“It’s very exciting and it strengthens our connection with another major cultural institution,” said Magda Teter, Ph.D., Shvidler Chair in Judaic Studies and professor of history.

The Fordham-NYPL Fellowship Program in Jewish Studies is made possible by the Eugene Shvidler Gift Fund and additional gift funds to Jewish studies.

“The library has quite a number of fellowships, but there’s not something special for the Dorot Division,” said Stephen D. Corrsin, Ph.D., curator of both the Dorot Jewish Division and the Slavic, Baltic, and East European Collections.

The Dorot Division was formed two years after the library was founded in 1895 and was the library’s first special collection, he said. With over 300,000 books and serials, it stands as one of the most significant collections of Judaica in North America.

“I know that scholars will find all sort of things here. Sometimes it’s serendipitous, sometimes they’re looking for something specific,” he said.

From a collection of 15^th-century books published at the dawn of the printing press called incunables to microfilms of 20^th-century Jewish newspapers from around the globe, the library presents a rare chance for scholars to study materials that have yet to be digitized, Corrsin said.

“We get people dropping by who just want to see something unusual, and if we have a facsimile we’ll bring it out,” he said. “But we wouldn’t bring out an incunable for a tourist. The scholar has a presumed need for the original item.”

Teter said that while Fordham Libraries’ Archives and Special Collections continues to grow its Judiaca collection, the library doesn’t yet have the resources to support the world class Jewish scholarship that the Dorot Division can provide. But Fordham can now facilitate visas for international scholars to gain access to the division; in turn, the University will then showcase their findings at lectures and faculty seminars.

“Research in the humanities and social sciences is underfunded and this program will enable scholars who we would love to come to New York City to come and share their research,” said Teter. “The New York Public Library will be their research lab and Fordham will be the place where their exciting conversations happen.”

In addition to the fellowship program, the University will host its first joint Fordham-NYPL program on March 29 with a talk by NYPL Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Center Fellow Natan Meir, Ph.D., on “Stepchildren of the Shtetl: Destitute and Disabled Outcasts of East European Jewish Society, 1800-1939.”

Speaking at Fordham on Dec. 17, an academic expert strongly contested the idea that African Americans should “move on” from their history and drove home its continuing importance for educators.

“The threats to black historical literacy remain with us today as they did in the past,” said Khalil Gibran Muhammad, Ph.D., a history professor and director of the New York Public Library’s Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture.

“This notion of post-racialism—that history is no longer meaningful and impactful—actually is a very old thing. It’s an old problem” dating from the 19th century, he said.

He spoke at a professional development session for middle and high school educators, held at the Lincoln Center campus. Fordham’s Graduate School of Education, School of Professional and Continuing Studies, and others co-sponsored the event with WNET New York Public Media to show how classroom lessons might be enhanced with materials from a recent PBS series, The African Americans: Many Rivers to Cross, with Henry Louis Gates, Jr.

Describing the idea of post-racialism, he cited one African American’s assertion, posted online, that it’s “time to move on” because Jim Crow laws and the civil rights movement have receded into the past. “We aren’t helping ourselves by constantly looking to the past, and what our ancestors had to go through and demanding some sort of handout because of it,” the commentator wrote.

Muhammad showed something from the past that echoed the idea of a “handout”: a 19th-century flyer distorting the purpose of the Freedmen’s Bureau, established by the federal government in 1865 to assist newly freed slaves. It describes the bureau as “an agency to keep the negro in idleness at the expense of the white man” and juxtaposes a picture of a white man hard at work with a grotesque rendering of a happily recumbent black man.

“I suspect that if an image like this circulated more in our classes, amongst our seventh graders, amongst our 10th graders, that if you actually taught this period, that our political discourse would be very different,” Muhammad said.

“This is what’s been left out of the textbook,” he said. “And it’s precisely the silences that get filled in with ideology.”

Historical literacy is important for countering the ideologies of oppression that serve the interests of powerful elites, he said. “If people don’t even know to question the historical narratives that they’re being fed, then I feel like we’re all complicit in it as educators.”

Noting that President Obama’s picture graces the covers of some college-level textbooks, he cautioned that the election of the first African-American president should not bring a sense of lasting triumph.

“If we go to the Reconstruction period, we have this … immediate ascent of formerly enslaved people to the highest offices of the political landscape: fourteen in Congress, two as U.S. senators, a couple of more as governors,” he said. “And yet, by the turn of the 20th century none of them were serving anywhere in Washington, D.C., except to clean toilets and bathrooms, at least at the federal government level.

“If we knew our history better, if the makers of textbooks knew our history better, this immediate symbolic representation would at least be contrasted with the ongoing work to be vigilant about those gains; not to, in fact, metaphorically close the book on them.”

Using terms like “artisanal data harvesting,” the Faculty Technology Day keynote speaker Ben Vershbow, manager of the New York Public Library (NYPL) Digital Improvement Group, guided a rapt audience through ways humans and computers can better collaborate. Fordham IT sponsored the May 21 event.

