is most noted for playing Maria on Sesame Street. She is the author of Becoming Maria and A Miracle on 133rd St, among other books.

Sotomayor has penned a few books of her own since being appointed to the nation’s highest court in 2009. She is the author of My Beloved World (2013) and a children’s book called Turning Pages (2018). She is also expected to release Just Ask! Be Different, Be Brave, Be You in September.

Sotomayor said she wrote My Beloved World to remind herself, and everyone, that none of us succeed alone.

“Nobody can do it by themselves. No matter what you do in life, people help you do it. My book was for me to remember that always. All of those people and experiences that started here in the Bronx, that made me— that’s what I wanted to write about.”

The Bronx Book Festival, just in its second year, included a full line-up of author-led panels. The Bronx Book Festival is organized by The Bronx is Reading, founded by Bronx native and book publicist Saracia Fennell. This year the event was co-sponsored by Fordham University. Panels were held on both the Fordham’s Rose Hill campus and Fordham Plaza. Bronxites and folks from all over NYC lined up at 8:30 a.m. in front of the University to attend the Bronx Book Festival and listen to Sonia Sotomayor speak.

At their in-conversation style event, Sotomayor told Manzano how much she admired her work on Sesame Street.

“You reached out to a community of Latinos that were ignored in mainstream television at the time,” she said.

Manzano and Sotomayor met on the set of Sesame Street for the episode The Justice Hears a Case. Over a cafecito, Sotomayor explained the role of supreme court judge to the show’s characters.

Just as they did on Sesame Street, at the Bronx Book Festival they both spoke in a way that was accessible to the many young children in the audience.

Sotomayor asked the organizers to place a row of child lawn chairs at the very front. “I put all the kids in the front because I remember being a kid and having to sit in the back, and I couldn’t see anything, and I hated it,” said Sotomayor.

At times, the justice spoke directly to the kids. She told them about her library and why it was important to her.  

“One of my favorite places was and still is the library. It was one of the places I escaped to after my dad died. My house was very, very sad when my dad passed away. So, I would go to the library and get lost in books. I traveled around the world when I read books,” she said as she pointed to a picture of her library card in her book Turning Pages.

“Does every child in the audience have a library card?” she asked, encouraging those that didn’t to “ask your mommy or daddy to get you one.”

Sotomayor told the crowd that Lord of the Flies was the book that inspired her to become a lawyer. “I learned something very important,” she said of reading the 1954 William Golding novel, in which a group of boys are marooned on an island and attempt to govern themselves—with tragic results.

”Laws help us figure out how to treat each other better,” she said, “and how to share things in this world together.”

She also cited the importance of her mother purchasing the Encyclopedia Britannica for her while they lived in the projects in the Soundview section of the Bronx, now named the Justice Sonia Sotomayor Houses. The volumes helped her learn about the world beyond her home borough.

“You cannot dream about becoming something you don’t know about,” she said.

In the middle of the conversation with Manzano, Sotomayor got up and said she was “going to go for a walk so that the people in the back can see me.”

“I give out hugs freely,”  she added as she walked down to the audience members in the lawn.

Panelists Share their Stories

Like many of the authors on the festival lineup, Lilliam Rivera, a keynote speaker and young adult author of Dealing in Dreams and The Education of Margot Sanchez, was in the audience for Sotomayor’s and Manzano’s session. In her own talk, Rivera discussed the significance of the festival itself.

“I write about my home, and those connections,”  said Rivera, who set all of her books in the Bronx. She held her book launch for Dealing in Dreams last spring at the Bronx’s only independent bookstore, The Lit. Bar, founded by Noelle Santos.

Growing up near Fordham Plaza, she said, “If you wanted to buy a book you had to go to the city.”

Like Sotomayor, Rivera and her family got their books from the New York Public Library.

Rivera was inspired by her father to become a writer. “Growing up, my father used to recite poetry at events. He still does. My parents are very proud of my career. They are always making me sign books for their doctors or neighbors.”

Readers young and old said that the festival inspired them.

Jasmine Cordero of Soundview said that coming to the festival last year sparked her interest in reading.

