In 1994, Dean John Feerick ’61 received a simple but compelling invitation: “Come and visit Northern Ireland.”

The invite was offered by the Northern Irish Labour Party leader John Hume, and it planted the seed that grew into a thriving relationship between Fordham Law School and the historically troubled region. But Hume had more than a social visit in mind. “I want more from you,” he told Feerick, who is a first-generation Irish American.

Feerick accepted the invitation, and took back an impression of common humanity. “The people there wanted what we all want—a peaceful society for their families,” he says. But Hume’s second request lingered in his mind, particularly when, the following year, he joined Bill Clinton and a group of 30 academic and business leaders on the first-ever presidential visit to Northern Ireland. Clinton, it turned out, also wanted more from Feerick. At the end of the trip, he challenged the men and women in his entourage to find ways to invest in Northern Ireland.

Feerick immediately knew that his investment would not be of the financial kind. “Instead, I got the idea to bring together the major law schools in the North and South of Ireland, for the first time in history,” says Feerick.

Fordham Law would be the bridge.

In 1996, he laid the groundwork by forming the Fordham-Ulster Conflict Resolution Program with Professor Jacqueline Nolan-Haley. Twenty-two residents of Northern Ireland from both Protestant and Catholic backgrounds were invited to Fordham Law to study conflict resolution in a neutral territory, with the goal of bringing back what they learned to their embattled communities.

In 1999, Feerick contacted Queen’s University Belfast, a historically Protestant institution, and University College Dublin, whose roots lay in a Catholic university, to see if the two law schools would be amenable to co-hosting a summer program with Fordham Law. Back then, the Law School didn’t offer students any summer programs. But that’s not the only reason the program’s launch was notable. “It was born out of an idea that was far more ambitious than the typical law school summer program, which usually tends to be about fun and travel,” says Professor Mike W. Martin ’92. “Our goal was to have Fordham Law play a role, however modest, in bringing the North and South of Ireland together—as well as to bring U.S. law students to the North so they could see the complexities of the situation firsthand.”

By 2001, the first wave of Fordham Law students traveled to Ireland to take part in that grand experiment: Students would spend time in Belfast then in Dublin, taking courses in conflict resolution and international law—and, perhaps more important, immersing themselves in communities few Americans had visited. “I didn’t know much about the Troubles before going there,” says James Bulger ’03, who visited Belfast during the program’s inaugural summer. “But Dean Feerick and the rest of the teachers did an amazing job showing us around and explaining the history and nuances. It never felt scary, per se, but from time to time, there was a nervous energy in the air.”

Bulger recalls one encounter in a pub where he was gathered with a group of students and professors. “A tough-looking guy heard my accent and asked if I was American,” Bulger recalls. “I picked up on some cues, figured out he was Catholic, and told him I hoped everyone could get along but that I was there with a Catholic school.” Only then did the local drop his guard. “He hugged me and told me we were welcome there.”

Breaking down walls with learning

Tense moments like that one stemmed from the decades of violence in the North, violence that had ceased only a few years earlier with the signing of the 1998 Good Friday/Belfast Agreement. It marked the formal beginning of peace between the United Kingdom and Ireland, as well as between most of the warring political parties in Northern Ireland. It also established a government with power shared between those who were loyal to the United Kingdom (known as the loyalists and generally Protestant) and those who wished to join the Irish state (aka the republicans, who were largely Catholic). Yet the two camps remained deeply divided by barriers both figurative and literal.

The first of those physical barriers sprang up on September 10, 1969, when British troops entered Northern Ireland and began erecting a barbed wire fence between two Belfast neighborhoods: the predominantly Catholic (and republican) Falls Road and the Protestant/loyalist Shankill Road. Ironically, the authorities dubbed it a “peace wall,” and it came after a long summer of rioting, violence, and arson that left nearly 1500 families homeless and 10 people dead, events all too common during the Troubles, as the ongoing low-level state of war became known.

Professor Martin, who has family in Ireland, witnessed some of this tension firsthand. In 1988, he traveled to the North while working with the Institute for International Sport. “Being there then had a profound effect on me,” he recalls. “There were military personnel with machine guns on the streets. I hadn’t seen that before.”

Out of the classroom, into the world

Mike Martin heard about the new Ireland program when the first group of Fordham Law students returned to campus in the fall of 2002. He had not been back to Ireland since 1988, but he asked Dean Feerick if he could get involved the following summer. “It just so happened that he needed someone to teach human rights,” says Martin, who returned to teach the course in 2004 and again in 2005. In 2006, he began running the program himself.

“I didn’t know much about the Troubles before going there,” says James Bulger ’03, who visited Belfast during the program’s inaugural summer. “But Dean Feerick and the rest of the teachers did an amazing job showing us around and explaining the history and nuances. It never felt scary, per se, but from time to time, there was a nervous energy in the air.”

From the get-go, Feerick and Martin intended for students to be immersed in the history, culture, and laws of Ireland, and, particularly, in the North. “The Republic [or South] tends to be overrepresented with visiting students, but because of the history of conflict, few were coming to Belfast,” says Martin.

And even fewer law students were getting the kind of full-on crash course in the region that Fordham Law’s students did—and still do. “Everyone shows up in Belfast on a Sunday and that same afternoon, we take the students around to the areas that were hardest hit by the Troubles,” says Martin. “Each and every day after that is about connecting the students, in and out of the classroom, to the issues around the Northern Ireland conflict, which continues today.” That means seeing the so-called peace walls, which are now covered with graffiti and vibrant murals that draw hordes of tourists yet continue to segregate Catholic from Protestant, republican from loyalist. “From 2001 until 2007, we’d hold panels, and it was common for parties from the North and South to refuse to speak with each other,” says Martin. “Panelists from opposing sides would tend to make a general statement at the beginning, with their backs to their opponents, before storming out. People had difficulty sitting next to folks who had supported acts of violence against them.”

