Fordham: A History of the Jesuit University of New York: 1841–2003 by Thomas J. Shelley (review)

Monsignor Thomas Shelley's Fordham: A History of the Jesuit University of New York stands out from a short list of other books about the university for its concentration on the members of the Society of Jesus. It was a small group of Jesuits who answered the call of New York Archbishop John Hughes in 1846, soon after his 1841 founding of a small college and seminary at Rose Hill in the Bronx, not yet part of New York City. It was then called St. John's College. Hughes was fighting anti-Catholicism in the public schools and worked assiduously to expand Catholic education. He wanted a college, but was not able to manage it, so an agreement was made to bring in a group of French Jesuits ready to leave their prior post in Kentucky.

Shelley, a professor emeritus who taught church history at Fordham, relies heavily on two firsthand accounts, a book by alumnus Thomas Gaffney Taaffe, S.J., and another by Thomas Gannon, S.J., president of Fordham during its most influential years in the 1930s and 40s. Many additional Catholic and Jesuit letters and publications are cited. The author traces the slow growth of the college in the 1800s and the vast expansion that began at the dawn of the twentieth century, when the college became a university and was renamed Fordham after the manor to which it had been born, at the time part of Westchester.

Amid all the milestones are details about the Jesuit college presidents and their accomplishments, but not as much as one might like about the personalities, some of whom were dynamic and fascinating. The same goes for the most influential alumni; many are listed, but not characterized. Little is written about the students, generations of young men who learned the classics and humanities under relatively strict and conservative leadership—until the turbulent 60s. (Women entered via their own college in 1964 until the undergraduate programs merged in the 70s.) The author writes in detail about the various buildings as they rose, one by one, and the rigid coursework taught by his predecessors, that relied heavily on Greek, Latin, philosophy, and "letters," in the vernacular of the earlier eras, and the always important student presence at Mass and prayers.

There are tangents, as an entire chapter dedicated to the founding of another Jesuit college, the relatively short-lived College of St. Francis Xavier in Manhattan. The history ends at the start of the tenure of the current Fordham president, the Reverend Joseph McShane, S.J., who is the author's cousin.

Those interested in Catholic education, Jesuit history, and, of course, Fordham University will take to this 500-page tome. Alumni and former faculty and staff will enjoy the journey from past to present, but will have to wade through a great deal of detail without the characterizations that would have brightened the work. It is decidedly and expectedly pro-Catholic and includes a good deal of Irish-American history.