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Richard Engel

John Tognino

Paulette LoMonaco

Dion DiMucci

Preet Bharara

Sally J. Bellet

Patricia E. Harris

Kaushik Basu

The University Commencement ceremony is broadcast live over radio station WFUV (90.7 FM) on the dial or at www.wfuv.org. Video of the ceremony is also streamed live on Cable Channel 10 on the Rose Hill and Lincoln Center campuses and online atwww.fordham.edu/media.

As part of its 2013 commencement ceremony on May 18, Fordham University will award honorary degrees to eight people of distinction in fields ranging from public service and government to journalism and the arts.

This year’s commencement speaker, NBC News Chief Foreign Correspondent Richard Engel, will receive an honorary doctorate of humane letters at the University’s 168th commencement, to be held at the Rose Hill campus.

That degree will also be awarded to Paulette LoMonaco, R.G.S., executive director of Good Shepherd Services; John Tognino, PCS ’75, chairman and chief executive officer of Pepper Financial Group and former Fordham trustee; Dion DiMucci, the famous and influential Grammy-nominated musician; New York City First Deputy Mayor Patricia E. Harris; and Kaushik Basu, chief economist and senior vice president for development economics at the World Bank.

Two honorees will each receive an honorary doctorate of laws: Sally J. Bellet, Esq., LAW ’76, president of the Stein/Bellet Foundation, and Preet Bharara, U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, who will give the keynote address at the 106th diploma ceremony for the Fordham School of Law, to be held at Radio City Music Hall on Sunday, May 19.

Basu will give the keynote address at the diploma ceremony for the Graduate School of Business Administration, also to be held Sunday, May 19, at Avery Fisher Hall at the Lincoln Center campus. Peter Vaughan, Ph.D., who is retiring as dean the Graduate School of Social Service, will speak at the school’s diploma ceremony on Monday, May 20, also at Avery Fisher Hall.

Richard Engel, widely known as one of today’s top foreign correspondents, has won multiple awards for his coverage of wars, revolutions and political changes in the Middle East over the past decade. He is one of the few Western journalists to cover the second Iraq war from beginning to end, and he has also covered the war in Afghanistan, the 2006 Israel-Hezbollah conflict, the uprisings in Egypt and Libya, and the current conflict in Syria, where he and his production team were kidnapped in December. He is the author of two books, A Fist in the Hornet’s Nest: On the Ground in Baghdad Before, During & After the War(Hyperion, 2004), and a follow-up, War Journal: My Five Years in Iraq(Simon & Schuster, 2011).

John Tognino, PCS ’75, chairman and chief executive officer of Pepper Financial Group and a former executive at Merrill Lynch and NASDAQ, has been one of the most steadfast and generous supporters of Fordham for more than a decade. He has served for 12 years on the Board of Trustees, including eight years as chairman, and has given abundantly of his time and energies in the cause of the University’s advancement. He and is wife, Norma, created the Tognino Family Endowed Scholarship, which supports nontraditional students, and the Tognino Endowment for Disability Services. In 2007 they made a planned gift of $3.5 million to name Tognino Hall in Duane Library.

Paulette LoMonaco, R.G.S., has served since 1980 as executive director of Good Shepherd Services, a social service agency that provides a variety of services to vulnerable youth, children and families. Under her leadership, the agency has dramatically expanded and become nationally recognized for its innovative service models. Today it helps 27,000 people in New York and serves as a leading example for excellence not only in providing direct services to the disadvantaged, but also in advocating on their behalf. Under Sister LoMonaco’s tenure, Good Shepherd Services also began operating transfer schools in partnership with New York City that give truant students a second chance at high school graduation.

Dion DiMucci, a native of the Bronx, found fame as lead singer of Dion and the Belmonts in the 1950s. In the decades since, he has built a following as one of the most soulful and influential musicians of his time. He has received two Grammy nominations and has been cited as a formative influence by Paul Simon, Lou Reed, Bruce Springsteen, and Bob Dylan. DiMucci is known for his range and versatility, having developed an early style that melded R&B, blues, doo-wop, and rock and roll, and having recorded a number of gospel albums as well. His greatest hits include “Runaround Sue,” “The Wanderer,” and “Abraham, Martin and John.” He was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1989.

Preet Bharara, U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York since 2009, was named one of the 100 Most Influential People in the World byTime magazine in 2012, which also featured him in a cover story, “This Man is Busting Wall Street.” He has put new focus on financial crimes as well as other complex and sophisticated offenses, forming units to focus on cybercrime as well as the often-linked areas of terrorism and narcotics. His new civil fraud unit has collected nearly $500 million in settlements for faulty lending practices and other crimes. Other victories on his watch include prosecution of key members of the computer hacking groups Anonymous and LulzSec, and more than 70 convictions for insider trading.

