Joseph Aloysius O'Hare (February 12, 1931 – March 29, 2020) was a Jesuit priest, New York City civic leader and editor.
He was president of Fordham University from 1984 to 2003 and chaired New York City's Campaign Finance Board for its first fifteen years from 1988 to 2003.
[1] In 1991, he led a successful $150 million fundraising campaign, then the largest ever by a Jesuit university;[5] he ultimately increased the endowment by a factor of seven.
During his tenure the University expanded in both the Bronx and Manhattan, adding 1.1 million square feet of teaching and residential space.
"[6] At Fordham he allowed the student government to recognize advocacy groups as long as they promoted "enlightened discussion", including those organized around gay rights and abortion.
He opened one op-ed column with the disarming line: "I would like to say a word for the right of the American Roman Catholic bishops to be wrong."
He called the criticism that the bishops were trying to impose their views a "tiresome argument, an objection answered many times".
He concluded: "It is neither anti‐Catholic nor unAmerican to argue against the bishops in this debate, but to question their right to be heard is a persistent form of bigotry."
[10][12] In 1988 Koch named O'Hare the first chairman of the city's five-person Campaign Finance Board, which oversaw the public financing of municipal elections, allocating funds to candidates who agreed to adhere to restrictions designed to make candidates independent of large contributors.
[17][15] In 2003, Mayor Michael Bloomberg named him to another Charter Revision Commission, tasked with considering several modest reforms and one controversial one: eliminating party primaries for municipal offices and making those elections non-partisan.
[2] U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor, who like O'Hare was one of the first appointees to the Campaign Finance Board, called him "one of my heroes."