| Education
In teaching their students to think for themselves, and exposing them
to the power of possibility, these teachers and administrators are laying
the foundations for future success stories even as they create their own.
 Dan Cassidy
Most Anglo-American dictionaries derive the cheerful, prosperous, delicious
slang word “swell” from the painful, protuberant, swollen
Standard English “swell,” or from Old English swellen. But
the slang “swell” is not swollen or swellen; it is from the
Irish word sóúil, meaning “joyful; comfortable, luxurious,
wealthy, splendid, classy; satisfying, delicious, delectable, scrumptious,
and exquisite.” So writes Daniel Cassidy in The Secret Language
of the Crossroads: How the Irish Invented Slang, which will be published
by CounterPunch Books in May 2007.
“I wrote the book because I had a hunch that some of the slang words
and phrases that I had learned as a kid growing up in New York in the
1940s and ’50s, like ‘in dutch’ (duais, pron. dush,
trouble), ‘say uncle’ (anacal, mercy, quarter), ‘dukin’
(tuargain, hammering, thumping, pounding) it out,’ snazz (snas,
polish, gloss, lustre), snazzy (snasach, pron. snasah, polished, glossy,
elegant), glom (glám, grab), and dude (dúdach, dúd,
pron. dood; a foolish-looking person, a dolt) – were derived from
the Irish language,” Cassidy told Irish America.
The founder and the co-director of An Léann Éireannach,
the Irish Studies Program, at New College of California in San Francisco,
and an award-winning filmmaker and musician, Cassidy’s research
on the Irish language influence on American vernacular and slang has been
published in the New York Observer (“Decoding the Gangs of New York”),
Ireland’s Hot Press magazine, The San Francisco Chronicle, Irish
Sunday Times, and Lá, the Irish-language newspaper.
Cassidy was born in Brooklyn, New York, and lives with his wife Clare
McIntyre Cassidy in San Franisco. His father’s family were Irish-speakers
who emigrated to Greenpoint, Brooklyn, at the end of the 19th century.
His mother’s family were famine Irish immigrants who landed in “Irishtown,”
Brooklyn, and the slums of lower Manhattan in the 1840s and 50s. –
Patricia Harty
John Feerick
John D. Feerick is a negotiator, writer, teacher and award-winning attorney.
He graduated from Fordham University and Fordham Law School where he was
Phi Beta Kappa, Order of the Coif, and Editor-in-Chief of the Fordham
Law Review. After a successful career in private practice, Feerick returned
to his alma mater as Dean of the Law School in 1982, a position he held
until 2002, at which time he took up of full professorship.
In 2004, Feerick was named to Fordham’s Sidney C. Norris Chair of
Law in Public Service.  A
past president of the Association of the Bar of the City of New York,
and a member on the New York State Law Revision Commission and the Chairman
of the New York State Commission on Government Integrity, Feerick was
a player in a number of high profile labor disputes like the National
Football League salary cap and the New York City Transit negotiations
of 1994. He is also a dedicated public servant, and served as a member
of the special master panel in the homeless family rights case of McCain
v. Bloomberg.
Feerick, whose parents immigrated to the U.S. from County Mayo, is a proud
Irish-American. His uncle Pat Boyle, who fought in the Irish War of Independence,
was a major influence. “Despite his lack of formal education he
knew more about any subject than I would hope to know after going all
the way through law school. I still haven’t matched him, and don’t
think I am going to,” Feerick told Irish America.
Professor Feerick has received many honors including The American Irish
Historical Society’s Gold Medal, the New York State League of Women
Voters Citizen Achievement Award, and the New York State Bar Association’s
Gold Medal. He has also received honorary degrees from St. Francis College,
Hamilton College, the College of New Rochelle and Fordham University.
– Liam Moriarty
 Christopher
Fox
Christopher Fox, a professor at Notre Dame University, knows about ties
that bind. Three hundred years after his ancestors emigrated from Ireland,
Fox felt a strong desire to rediscover his Irish roots. His quest led
him to Irish literature and to the realization that Notre Dame’s
Irish Studies department needed a boost.
Fox’s desire to improve the Irish cultural studies at Notre Dame
and teach Irish literature within the context of culture resulted in the
establishment of Notre Dame’s Keough-Naughton Institute. The Institute
developed a reputation for excellence almost immediately upon construction
when Notre Dame welcomed Seamus Deane, distinguished Irish academic, critic,
and writer to its faculty. Deane’s arrival at Notre Dame in 2003
established the Institute as the “place-to-be” for Irish cultural
studies. The Keough-Naughton Institute is also home to Irish natives such
as the Gaelic Poet Nuala Ni Dhomhnaill, and renowned Irish linguist Breandan
O Buachalla.
