With his instant camera always at the ready, psychology and urban studies professor Harold Takooshian, Ph.D., doubled as the unofficial documentarian of Fordham’s psychology department. This past spring, his colleagues invited him to present his photos and stories of the many Fordham scholars he overlapped with; the events he attended and facilitated; and the famous guests who visited Fordham during his career.
In honor of his Aug. 31 retirement, here are a few of those highlights from a half-century in Fordham’s psychology department.
1975
While completing his doctorate at the City University of New York with Stanley Milgram, who studied obedience to authority and the behavioral impacts of urban environments, Takooshian joined Fordham as a part-time professor.
For his first four years, he overlapped with Anne Anastasi, Ph.D., a pioneer in the field of psychological testing who received the National Medal of Science from President Ronald Reagan in 1987. “Wherever I travel in the world, psychologists know Fordham because of Anastasi,” said Takooshian.
1978
Takooshian became a full-time professor and helped organize a psychology student club that paved the way for chapters of Psi Chi at Fordham’s Rose Hill, Lincoln Center, and Westchester campuses. The international honors psychology association is the “best, single largest sponsor of student research,” said Takooshian. (Many graduate students in the department received grants over the years, including two in 2024.)
1983
Takooshian helped establish and became the faculty advisor for the Psi Chi chapter at the Lincoln Center campus. He later went on to serve as a national officer and president of the organization.
1984
On the 20th anniversary of the 1964 murder of Kitty Genovese, whose early morning cries for help went ignored by her neighbors, Takooshian and law professor Peter O’Connor organized a conference examining what psychologists had learned about “the bystander effect,” an area of research that Takooshian is an expert on.
The New York Times sent Maureen Dowd to report on the conference. “Some people were probably apathetic, but some were afraid of the killer,” he said at the time. “Some misinterpreted what was happening and thought it was a lover’s quarrel. Some might have wanted to get involved but didn’t know what to do.”
C. Everett Koop, then the U.S. Surgeon General, spoke at the event. In 2014, Fordham held a forum and remembrance on her legacy.
1988
Near the end of the Cold War, a group of Russian psychologists visited Fordham to meet then-retired Anne Anastasi, who lived near Lincoln Center until her death in 2001. “They saw her as the epitome of psychological science in America,” said Takooshian.
Also that year, Takooshian was named the top psychology faculty advisor in the U.S. via the Florence L. Denmark Faculty Advisor Award.
2004
Takooshian served on the board of the Guardian Angels, a Bronx-based, volunteer crime-fighting organization formed on Fordham Road in 1979 by Curtis Sliwa (now an NYC mayoral candidate). For the nonprofit’s 25th anniversary in 2004, Fordham hosted over 80 Guardian Angels from around the world at O’Hare Hall.
2012
April: Fordham’s Psi Chi chapter inducted Olivia Hooker, Ph.D., at age 97. Hooker survived the Tulsa Race Massacre and was the first Black woman to serve in the U.S. Coast Guard. She joined Fordham in 1963 as a professor specializing in the psychology of developmental disabilities and overlapped with Takooshian for 10 years until her retirement in 1985.
October: At a two-day conference called “Jung in the Academy and Beyond” organized by associate psychology professor Mark Mattson, Ph.D., Fordham celebrated the 100th anniversary of Carl Jung’s groundbreaking lectures at Fordham. During this 1912 lecture series, the Swiss psychiatrist and psychoanalyst broke with his colleague Sigmund Freud, introducing his own theories on neuroses and human behavior.
2015
Takooshian organized a salute to psychologist Jerome Bruner, a protégé of Anne Anastasi’s. Bruner’s close friend and colleague, renowned neurologist and writer Oliver Sacks, stopped by.
This year also saw the release of the film Experimenter, starring Peter Sarsgaard as Stanley Milgram, for which Takooshian served as a science advisor to the director.
2023
On the 40th anniversary of the Lincoln Center Psi Chi chapter, it took Takooshian 20 minutes to unfurl a 60-foot-long scroll detailing all of the chapter’s activities.
2025
March: Two psychology professors took home awards at Faculty Day: Takooshian, who received the Social Sciences award, and Molly Zimmerman, Ph.D., who received the award for Graduate Teaching and Mentoring.
July: Takooshian gave his final lecture for Urban Psychology, a class he introduced in 1979 and taught exclusively at Fordham.