Vershbow delivered a mile-high perspective of digital possibilities for an august institution like the NYPL, a message that resonated with Fordham faculty wrestling with similar issues of how to engage a digital audience.

He described the NYPL as a 19th-century institution striving to remain relevant in the 21st century. With a world-class archival map collection that began being digitized in the last decade, the library is seeking to make the digital maps more dynamic and interactive.

Vershbow showed a digital image of a 19th-century map of Lower Manhattan that lives online. He then explained how that map can be rectified with contemporary maps using Google Earth through a NYPL-designed website, Map Warper. The 19th-century map sits on top of the contemporary map, and a transparency dial can fade the older map atop the new map.

The result shows how extraordinarily accurate the 19th-century maps were, as the streets resolve almost perfectly with their contemporary cousins.

Such newly combined maps have the potential to be used with other data, for example, the recently released 1940 Census. Maps can then yield much richer information, such as who lived where and what they did for a living.

“We’re trying to drop pins in time,” said Vershbow. “If we open up the data, we can get the community involved.”

Vershbow said that Map Warper is “a call to action,” to engage the public on the site to rectify maps for themselves. Once completed, the newly rectified maps are available for all to see, or to correct if there’s a mistake.

The NYPL has gone even further with crowd sourcing in other areas. Vershbow said the library has a collection of approximately 45,000 menus dating back to 1848.  However, as the fonts on the menus vary greatly, optical character recognition software is not able to recognize all the “funky fonts.”

In response, the NYPL has set up a “What’s on the Menu” site and has invited the public to transcribe the menus.

In much the same way that Wikipedia asks its community to help with quality control, the NYPL calls on the public to check the veracity of its data, he said. This “artisanal data harvesting” can only be accomplished through human and computer cooperation. The quality control may not be perfect, but the people who delve into the site are a conscientious group.

While the letters of Percy Bysshe Shelley have their own hallowed room within the library, what’s one to do with Timothy Leary’s floppy discs if the information can’t be accessed?

Verhshbow expressed a concern for preserving “tomorrow’s past” which will include newer writings that will exist on the digital cloud. Media archeology labs are being developed at some universities, but New York City still lacks a preservation lab, he said.

He warned of an “information hole” that could develop should the academic communities rely on technology companies to preserve important information.

Using terms like “artisanal data harvesting,” the Faculty Technology Day keynote speaker Ben Vershbow, founder of the NYPL Labs, New York Public Library’s in-house tech startup, guided a rapt audience through ways humans and computers can better collaborate. Fordham’s IT sponsored the May 21 event.

Vershbow delivered a mile-high perspective of digital possibilities for an august institution like the NYPL, a message that resonated with Fordham faculty wrestling with similar issues of how to engage a digital audience.

He described the NYPL as a 19th-century institution striving to remain relevant in the 21st century. With a world-class archival map collection that began being digitized in the last decade, the library is seeking to change the static nature of those digital images and make the maps more dynamic and interactive.

Vershbow showed a digital image of 19th-century map of Lower Manhattan that lives online. He then explained how that map can be rectified with contemporary maps using Google Earth through a NYPL-designed website, Map Warper. The 19th-century map sits on top of the contemporary map, and a transparency dial can fade the older map atop the new map.

The result shows how extraordinarily accurate the 19th-century maps were, as the streets resolve almost perfectly with their contemporary cousins.

Such newly combined maps have the potential to be used with other data, for example, the recently released 1940 Census. Maps can then yield much richer information, such as who lived where and what they did for a living.

“We’re trying to drop pins in time,” said Vershbow. “If we open up the data, we can get the community involved.”

As the library operates on limited resources, Vershbow said that Map Warper is “a call to action,” to engage the public on the site to rectify maps for themselves. Once completed, the newly rectified maps are available for all to see, or make corrections if there’s a mistake.

NYPL has gone even further with crowd sourcing in other areas of its digitized collections. Vershbow said the library has a menu collection with approximately 45,000 menus dating back to 1848.  However, as the fonts on the menus vary greatly, optical character recognition software is not be able recognize the all the “funky fonts.”

In response, NYPL has set up a “What’s on the Menu” site and has invited the public to transcribe the menus. Menu items can then be linked to recipe sites like Epicurious.

In much the same way that Wikipedia asks its community to help with quality control, the NYPL calls on the public to check the veracity of its data, he said. This nuanced “artisanal data harvesting” can only be accomplished through human and computer cooperation. The quality control may not be perfect, but the people who delve into the site are a conscientious group. Like other forms of volunteerism, participants uphold certain civic ideals.

With the preservation and digital activation of the older collections underway, an obvious question is beginning to emerge: what about contemporary collections? The letters of Percy Bysshe Shelley have their own hallowed room within the library, but what’s one to do with the Timothy Leary’s floppy discs if the information on them can’t be accessed?

