Haiti Crisis Update: How to Help

Friday, Jan. 22, 2010

Humanitarian crisis experts agree that the best way to help the people of Haiti right now is to donate money to reputable organizations involved in the relief effort. Collections of goods, such as food, clothing and medicine, are well meaning, but do far less to improve conditions in the disaster area than monetary donations. Likewise, traveling to Haiti as a volunteer is probably neither possible nor helpful at this stage of the crisis. The U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), outlines the very limited conditions under which goods and services might be helpful in Haiti on its website: www.usaid.gov/helphaiti

See the information and links on Fordham's home page for ways to donate to relief efforts in Haiti.

Expert Panel: Haiti: Crisis and Humanitarian Action

Kevin M. Cahill, M.D., director of Fordham’s Institute of International Humanitarian Affairs, moderates a panel on the nature and scale of the disaster in Haiti, and the humanitarian response underway there. Panelists include:

• Paul Browne, New York City Police Department's deputy commissioner of public information and deputy director of the International Police Monitors in Haiti, where he helped establish an interim police force during the United States-led "Operation Restore Democracy" in 1994-1995.
• Rev. Ken Gavin, S.J., national director of the Jesuit Refugee Service, U.S.A.
• Robert Nickelsberg, American photojournalist whose work often appears in Time magazine, and who was embedded with the First Marine Division in the Iraq War in 2003.
• Ed Tsui, former longtime director of the New York office of the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.

Thursday, Jan. 21, 1 p.m. | Keating First Auditorium, Rose Hill campus
Free and open to the public

Fordham to Host Interfaith Prayer Services for Haiti

Fordham University's Campus Ministry invites all to come together for the people of Haiti who have been devastated by the earthquake.

Interfaith prayer services will take place today (Wednesday, Jan 20) on both the Rose Hill and Lincoln Center campuses.

The service on the Lincoln Center campus will take place at 2:30 p.m. in the Blessed Rupert Mayer, S.J., Chapel, in Lowenstein Center. For more details, contact Pat Callaghan at (212) 636-6267.

On the Rose Hill campus, the prayer service will take place at 5 p.m. in the McGinley Ballroom in McGinley Center. For more information, contact Rev. Erika Crawford at (718) 817-1272.

-Gina Vergel

High Praise for a Raucous Life

Fordham’s own Matthew Maguire, director of the theatre program , is featured in Tuesday’s New York Times in a review of his latest one-man show, Wild Man, currently playing in the East village.

The review calls Maguire an “appealing, talented performer” and says the show is worth the ticket price alone just for the great anecdotes.

“This is the kind of guy you’d love to get stuck with at an airport bar,” writes the reviewer.
Besides directing the theatre program at the Lincoln center campus, Maguire authors and directs plays. He has won two Obies for his work.

You can still catch Wild Man on Tuesday, Jan. 19, Monday, Jan 25 and Tuesday, Jan. 26 at the Wild Project, 195 East Third St, East Village; (212) 352-3101, thewildproject.com.

J.S.

Professor Wins Award for 'Mitzvah Girls'

In her most recent book, Ayala Fader, Ph.D., Associate Professor of Sociology and Anthropology, delved deep into the close knit Hasidic Jewish community of Boro Park, Brooklyn.

For her efforts, the Jewish Book Council recently awarded Mitzvah Girls: Bringing Up the Next Generation of Hasidic Jews in Brooklyn (Princeton University Press), with the 2009 Barbara Dobkin Award in Women’s Studies.

In the book, which is one of 18 winners in the council’s annual book awards, Fader examined language, gender, and the body from infancy to adulthood to showing how Hasidic girls in Brooklyn become women responsible for rearing the next generation of non liberal Jewish believers. To uncover how girls learn the practices of Hasidic Judaism, she looked beyond the synagogue to everyday talk in the context of homes, classrooms, and city streets.

Fader will be honored along with her fellow winners on at a gala award ceremony on March 9 at the Center for Jewish History in Manhattan at 15 West 16th St. The awards ceremony, which begins at 7:30 p.m., is free and open to the public.

—Patrick Verel

Father Ryan Reports from West Africa (IX): "Last Thoughts from Nigeria"

Laurence J. McGinley Professor of Religion and Society Patrick J. Ryan, S.J. is spending a month in Africa, a continent where he previously lived for 26 years. During his time there, he will be blogging about his experiences. Here is his latest post:

Yesterday, I flew from Lagos to Abuja, about 500 miles by air (which was one hour), but 800 miles by road (which would have been 12 hours). Classes resumed last week at Loyola Jesuit College, so I saw a few familiar faces among the students at this six-year school, which teaches the seventh through twelfth grades. Since I left the school's presidency in 2005, I now would remember only the final year students who were in first year in 2004-05. Several now tower over me, and I am 6 feet 2 inches tall.

Today, Jan. 15, is the 44th anniversary of the coup that ended Nigeria's first republic a little over five years after independence. The current, civilian-run fourth republic (since 1999) is in trouble. The second president of this republic, Umaru Musa Yar’Adua, has been hospitalized in Saudi Arabia since Nov. 23 with pericarditis, on top of continuing problems with his kidneys. When he spoke on the BBC earlier this week, he sounded very tired.

The Armed Forces Remembrance Day ceremonies today in Abuja were presided over by the vice president, Goodluck Jonathan. Jonathan seems now to be gaining support as acting president, but his origins are in the so-called South-South oil-rich geopolitical zone of Nigeria, the polar opposite of Yar Adua's origins. That causes some unhappiness among northerners in positions of power.

