A campus-wide email from Tania Tetlow, president of Fordham University, is asking for “collective empathy” for illegal aliens, including Fordham students, who fear they or their family members will be arrested and deported by ICE and the new Trump administration.
The email, which was filled with emotional appeals, was obtained by Campus Reform, the education watchdog, which reported on it last week.
In one portion, Tetlow said Fordham students are “losing sleep” over the “fate of undocumented loves ones.” The university president also claimed she “struggled” to write the email “because it is not within my power to reassure those in pain.”
The email also announced Fordham is updating and adding new resources to its “Undocumented Students” web page in light of the ICE crackdown. The website now lists six Fordham resources as well as links to 20 outside sources, AFN found.
Fordham, a private university, is headquartered in the Bronx. It was founded as St. John’s College in the 1800s by John Hughes, a Catholic archbishop. The college's first president, John McCloskey, eventually became the first U.S. cardinal.
Tetlow, a former assistant U.S. attorney and Tulane University president, became Fordham’s 33rd president in 2022. At her installation ceremony, she vowed to fight for social justice as leader of the university.
Elsewhere in the email, Tetlow wrote, “In this Catholic university founded for immigrants, I can remind us that one of the strongest exhortations of our faith (and of Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, and other religions) is to ‘welcome the stranger,’” she continued.
It’s not clear why Tetlow believes all of the world’s major religions follow that same theme but liberal, Catholic-based nonprofits, such as notorious Catholic Charities, openly see no difference between a legal immigrant and an illegal alien on U.S. soil.
Christian apologist Alex McFarland says what the Fordham president is really advocating is breaking the law and making American citizens unsafe.
“She is in the wrong,” he tells AFN. “She's advocating for lawlessness, and that's really a breach of her responsibilities as an educator and as a university president."
After reading the university president’s email, McFarland says people should recognize her emotional appeals that prey on our sympathy for others.
“There’s this outpouring of sympathy,” he says, “but really the wise, mature position is to uphold the structure of the society and the rule of law.”