“I bought two books last year, and I read them in a month. I didn’t know that I could read that fast. Now, I’m always looking for Latinx or African-American writers. I look for writers that look like me and writers that write about the community that I live in.”

The Bronx is both home and a source of inspiration for many of the panelists. For Josue Caceres, poet and brand manager of Bronx Native, the Bronx is more than a place.

“The Bronx is its own character in my writing. It’s important to be here and share the space with both kids and adults and show them that people in the Bronx read and write, and that it’s part of our culture.“

Throughout the weekend, 35 members of the Class of 1968 participated in the Thomas More College Oral History Project, which was supported by Fordham faculty and run by a team of students spearheaded by Nutting, a professor emerita of history at North Seattle College.

The project, including audio recordings and transcriptions of the interviews, was published on the Fordham Libraries site last August. It highlights the kind of reminiscences often shared at college reunions—favorite classes, lifelong friendships, and defining moments—from a group of women who saw beyond the boundaries of expectation, both at Fordham and beyond.

‘A Real Blessing’

Nutting, a Washington Heights native who later moved to the Bronx, told stories both hilarious—like the time a professor threw a bologna sandwich out a classroom window—and moving.

“A real blessing occurred when Fordham decided that it would open its gates to women here at Rose Hill,” she said of the college, which opened in 1964 and closed a decade later. “If I had not come here, I would not be the kind of person I am,” she added. “Intellectually, socially, politically, religiously, Fordham transformed me.”

Nutting said that one of the most powerful memories she has of her time at TMC is of taking a Greyhound bus through the American South with Lorraine Archibald, her only African-American classmate.

After working together in Mexico and living with a local family as part of a Fordham program one summer, Nutting and Archibald were forced to take buses home because of a national airline strike. Out of fear for Archibald’s safety, they decided that Nutting would get off the bus alone to get them snacks at a rest stop in Texas.

“I was coming back,” she said, “and all of a sudden I was surrounded by what I call ‘good ol’ boys’ who wanted to know why I was sitting with that … they used the n-word. And I lost my Irish temper in a way a New Yorker can lose a temper.”

Nutting’s response defused a tense situation, but the long bus ride home “profoundly changed me,” she said.

She also recalled taking a course with legendary media critic Marshall McLuhan, who held the Albert Schweitzer Chair in the Humanities at Fordham at the time. “He taught us about the global village and he talked a lot about looking at the rear-view mirror as you go forward. Those two lessons became really important as I moved forward in history, and particularly as I taught history, because you need to have that perspective when you’re heading in a new direction.”

‘She Expected Great Things of Us’

Barbara Hartnett Hall, a Bronx native who discovered TMC when a recruiter came to her high school, also told her story as part of the project. She did not always think of higher education as a realistic possibility, but after receiving scholarships from New York state and from Fordham, she was able to attend.

“I felt like the luckiest person in the world,” she said. “I couldn’t imagine that that world was going to be open to me.”

Now a shareholder at Greenberg Traurig in Fort Lauderdale, where she practices land use and environmental law, Hall recalled being intimidated by the academic options at TMC. She signed up for 18 credits in her first semester before meeting with assistant dean Patricia R. Plante, Ph.D., who encouraged her to drop three credits. “‘You’re in New York City,’” she said Plante told her. “‘You know, this city is an education. You have to take advantage of it.’”

“She was pretty amazing,” Hall said of Plante, who later became the first woman dean of TMC, “because she treated us like she expected great things of us and that we were capable of it.”

Hall also shared memories of her time as co-founder and captain of the women’s basketball team. The women wore uniforms designed by a teammate’s older brother. “They seemed cool then,” she recalled of the outfits, “but they were funny when you look back.”

In talking about her time at TMC and afterward, Hall recalled walking into many new and unknown situations, including in the workplace. “I think there were a lot of firsts in our generation” she said, “and Thomas More was just one.”

‘My Life Was Suddenly Changing and Expanding’

Like Hall, Marie Farenga Danziger was born and raised in the Bronx, and saw a previously unthought-of opportunity arise with the opening of TMC.

She said that coming back to the Rose Hill campus for Jubilee last year gave her “this instant recall of my very first day at Fordham in September 1964. I remember walking up that path, in particular, focusing on the lovely trees on each side of the path and somehow knowing that my life was suddenly changing and expanding, and I was enormously excited.”