Today, over 400 students take part in the Irish Studies program. Fox,
however, is not satisfied with an all-star faculty or growing student
enrollment. He is looking forward and envisions the growth of a recently
founded Archaeology in Ireland program, as well as further course offerings
in Irish politics, sociology, and arts. He’s made it clear that
Notre Dame’s Keough-Naughton Institute must continue to grow and
enable Irish studies to flourish. – Maeve Molloy
Thomas Hachey
In 2001, in a move to position itself among American universities as
a leader in Irish Studies, Boston College named Thomas E. Hachey as its
first ever executive director of Irish programs. Hachey, Marquette University’s
College of Arts and Sciences Dean and History Professor before coming
to Boston, likes to remind his graduate students that his career was not
as ramrod straight as it might appear. In the early 1960s, in London doing
research on British appeasement in the Public Records Office, Hachey picked
up a newspaper at lunch one day and learned that the Public Records Act
had been amended to allow access to government documents after 30 years
instead of the heretofore 50 years. That afternoon he asked a surprised
clerk for Irish documents dating from 1916 to 1922. Hachey’s subsequent
career path owed much to the fact that he was the first in the field to
set eyes on records from one of Ireland’s most momentous periods.
 Of course luck
is no use without its corollary, hard work, and Tom Hachey has never shied
from that. Among his numerous published works is The Irish Experience
(co-edited with L.J. McCaffrey), a standard text book and never out of
print since first published in 1989. In Boston, despite his academic workload,
he finds time for extracurricular work with the Ireland
Fund, the ICCUSA, the Irish American Partnership, and the Irish Immigration
Center.
A native of Lewiston, Maine, Hachey’s maternal grandfather, Andrew
Johnson, came from the Bantry Bay area of County Cork. His maternal grandmother,
Hannah Doyle, was from the same parish, though the couple did not meet
until they settled in Auburn, Maine, where they both worked in the linen
mills. With his wife, Jane, Tom visited family in the Bantry area throughout
the ’60s and ’70s.
In an e-mail exchange with Irish America, Tom mused, “Perhaps I
developed an unconscious interest in Irish history from my maternal grandfather
. . . He regaled me early on about the struggle against the British in
the land war.”
To date, he says, “The most rewarding experience of all has been
working with [BC’s] Irish Institute, particularly in its contribution
to the Northern Ireland peace process.” Every year the Institute
invites candidates from Ireland’s North and South to participate
in a program involving eminent specialists, on such topics as community
policing and political leadership.
Says Tom: “We have invited all 700 participants who have been
in Irish Institute programs since 1997 to attend a reunion conference
this April [in Dublin Castle] ... The program has garnered such respect
that the Irish government has agreed to waive for BC all fees normally
associated with the use of Dublin Castle.” – By Lauren Byrne
 Joe Lee
The Director of Glucksman Ireland House and Chair of Irish Studies and
Professor of History and Irish Studies, New York University, Professor
J. Joseph Lee came to NYU in 2002 from University College Cork, where
he chaired the History Department and served for periods as Dean of Arts
and as Vice President.
Under Lee’s direction, Glucksman Ireland House is currently working
on the development of a publication series with New York University Press.
He is also adding to the house a new emphasis on Irish economy and Irish
historiography.
In 2006, Lee, together with Marion Casey, edited Making the Irish American:
History and Heritage of the Irish in the United States. With a contributors
list that is a virtual Who’s Who of Irish-American writers, this
book is a monumental work of over 700 pages that explores the fascinating
story of the Irish in America.
Lee, who has published widely, and is also the author of the award-winning
book Ireland 1912-1985: Politics and Society, was educated at University
College, Dublin and the Institute for European History in Mainz, Germany.
He has taught as a Fellow of Peterhouse, Cambridge; a Senior Parnell Research
Fellow in Irish Studies at Magdalene, Cambridge; Visiting Fellow/Professor
at the Austrian Academy, Vienna; the European University, Florence; and
the University of Edinburgh. He served for sixteen years as Chair of the
Fulbright Commission for Ireland, as a 1989 Eisenhower Fellow, four years
as an elected Independent member of the Irish Senate, and on the British-Irish
Parliamentary Committee from 1993-97.
 Richard
O’Connell
Having begun his career teaching fifty-four students eight subjects a
day in a single classroom,
Dr. Richard O’Connell is no stranger to the more challenging aspects
of the American educational system. O’Connell spent an additional
two years teaching high school English before discovering his calling
as a guidance counselor in New York and New Jersey public and private
schools.
