In her annual State of the University address, President Tetlow highlighted the importance of a strong, unified community as Fordham faces the challenges of an increasingly turbulent national environment.
“This is our moment to stand up, to defend our values, to lean into the power of our work,” she said at the Rose Hill campus on Sept. 18.
One Fordham
Tetlow said Fordham’s efforts to “forge community”—one of three key priorities in the University’s new strategic plan—must include a focus on accountability, transparency, and trust between leadership and the rest of the campus community.
The University must also find ways to break down divisions between campuses, she said, noting that this will be critical to much of Fordham’s mission-centered work.
“Forging ‘one Fordham’ is key to our interdisciplinary research goals. It’s key to collaborating in the ways that will improve our retention,” she said. “It is key to our undergraduate admission strategy, where we’ve already made real progress.”
Acknowledging Challenges
The need for unity is urgent, Tetlow said, as the nation grapples with deepening divides, political violence, and growing mistrust of higher education. “We know that trust is far easier to shatter in our cynical world than to rebuild,” she said.
She pointed to the “unleashed forces of technology” as another critical challenge.
“This is where Fordham must stand up,” she said. When IBM, Meta, and Lucite created an academic consortium on AI, Fordham was invited to help shape the conversation around ethics.
Three Guiding Values
Tetlow said that as a Jesuit institution, Fordham is uniquely suited to face these unprecedented challenges.
She cited three values that can provide a roadmap for what lies ahead: curiosity, ambition for the good, and compassion.
Our scientists and researchers are the perfect role models for curiosity, she explained, because they are just as willing to be proven wrong as they are to be proven right. “To be truly curious, we can’t jump to conclusions; we have to remain open,” she said. “Listening, the Jesuits teach us, is a moral imperative.”
Ambition, often described in Jesuit tradition as magis (“more”), pushes the University to strive for more for its students, research, and society at large. That ambition also informs Fordham’s commitment to a civil society, she said, where we must defend our constitutional rights as a Catholic institution to “embody our values, especially fundamental dignity and equality.”
And compassion, she added, is Fordham’s “superpower.” “At a moment when many argue that empathy is a weakness, we know it is a strength,” Tetlow said. She added that her new mantra—one she hopes to carry into every meeting—is “assume good intentions.”
Sharing Ideas
It was in the spirit of those three guiding principles that faculty and staff came together at brainstorming sessions after the address, where they explored ways to build trust, embody Jesuit values, and work toward “one Fordham” by bridging the divide between campuses.
Tetlow said she’s grateful for the community’s ideas and the ways it has always pushed and supported her.
“We face so many daunting challenges ahead, but there’s no one I’d rather be on the front lines with,” she said.