I fly out of Abuja late tonight on Delta. After a crew change in Senegal, we arrive at JFK early tomorrow morning. I will be leaving hot and dry Abuja for cold and damp New York, but I am coming home to Fordham.

-- Pat Ryan, S.J.

FUP Book Nabs McCaffrey Prize

Judith H. Anderson’s Reading the Allegorical Intertext: Chaucer, Spenser, Shakespeare, Milton, will be awarded the Isabel McCaffrey Prize for the best book on Spenser and Renaissance literature published in 2008-2009, a prize conferred by the International Spenser Society.

The book is published by Fordham University Press. The prize was publicly announced this past December at the Modern Language Association convention in Philadelphia.

Congratulations to Anderson, who is chancellor’s professor of English at Indiana University, and to FUP.

-J.S.

Fordham IIHA to Sponsor Red Cross Disaster Reserve Institute

Fordham University’s Institute of International Humanitarian Affairs (IIHA) is sponsoring a Red Cross Disaster Reserve Institute on Saturday, Feb. 20.

Should a major disaster strikes the New York City area, the American Red Cross will need 10,000 Disaster Reserve Volunteers ready to staff up to 100 shelters and provide thousands of city residents with basic needs. The one-day training is free and includes lunch. Upon completion, participants will become certified Disaster Reserve Volunteers.

Space is extremely limited. To reserve a spot, email Jenna Felz, program director at IIHA, at felz@fordham.edu.

The training takes place from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. (participants should arrive no later than 8:30 a.m.) at 520 West 49th St., New York, N.Y., 10019.

-Gina Vergel

Rose Hill Campus Gets New Data Center

The Rose Hill Data Center, which hosts everything from online course catalogues to payment records and transcripts at Fordham’s Rose Hill campus, has been given a major upgrade.

The center, which until recently was housed in Dealy Hall, has been augmented with several new features that will safeguard the University’s most sensitive information. The upgrade, which began in January 2009, greatly improves both redundancy and efficiency, resulting in an environmentally-friendly system with enhanced risk management capability.

“We were fortunate to take on this project at an advantageous point in time for a much needed facilities upgrade,” said Frank Sirianni, Ph.D., Vice President and Chief Information Officer. “As a result, we now have first-rate data centers on both campuses that will ensure business continuity in our records, not to mention the day to day University operations. Additionally, it provides us with complete certitude in the unfortunate event of a catastrophe.”

For increased efficiency, the Rose Hill data center contains a hot aisle containment system that regulates temperature in each server row within the facility. This is a 30% more efficient cooling scenario than the industry in-row cooling technology standard, and replaces an outdated system that relied on computer room air conditioner cooling units to control the air temperature throughout the room.

The center, whose exact location is being withheld by request of the Fordham Information Technology Department, also features 2N redundancy, which means there is a backup for every critical piece of power and cooling control within the structure.

In the event that there is a loss of public utility power in the surrounding area that results in an outage on campus, an on site generator will ensures that the data center continues to operate at full capacity. The redundancy extends to the data stored there and at a counterpart at the Lincoln Center campus as well.

All data and related systems will be transferred from Dealy Hall to the new location in advance of the Spring 2010 semester.

—Patrick Verel

Father Ryan Reports from West Africa (VIII): "Winding Up in Ghana"

Laurence J. McGinley Professor of Religion and Society Patrick J. Ryan, S.J. is spending a month in Africa, a continent where he previously lived for 26 years. During his time there, he will be blogging about his experiences. Here is his latest post:

Since last Saturday, Jan. 9, I have been meeting with old friends whom I originally knew at the University of Ghana. The Reverend Joyce Kodade, a Presbyterian minister (a man, like Joyce Kilmer and Joyce Cary), was my student in his final year (1975-76). He eventually did a master's degree at Fordham's Graduate School of Religion and Religious Education (1985-87). He is now a major administrator of the Evangelical Presbyterian Church in Ghana.

I celebrated mass on Sunday morning in an "out-station" I began with 12 adults and about 30 children in December 1974. We started in a classroom, but now the parishioners (about 1,000 in number) worship in a church they have built and dedicated to my patron saint, St. Patrick. As soon as they build a presbytery, it will become a full parish. The offertory procession, involving all in church, was conducted to an African beat and brought up not only cash donations but also foodstuffs, candles, bottled water, toilet paper and soap. This helps their pastor, Father Agbattey, to survive. Like most masses in Africa, it began a bit late but (happily, given the heat) only lasted 90 minutes.

On Monday, I had lunch with another friend from those days, Professor John Pobee, once my head of department. Late in life, he was ordained to the Anglican priesthood and is now the Vicar General of the Diocese of Accra. He also worked for 19 years in Geneva for the World Council of Churches's program for ecumenical theological education.

Today I had lunch with a former registrar of the University of Ghana (who also worked as a registrar later on In Rwanda), Ebow Daniel. I have a particularly poignant bond with him and his wife, Theresa. On my 40th birthday, I had the sad duty of burying their eldest son, a 12-year-old, who had died suddenly of an asthma attack.

I return to Nigeria tomorrow, Jan. 13, and to New York on Jan. 16. Alas, I will miss the Jan. 14 funeral of my friend and former Provincial, Father Joe Novak. May he rest in peace.

-- Pat Ryan, S.J.