O’Connell, who has received numerous New York State and Nassau
Counselors Association awards for his work, recently published a book
entitled Improving School Guidance Services in the Senior High and Middle
Schools. The book, which focuses on the topic of guidance service reform,
is directed towards parents, counselors, teachers, and administrators,
with special attention paid to aspiring Ivy Leaguers, learning-disabled,
unmotivated and foreign-born students, and emphasizes how each member
of the school community can contribute to improve guidance services.
A professor at CW Post, Long Island University, O’Connell holds
a doctorate in educational leadership from Nova Southeastern University,
two master’s degrees from Manhattan College in counseling psychology
and English literature and a Bachelor of Arts from the Catholic University
of America.
A first-generation Irish-American, O’Connell lives in Bronxville,
New York.
 Catherine
McKenna
Catherine McKenna dates her fascination with the Celtic world to a book
of Irish myths and folktales her brother gave her when she was about 10
or 11, little knowing that the interest he sparked in his sister would
result in her being appointed in 2005 the Margaret Brooks Robinson Professor
of Celtic Languages and Literature at Harvard University. Other genetic
forces may have played their part in shaping her career; told of her daughter’s
plans to pursue a career in Celtic studies, McKenna’s mother thought
it was a “daft scheme,” but admitted there was nothing Catherine’s
Kerry-born maternal grandfather wanted more than someone in the family
to be a scholar of things Irish.
A native New Yorker, McKenna is married to John McGill, whose tea shop,
Two for the Pot, on Clinton Street in Brooklyn Heights is a favorite spot
for those in search of Irish goodies. Her father, whose parents hailed
from Cavan and Monaghan, was an Assistant D.A. under Tom Dewey and Frank
Hogan. After her father’s death in a car accident when McKenna was
three months old, she and her mother and two brothers went to live in
Queens. Receiving her Ph.D. from Harvard in 1976, McKenna joined the Queens
College faculty, and later served as director of their Irish Studies Program
from 1984 to 1997. She was also coordinator of CUNY’s Medieval Studies
Certificate Program from 1990 until 2005, when she took up her post at
Harvard, and a visiting adjunct professor at New York University from
1996.
McKenna has noticed some big changes at Harvard since her postgraduate
days. “In my day,” she comments, “most of us –
though not all – concentrated exclusively on the medieval languages
and their literatures. But now it is very Common to hear Irish, Welsh,
Breton, or Scottish Gaelic being spoken around the department. . . . As
a group we care very deeply about the status and fate of the Celtic languages
in the world.”
Catherine’s interest in St. Brigid of Kildare, about whom she
is currently writing a book, has taken her to Ireland numerous times.
Did the saint, whose existence is nowadays often called into question,
ever really exist? – Our chance to get an expert’s opinion:
“Ah, the $64 question,” Catherine responds. “In all
honesty, we can’t know the answer to that ... As early as 650 A.D.
there were monks – her biographer, Cogitosus, for one – who
were confident she had lived 100 years earlier, and that she had been
the founder and head of their monastery at Kildare ... This inclines me
to accept that she did exist, and that it’s possible to imagine
a woman in a position of real power and authority in the church, and I
think that’s remarkable.” – Lauren Byrne
Dennis Sullivan
 Dennis P. Sullivan’s
achievements in the field of mathematics are truly remarkable. He has
developed specific theories and solved various problems in areas including
homotopy theory, dynamical systems, Kleinian groups, and low dimensional
topology. He received the nation’s highest honor when he was awarded
the National Medal of Science in 2004 presented by President G.W. Bush
in 2004 (photo) and in 2006 he was the recipient of the Leon P. Steele
Prize for Lifetime Achievement from the American Mathematical Society,
Born in Port Huron, Michigan, Sullivan received his doctorate from Princeton
University in 1966. For many years a professor at the Institute des Hautes
Etudes in Paris, Sullivan currently holds joint appointments as a professor
of mathematics at Stony Brook University and as the Einstein Professor
at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York.
A second-generation Irish-American, Dennis reconnected with his Irish
roots on a 1984 trip to Ireland. He visited Skibbereen where his grandfather
Dennis Parnell Sullivan lived before immigrating to the U.S. in 1870.
Among Sullivan’s many other awards are the AMS Veblen Prize in 1971,
the Prix Elie Cartan of the French Academy of Sciences in 1981 and the
King Faisal Prize in 1994. The father of six lives in New York with his
fourth wife, Moira Chas and his two youngest children Richard and Clara.
–Bridget English
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