Professor Hoffman Receives Bene Merenti Medal for 40 Years of Service
At the annual Convocation ceremony, held this year on March 10th at Lincoln Center, Professor Anne Hoffman received the Bene Merenti metal for 40 years of service to Fordham University.
“You make the routine miraculous,” President McShane said. “And you make everything at the University an occasion of grace because of the way in which you go about your work.”
President McShane and Professor Hoffman
Here is the tribute celebrating Professor Hoffman’s considerable contributions to Fordham University:
“Anne Hoffman’s history is marked both by an unusually full commitment to Fordham and by an unusually complete engagement with scholarship. In the mid-1990s, she served as Chair of the Humanities Division at Lincoln Center and then as Associate Chair of the English Department. Her wholehearted involvement with the issues surrounding the merger of Fordham’s two campuses was graceful, collegial, and tolerant, supported by an encouraging belief that difficulties were surmountable.
Administrative work has been just one facet of Anne’s notably productive career. She has written two books and, since 1981, has published an article every year, as well as giving one or two lectures annually. This public aspect of her scholarship has been enlarged by her work closer to home, where her admired teaching has been recognized with the Outstanding Teaching in the Humanities Award. For generations of students, Anne has provided extraordinary continuity, mentoring them and forging friendships for years. She has directed four honors classes, the most recent one graduating last May. She was the prime mover in the interfaith initiative between studies in Judaism and Christianity, “Nostra Aetate.”
President McShane and Professor Hoffman
For about a dozen years, Anne served on the executive committee of the Women’s Studies Program, where she devised the Women’s Studies major. The ease and pleasure with which she has shared her interests—modern Hebrew literature, psychiatry, gender—has drawn many people. We are happy to honor this remarkable colleague, universally recognized for her sense of fairness, judiciousness, wisdom, and decency.”
Congratulations to Professor Hoffman, and thank you for all you have done for your students, for the English Department, and for Fordham University.
