Fordham University

By James A. Barham, PhD

Fordham University was founded in 1841 by the Jesuit religious order. It still retains its Catholic affiliation.

Originally located in the Fordham section of New York City’s borough of the Bronx, today the university’s flagship campus lies just to the east of the original campus in that same borough’s Rose Hill neighborhood. Fordham also has three satellite campuses: one on the Upper West Side of Manhattan near Lincoln Center; one in southern Westchester County, immediately north of the Bronx; and one in London in the UK.

Fordham is organized into four undergraduate schools offering some 50 degree programs, as well as six graduate-level liberal arts and professional schools and a School of Professional and Continuing Studies. Among the most popular programs offered by Fordham are those in business administration and management, in economics and finance, in political science and government, and in psychology.

Fordham Online offers two doctoral programs, a baker’s dozen of master’s degree programs, and seven professional certificate programs.

Fordham is associated with one Nobel laureate, Victor Hess, for physics.

Other distinguished Fordham-connected individuals include the following:

• Mathematician, Guillermo Owen
• Philosophers—John J. McDermott, Brian Leftow, Brian Davies, Owen Flanagan, W. Norris Clarke, Francis J. Beckwith, Babette Babich, and Joseph Koterski
• Theologians—Francis Xavier Clooney, Alice von Hildebrand, and Thomas Hopko
• Poet, essayist, and historian, Hilaire Belloc
• Novelists, Don DeLillo and Valerie Sayers
• Biographer, Donald Spoto
• Suspense fiction author, Mary Higgins Clark
• Playwright and screenwriter, Paddy Chayevsky
• Theater director, JoAnne Akalaitis
• Film director, Robert Mulligan
• Actors—Edmund O’Brien, Denzel Washington, Alan Alda, Raúl Juliá, John Benjamin Hickey, Dylan McDermott, Patricia Clarkson, Regina Hall, Amanda Seyfried, Robert Sean Leonard, and Taylor Schilling
• Television children’s show host, Bob Keeshan (Captain Kangaroo)
• Singer-songwriters, Chrissy Costanza and Lana Del Rey (Elizabeth Woolridge Grant)
• Music critic, John Schaefer
• Visual artists, Michael Craig-Martin and Jeanette Pasin Sloan
• Stage magician, David Copperfield (David Seth Kotkin)
• Astronomer, George Coyne
• Physicist and historian, Stanley Jaki
• Pioneering surgeons, Thomas D. Schiano and Susan M. Love
• Psychoanalyst, Carl Jung
• Political theorist, Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn
• Anthropologist, Margaret Mead
• Historians, Ivo Banac and Thomas Cahill
• Media theorist, Marshall McLuhan
• Judaica scholar, David Hartman
• Catholic cardinals—John Farley, Francis Spellman, Avery Dulles, and Theodore McCarrick
• Print journalist and magazine editor, Susan L. Taylor
• Radio journalist, Lynn Neary
• Television journalist, Chris Cuomo
• Current New York Governor, Andrew Cuomo
• Former US Representative and 1984 Democratic Party vice-presidential candidate, Geraldine Ferraro
• Current US Representatives, Jerrold Nadler and Dan Donovan
• Current President of Namibia, Hage Geingob
• 45th President of the US, Donald J. Trump

Fordham is regionally accredited by the Middle States Commission on Higher Education (MSCHE).