As a junior, she took the transformative step of studying abroad in Paris for the year, an opportunity that had drawn her to Fordham when looking into colleges. Despite having never flown on an airplane before leaving for Paris, Danziger became worldly during her year abroad, traveling throughout Europe and becoming fluent in French.

“It changed the rest of my life,” she said of the experience. “It made me the person I am today.”

Other formative experiences Danziger had at Fordham came from her time as the social chair for the Horizons club, which invited notable speakers to campus. In that role, she brought famous figures like Helen Hayes, Salvador Dalí, and Sidney Lumet to Rose Hill. This kind of cultural exposure made Danziger “feel that there [was]this wider world out there, and maybe, maybe, I had a bit of access to it.”

Danziger, who retired from Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government just before the 2018 reunion, was touched to discover that several of her fellow alumnae still remembered her speech as class salutatorian in 1968. The speech, which came on the heels of the assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy, referenced the movie Zorba the Greek, in which the title character teaches a young man how to dance in the face of sadness and violence.

“Fordham taught us to dance,” she said. “It certainly did that for me.”

Nutting expressed the same sentiment with a different metaphor: “I have told many people in my life that Fordham gave me wings,” she said.

“I want to see you soar,” she told the student interviewers. “In 20 years, I want to find out what you have done with your lives. And one of the things that you’re going to find out as women is that there are going to be some really difficult choices. Make them the best way you can … and you’ll find that you can do that.”

Jubilee 2019 will take place on the Rose Hill campus on May 31 through June 2.

—Adam Kaufman contributed to this story. 

This conversation is more critical than ever, said keynote speaker, Patrick J. Ryan, S.J., the Laurence J. McGinley Professor of Religion and Society. In the wake of the Catholic Church’s sexual abuse scandal, it is important to recognize that sexuality has a sacred meaning in each religion.

“I want to draw your attention to how very human forces, male and female, interact with each other in the imaginative creation of worlds of faith, worlds of spirituality,” Father Ryan said. “How, in particular, do our understandings of human sexuality color how those of us who are Jews, Christians, and Muslims think about God?”

The Bible says that God created Adam, the first human being, as both male and female. (Eve was created from one of Adam’s ribs.) This duality continues to be found in all aspects of life, including marriage, Father Ryan said. It can also be seen in male and female images in the Book of Genesis and the Song of Songs. But one of the most important texts in Judaism, the Zohar, takes a step further and suggests that humanity itself “mirrors and magnifies the Lord God,” he said.  

In the same vein, Christian texts show spirituality through sexuality. For example, an autobiography by Saint Teresa of Avila, a 16th-century Christian mystic and writer, portrays the soul and God as passionate lovers, Father Ryan said. She uses graphic imagery to show the angelic piercing of her heart with the spear of God’s love: “When he drew it out, I thought he was drawing them  [her entrails]out with it and he left me completely afire with a great love for God.”

The Quran also denotes spirituality through sexual language, he said. The basmalah blessing, which begins every chapter of the Quran but one, uses words that associate “the mercy of God” with a mother’s womb.

“To connect the mercy of God with a feminine physical characteristic is to understand God’s perfection as including all that is most tender in created reality, including the generative and loving characteristics of others,” Father Ryan said.

Although much of the main lecture focused on heterosexual love, respondent Amir Hussain, Ph.D., professor of theological studies at Loyola Marymount University, took a detour from the night’s discourse to reflect on the dangers faced by the LGBTQ community.

“I think of Islamic psychologists from Los Angeles, where I live, who worry about losing their license if they are anything but heteronormative,” he said. “And I wonder how we got to that place where we can hate people for the love that God has put between them.”

For Hussain, it’s a personal issue, as he was an undergraduate at the University of Toronto during the “plague years” of the ’80s, when he said he attended one too many funerals for his friends who died of HIV and AIDS.

“We have to speak out when our gay, lesbian, queer, trans, and bisexual brothers and sisters are threatened,” Hussain said. “We have to lift up the work and voices of LGBTQ scholars and activists, such as Scott Kugle at Emory University, who remind us of the inherent dignity of all of us—regardless of our sexuality.”