Verhshbow expressed a concern for preserving “tomorrow’s past” which will include not just the emails of Salman Rushdie, but newer writings that will exist on the digital cloud. Media archeology labs are being developed at places like Emory University, but New York City still lacks a significant preservation lab, he said.

He warned of an “information hole” that could develop should the academic communities rely on the promises of technology companies to preserve important information.

The campaign—the largest in Fordham Law history—will aid the creation of a new law school building while strengthening the school’s annual fund, professorships, scholarships and centers.

Already the campaign has benefited from two of the largest gifts ever made to the school: $5 million each from T.J. Maloney, LAW ’79, and Thomas Moore, LAW ’72. Maloney’s gift will provide for the library in the Law School’s new building, while Moore’s gift will fund the Fordham Law Advocacy Center which encompasses the moot court room and trial advocacy room.

“The generosity of Mr. Moore and Mr. Maloney is a statement of their faith in the future of our school and its educational mission,” said Dean William Michael Treanor.

“These are historic gifts for this institution,” he continued. “Coming as they do at a time of economic turmoil, they represent a profound commitment to Fordham Law School and demonstrate the importance of philanthropy during a time of financial uncertainty.”

The gala, “One Hundred Million Bravos,” began with cocktails in the library’s main foyer. Befitting the school’s long history, attendees sipped on classic cocktails including Manhattans and Sloe Gin Fizzes before moving to the 6,400-square-foot, domed Celeste Bartos Forum for dinner.

New Building
The school’s new home is a particular focus of the campaign. Designed by the firm Pei Cobb Freed & Partners, LLC, it is positioned to join the Louvre Pyramid and the East Building of the National Gallery of Art as one of the firm’s achievements.

“Fordham’s gift to me dwarfs my gift to Fordham,” said Moore, who joins Maloney as co-chairs of the campaign committee. “This beautiful building will symbolize the strides our Law School has made into the highest echelons of legal education.”

Annual Fund
The annual fund also is essential because it allows the school to provide students with life-changing opportunities.

Fordham Law’s student journals, for instance, are some of the most influential in the nation. In fact, the Fordham Law Journal is the fourth-most cited journal in federal and state courts. Last year, three Supreme Court decisions cited Fordham Law journals.

Fordham Law students also give back in impressive numbers, racking up an average of 100,000 hours of public service each year. The support that the annual fund provides for public interest work at the Law School was behind the Pro Bono Publico Award that the American Bar Association awarded the school’s Public Resource Center this year.

Professorships
Because faculty are at the heart of any great law school, the campaign also focuses on endowed chairs, which can be established through a gift of $2 million, Treanor said.

“Fordham Law’s pragmatic approach to legal education helped me immeasurably in my journey from law practice into private equity,” Maloney said. “The chair in business law which I endowed at Fordham Law School was a good way to give back to the school—and specifically to the program—that gave me so much.”

Scholarships
The Francis J. Mulderig National Scholars Program serves as an umbrella for a number of named scholarships at the Law School, and there are more than 100 individual scholarships based on financial need, academic merit, career aspirations and scholarly interests.

“Having spent my first two years at Fordham as a “true evening student”—working full-time and attending classes at night—it was more of a challenge to take advantage of the multitude of opportunities the school has to offer,” said Tara Waters, LAW ’09, a Noreen E. McNamara Endowed Scholarship recipient. “This scholarship has allowed me to take time off work to gain experience that was essential to achieving my goal of living and working abroad.”

Centers
Fordham’s seven centers and institutes encompass a vast array of disciplines. The Brendan Moore Trial Advocacy Center fosters the study of lawyers as trial advocates, while the Forum on Law, Culture and Society engages artists, writers and journalists in conversations about the intersections between law and culture in America.

Julie A. Lucas, Fordham Law’s assistant dean of institutional advancement, noted that a $100 million campaign would have been unheard of less than a decade ago, but the school already has reached unprecedented levels of alumni interest.

“Based on the unparalleled giving levels we have experienced over the past five years, $100 million is a realizable campaign goal,” she said. “I am confident we can achieve it.”

Father Joseph McShane, S.J., president of Fordham, in addressing the attendees at the end of the evening, called the night one for celebration of the Law School’s dedication to education marked by sense of community, rigor and an unstinting devotion to ethics.

“The Law School is a most remarkable place, an extraordinary place, a place that was born of vision, a place where the vision of its founder has been nurtured for 103 years,” Father McShane said. “The Law School has had nine deans and seven homes, but it has had one driving vision. That vision has been a transforming vision for the students of the Law School, but also for the bar and bench in New York.”

Shortly afterward, the Four Tops took the stage with a rousing version of “Baby I Need Your Loving,” and moved onto hits such as “Bernadette” and “It’s the Same Old Song.” The crowd, a mix of alumni, faculty, friends and family, filled the dance floor.

The evening also featured nouveau jazz singing sensation Rosalind Schonwald.