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

The growth of what became Fordham University, from very precarious beginnings 175 years ago to one of the nation’s most prestigious institutions of higher learning, is a remarkable achievement. According to author Thomas J. Shelley, a multitude of obstacles had to be overcome: precarious finances, virulent anti-Catholicism, pressures to adapt its curriculum and rules to bring Fordham into accord with the norms of American higher education, and the latter-day threats of its urban location.

Fordham’s founder was John Hughes, then the very young bishop coadjutor of the Diocese of New York. His aim was to start a Catholic college as a way for his largely immigrant flock to rise out of poverty through education. In 1839, he purchased the Rose Hill estate at the tip of Westchester County, which later became part of New York City’s Borough of the Bronx. Failing to raise enough money locally to purchase the land, Hughes had to go on a “begging trip” to Europe to raise the additional funds.

Very soon Hughes, who became bishop of the diocese in 1842, found that he did not have the time or the resources to run a college while tending to his other monumental duties. His solution was to persuade the Society of Jesus to purchase the institution in 1846. Fordham would remain a Jesuit college and then a university (beginning in 1905). The Jesuits contributed a well-educated faculty in addition to their famous curriculum, the ratio studiorum. This plan of studies, which included a rigid set of rules for student deportment, was confined to the “classical studies” of theology, philosophy, Latin, and Greek. There was no room initially for more modern offerings, such as the natural and social sciences. There was also no provision for either elective courses or “majors” in specific fields of study, all of which held Fordham back for many years from entering the mainstream of American higher education. At the same time, the very strict rules for student life discouraged many from attending the institution.

During the first decades of the twentieth century, Fordham had no choice but to somewhat adapt the ratio studiorum. This included new academic programs with a practical or vocational bent, such as those in business, education, and the social sciences that Fordham began offering at various locations in Manhattan in 1916. Yet as late as 1941, at the time of the university’s centennial, its president Robert L. Gannon, SJ, was still excoriating American colleges and universities for adopting variations of the elective system. As a result, he charged, most American universities were “permeated with socialism, pragmatism, and exaggerated ‘experimentalism’” (309).

Another familiar feature of American college life with which Fordham struggled was athletics, and especially “big time” football. The university fielded several championship football teams during the 1920s and 1930s, but this feat did not sit well with Jesuit headquarters in Rome, which forbade Jesuit colleges in the United States to award athletic scholarships. Sharing this disapproval of football was Father Gannon. Mounting deficits in the football program and a decline in the student body during World War II allowed him to suspend football for the duration of the war. After the war, he reluctantly allowed a “Class B” football team, but even that was disbanded in 1954. (Football would be reestablished at the varsity level in 1970).

At the same time Gannon was bent on eliminating football, he had to deal with the problem of Fordham’s emphasis on quantity—rather than quality. With a miniscule endowment—a problem with which the great majority of Catholic colleges and universities then and now have had to struggle—Fordham was largely dependent on tuition for its operating expenses. Hence there was the temptation to admit increasing numbers of students to cover costs. Of course, this was a largely self-defeating measure, since more students meant increased demand for facilities and...