The scholar who delivered the Jewish response, Sarit Kattan Gribetz, Ph.D., assistant professor of theology at Fordham, compared two Biblical texts from the Old Testament: Song of Songs and Ezekiel 16. Both stories use the metaphor of a romantic partnership to show God’s relationship with Israel, she said. Only one relationship is healthy though, while the other is marred by manipulation and abuse.

Gribetz’s juxtapositions were often stark. In Song of Songs, the narrator portrays a romantic relationship between a man (God) and a woman (Jerusalem as the spouse of the Lord). Gribetz described the scenes that unfold between the lovers: “A series of kisses, love described as sweeter than wine, fragrant oils, and secluded chambers.”

Ezekiel 16, by contrast, takes a tragic turn. In it, God (a man) saves the people of Jerusalem (a woman) from slavery in Egypt, but is betrayed by the very people he rescues. The text is fraught with dark imagery: an unbathed newborn lying in the blood of her after-birth, nakedness, suffering, and violent threats.

But in these two texts, there is something to be said about humanity, Gribetz said. The stories paint a realistic portrait of the possible intersections among sexuality, spirituality, and love of God—both positive and negative.

“I chose to share with you this evening not only the positive but also the negative, not only the benevolent but also the malevolent, to highlight the empowering dimensions of religious texts, but also to acknowledge those parts of our traditions that are most problematic,” Gribetz said.

“So that we can imagine and construct together models of partnership—human and divine—that are based on mutual love and consent, rather than abuse of power and violation of dignity.”

The paper, “Identities Under Surveillance,” presented at the association’s annual meeting last March, argues that current models of measuring the way women vote, particularly in public opinion polls, are outmoded in light of new attitudes toward gender identity and norms.

After the 2016 election and with the emergence of the #MeToo movement, Murib said, much recent research has focused on gender in politics in an effort to understand how women vote, who they voted for, and why.

“But there’s an assumption that we can measure who women are, and on the basis of that sex assigned at birth, that they’re going to behave in a certain way,” said Murib. “I make the argument that the scholarship to date has had a really flat and simplistic measure of gender, so that often codes women as one and men as zero, and then uses that math to determine outcomes.”

Murib said that many political opinion pollsters will often check the box for male or female simply by the sound of the voice over the phone. Such a binary approach becomes problematic because it assumes that sex assigned at birth correlates with gender identity. The paper argues for a need for surveys to have a more expansive and graded view of how gender is understood. The question of how to measure gender identity in surveys has received little attention, Murib said, and that has resulted in “counter-intuitive and often contradictory findings.”

Murib’s described the paper as “research on research design,” which calls for an “intervention in the survey scholarship” that would put forth surveys that take into account all people’s relationship to masculinity and femininity, particularly when thinking about political outcomes.

When and if current surveys do approach gender, they tend to ask people assigned male at birth about their identity in relation to masculinity and to ask those who are assigned female about their femininity.

A better gauge of gender would be the Bem scale, they said, which was developed in the 1970s by psychologist Sandra Bem. The scale asks male respondents to rate their sense of masculinity on a scale of 0 to 100 with 100 being the most masculine, and vice versa for women with 100 being the most feminine.

“The Bem scale actually does what I am proposing,” they said. “Current political science scholarship, however, does not.”

Murib is currently working with Ivelisse Cuevas-Molina, Ph.D., assistant professor of political science at Fordham College at Rose Hill, to design a new survey, one that would not ask about sex assigned at birth.

“We should put those two pools together and ask all respondents about both masculinity and femininity,” they said. “We have men who are caring and do things we associate with femininity and we have women who fix tanks. We need something a bit more nuanced that’s not based simply on genitals, but focuses on how people are out in the world.”

Murib said their framework springs from trans studies that not only examine how people identify, but also calls into question power structures, such as laws and policy, that only identify two genders.

Not conforming to binary gender could play a role in political behavior, such as voting for a third-party candidate, not voting at all, or engaging in what is known as “resistant political strategies”—and that correlational evidence would be lost in surveys that don’t account for the many aspects of gender identity.

“We’re assuming that male and female are coherent homogenous categories and they aren’t.”