Dear Fordham Law Community, 

We are coming to the close of another extraordinary year at Fordham Law! We had many opportunities to celebrate the diversity of our community, and I am so grateful to all of you who have organized or participated in our many panels, symposia, and other events. It has been a pleasure to work alongside you and to be a part of these moments.

Endings are also new beginnings. Last month, Fordham Law welcomed our new Program Director for Diversity, Equity & Inclusion, Khanh V. Nguyen. Khanh is an administrator within the Law School’s DEI group. He looks forward to spearheading the REAL Scholars Program starting this summer, and engaging in our DEI program and events to kick-off the next academic year. 

Best wishes on your exams and an early congratulations to our soon-to-be graduates!

I am so thankful for all of our collective efforts to make our community more diverse, inclusive, and equitable.  I look forward to our continued momentum.

Be well,

Kamille Dean
Senior Director of Diversity, Equity & Inclusion
Office of Student Affairs

Please note: The DEI newsletter will go on hiatus during the summer and resume at the beginning of the fall semester.

Professor Adediran was recognized for the outstanding research and prestigious awards and grants she has received over the past year. Her most recent work examines DEI disclosures and policies adopted by U.S. companies in the wake of George Floyd’s murder in 2020.

Read more

Ben Lew ’23 won this year’s Robert T. Matsui Annual Writing Competition, which is held annually by the Asian Pacific American Bar Association Educational Fund to encourage legal scholarship on issues of importance to the Asian American community.

Read more

Justin Chaljub ’25, Raissa Ebeh ’25, Hira Mustafa ’25, Maya Rodgers ’25, and Cristian Vega ’25 were selected as fellowship recipients for the 2023 New York City Bar Association Diversity Fellowship Program.

Read more

This May, Fordham Law celebrates Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month. Fordham’s Asian Pacific American Law Students Association and Center on Asian Americans and the Law held a trial reenactment of the Chol Soo Lee case, followed by a panel discussion, on May 3.

REAL Scholar Hira Mustafa ’25 was invited to the White House to meet President Joe Biden on March 31, when he proclaimed April 2023 as Arab American Heritage Month.

On April 26, Fordham’s Muslim Law Students Association and South Asian Law Students Association wrapped up the spring semester with an Eid al-Fitr Celebration on Bickford Terrace.

Ahead of Lesbian Visibility Week (April 24-30), Fordham’s Irish Law Students Association and OUTLaws welcomed Dr. Katherine Zappone, the first openly lesbian politician elected to the Oireachtas, Ireland’s parliament, to discuss marriage equality in Ireland.

On April 19, Fordham’s Education Law Collaborative and Suspension Representation Project hosted a virtual panel where students learned about careers in youth law and engaged in a discussion surrounding re-imagining systems that disproportionately target POC youth. 

To mark the third anniversary of the coronavirus pandemic, the University’s Center for Jewish Studies invited Rabbi Dr. Erin Leib Smokler and Fordham Law Professor Ethan J. Leib for a discussion of Torah in a Time of Plague: Historical and Contemporary Jewish Responses (Ben Yehuda Press, 2021), which was edited by Dr. Smokler and to which Professor Leib contributed.

This May, Fordham Law celebrates Jewish American Heritage Month. Fordham’s Jewish Law Students Association (JLSA) is working on a project: The Fordham Law Living Holocaust Memorial Project, which will honor the victims of the Holocaust and ensure their stories live on. JLSA will be collecting stories of all those whose lives were affected by the atrocities of the Holocaust and the War through this Google Form. All Law School community members are encouraged to submit text, videos, images, and audio clips about their connections to the Holocaust.

Dean Matthew Diller joined students, staff, and guest speakers for the final, on-campus Dean’s Student Advisory Council on Diversity meeting of the semester on March 30.

On March 29, Fordham Law welcomed U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor for a wide-ranging conversation with University President Tania Tetlow on how her upbringing and life experiences have influenced her approach on the bench, her career as a lawyer and judge, and on advice she has for today’s law students.

Fordham’s Latin American Law Students Association also joined Dean Matthew Diller and President Tetlow to hear from Justice Sotomayor, who encouraged students to be relentless in working towards the change they want to see. Read more about this year’s Robert L. Levine Distinguished Lecture.

The first week of April marked a special moment among the three Abrahamic faith traditions—Judaism, Christianity, and Islam—as Passover, Holy Week, and Ramadan overlapped. In the spirit of this convergence of faiths, Fordham’s Institute on Religion, Law & Lawyers Work joined more than 60 leaders from different faiths, who came together as one community to learn from one another and celebrate the power of interfaith connections and friendship. 

Shanice Scantlebury ’25, Yannick Twumasi ’25, and Cristian Vega ’25 were named this year’s recipients of the Hon. Deborah A. Batts Scholarship.

Fordham’s OUTLaws is holding its annual Alumni Awards Dinner on May 17, following the end of finals and ahead of Pride Month. August Naston ’25, co-founder of Fordham Law’s Advocates for Trans* Law Students, will receive the 2023 “Student Advocate of the Year” Award.

The South Asian Bar Association of New York awarded a Public Interest Fellowship to Shivani Parikh ’24.

There are always additional events happening at Fordham University through the Office of Multicultural Affairs. Take a look at their offerings to find an upcoming program. 

Have a news story or photos you’d like to submit for consideration? Connect with us!

Email Erin DeGregorio