Feerick and Martin hoped that Fordham Law’s program could do its part to foster healing, sending students to study for a week in Belfast, then a week in Dublin, then on to either a course in international criminal law or a summerlong internship, an option that Martin introduced in 2010. There were practical reasons for extending the program and adding work opportunities for students: “It made sense to build in a full summer experience rather than making them go back after three weeks, then have them scramble to find a summer internship at a law firm,” Martin explains. But there were loftier reasons for his decision, as well. “The internships were designed to create deeper relationships and inroads into the community so that we could all learn more from one another.”

A web of connections

These days, those relationships include top people at NGOs and government organizations all the way up to the chief justices of the Supreme Court in both the North and South. “The chief justice of Northern Ireland was the first person to embrace the idea of taking Fordham Law students as interns, even though no internships for Irish students existed at that point,” says Martin.

Akbar Khan ’18 completed his 2016 internship with Belfast’s Public Prosecution Service (PPS). “When I started, the Brexit vote was coming up,” he says. “My supervisor asked me to look into the implications for criminal justice in Northern Ireland if the U.K. left the EU. The vote passed during my stay, so the research I was doing suddenly became very real,” he says.

The internship portion of the program was so successful that when a new chief justice took over in Northern Ireland, he asked, “Why isn’t this opportunity open to Irish law students?” Now, thanks in large part to Fordham Law, the Supreme Court there also takes interns from Irish law schools, as well as law schools in Wales and Australia. “Helping to create internships there is one of the things I’m most proud of,” says Martin.

Today, a select number of Irish law students from Queen’s University Belfast and University College Dublin also study alongside Fordham Law students. “I think these connections allow students to experience a broader, more nuanced understanding of divisions in and between the North and the Republic,” says Khan. “We walk away with a more complicated viewpoint on the region’s geopolitical history.”

Imelda Maher, dean of the law school at University College Dublin, agrees: “Bringing together students from the three jurisdictions [Northern Ireland, Ireland, and the United States] broadens and deepens understanding. That’s particularly important at times of uncertainty, such as those we are living in now.”

Not surprisingly, the Belfast/Dublin program fosters and strengthens connections within the Fordham Law community as well. Martin estimates that the program is responsible for at least 10 marriages (he even officiated one of the weddings). “John [Feerick] and I always talk about how, when we go to reunions or graduation events, the Ireland students are always gathered together,” says Martin. “It can be easy to feel disconnected in law school, but students from our program are truly bonded.”

Support in uncertain times

Those connections are even more important today, with Brexit still looming [at press time]. Northern Irish citizens, both Catholic and Protestant, dread a return of the hard border and the economic repercussions as well as the possible violence that could come with it. Though things are mostly calm in Northern Ireland these days, the tragic death of journalist Lyra McKee, who was shot by a member of the New IRA—a republican paramilitary group—in a riot in Derry this past April, felt chillingly familiar to anyone old enough to remember the headlines of decades past.

But there are those who are also cognizant that the links formed with Fordham Law and the United States can serve as a lifeline of sorts. In 2018, Feerick was part of a group that received the Belfast Homecoming Ambassador medal. “Our Ireland program was part of that,” he says. “I was introduced by the lord chief justice in the North, who uses our students as interns.”

“Our goal was to have Fordham Law play a role, however modest, in encouraging dialogue on two fronts: between the two communities that dominate Northern Ireland and between the North and South of Ireland. We also wanted to bring U.S. law students to the North so they could see the complexities firsthand.” — Michael W. Martin

Adds Colin Harvey, a professor of law at Queen’s University Belfast: “I have watched as the influence of the [Belfast/Dublin] program has spread throughout this region, and Northern Ireland needs the support of our friends in the U.S. more than ever.” With Brexit, “There is a real and tangible sense that we are being removed from the EU against our will—the majority of people here voted to remain,” he says. “There is a clear opportunity for Queen’s and Fordham to be involved in conversations about the future of the island of Ireland as they continue to develop.”

Whatever happens with Brexit, Martin believes the program will continue bringing students to the North. “They are the future bar members and political leaders who will understand and appreciate the rich and, at times, troubling history of Northern Ireland,” he says.

That is not hyperbole. Conor Walsh ’15 who attended the program in 2013 is now an advisor to U.S. Rep. Tom Suozzi ’89. Congressman Suozzi submitted a resolution to the House of Representatives reaffirming American support for the Good Friday Agreement. It passed out of the House Foreign Affairs Committee unanimously in October and at press time was awaiting consideration before the full House of Representatives. “We’re optimistic that it will be considered soon and receive overwhelming support,” says Walsh.

That’s exactly the kind of effect Martin and Feerick hope for. “A graduate of the program with a deep understanding of the North used that understanding to advise a House member who is playing a visible role on that front,” says Martin. “This is truly an example of what we can do.”

That kinship will be in evidence this February 12, when alumni of the program gather at Fordham Law for a 20th reunion, as well as on June 4, in Belfast, during the formal celebration of the program’s anniversary. “We are planning an all-day academic conference on human rights and conflict resolution; a fireside chat with John Feerick; and a large celebratory dinner in the Great Hall at Queen’s University, among other events,” says Martin.

Neither Martin nor Feerick could have predicted the eventual impact and scope of the program back in the early years. “It’s fair to say that law school summer programs tend to be humble in their origins and ambitions,” says Martin. “But ours really took off, even to the extent that our friends in Ireland now invite us to join in discussions about that country’s future. That’s heady stuff.”