Sally J. Bellet,Esq., LAW ’76, former vice president of real estate development for Amtrak, is president of the Stein/Bellet Foundation and a philanthropist who has given generously in support of education, medical research, and the arts. She established the Edward and Marilyn Bellet Chair in Legal Ethics, Morality and Religion at Fordham Law School in 2006, as well as the Bellet Scholars Program for students with a particular interest in ethical leadership. She serves on the advisory board for the law school’s Louis Stein Center for Law and Ethics, founded by her grandfather, Louis Stein, LAW ’26.

Patricia E. Harris, first deputy mayor of New York City, plays a pivotal role in city government by overseeing numerous departments and initiatives and making sure the various parts of city government work well together. Twice named one of the top five most powerful women in New York City by Crain’s New York Business, she is Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s closest aide. Among other duties, she oversees the departments of cultural affairs, landmarks, and parks, and serves as board chair for the Mayor’s Fund to Advance New York City. She created NYC Service, the city’s service initiative, and also represented Mayor Bloomberg on the 9/11 Memorial Jury, responsible for selecting the final design of the 9/11 Memorial.

Kaushik Basu, Ph.D., chief economist and senior vice president for development economics at the World Bank, is an internationally respected thought leader with a reputation for ideas that are inventive and sometimes provocative. He previously served as chief economic adviser to the government of his native India, at the Ministry of Finance, and has held visiting positions at top universities including Harvard, Princeton, MIT, and the London School of Economics. Basu has written more than a dozen books and 160 scholarly papers, as well as numerous popular articles. He is on leave from Cornell University, where he is a professor of economics and the C. Marks Professor of International Studies.

Widely considered one of the nation’s top foreign correspondents, Engel has covered the entire war in Iraq, the war in Afghanistan, the 2006 Israel-Hezbollah conflict, the uprisings in Egypt and Libya, and the current conflict in Syria, where he and his production team were kidnapped for five days in December. His many honors include five News and Documentary Emmy Awards, the Edward R. Murrow Award, and the Medill Medal for Courage in Journalism, given for his broadcast report, “War Zone Diary.” He is the author of two books, A Fist in the Hornet’s Nest (Hyperion, 2004), and a follow-up, War Journal: My Five Years in Iraq (Simon & Schuster, 2011).

“Richard Engel is the model of what a commencement speaker should be,” said Joseph M. McShane, S.J., president of Fordham. “He is highly accomplished, engaged with the world’s great events, and well able to convey his experiences and insights to our students, their families, and our faculty. We very much look forward to his address on 18 May.”

See Complete Details on Commencement 2013 Here.

Engel joined NBC News in 2003 and served as primary Iraq correspondent, senior Middle East correspondent, and Beirut bureau chief before becoming chief foreign correspondent in 2008. His reports have appeared on many of the network’s programs including Today, Meet the Press, Rock Center with Brian Williams, and NBC Nightly News. He has written articles for USA Today, Reuters, AFP, and Jane’s Defense Weekly.

Engel moved to the Middle East after graduating from Stanford University in 1996 with a bachelor’s degree in international relations. He became fluent in Arabic while living in Cairo, and easily shifts among several Arab dialects. From 2001 to 2003, he was Middle East correspondent for “The World,” a joint production of BBC World Service, Public Radio International and WGBH-Boston radio, and he also worked as a freelance journalist for ABC News during the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003.

Engel’s appearance will be a return visit to the University. In May 2012 he appeared at Fordham Law School’s Center on National Security for a dialogue with CNN national security analyst Peter Bergen about Bergen’s book on the successful hunt for Osama bin Laden.

Engel will be the second consecutive high-profile expert on the Middle East to deliver the University’s commencement address. Last year’s graduating seniors heard from John Brennan, FCRH ’77, President Obama’s deputy national security adviser for counterterrorism and homeland security at the time, who has since become director of the Central Intelligence Agency.

Engel’s colleague Brian Williams, anchor of NBC Nightly News, was Fordham’s commencement speaker in 2011.

Both were included among 38 scenarios that American intelligence officials theorized could ferret out occupants from a fortified, one-acre compound outside Abbottabad, Pakistan—including, they surmised, Osama Bin Laden.

Peter Bergen (left) in Q&A with NBC’s Richard Engel. Photo by Tom Stoelker

In the end, said Peter E. Bergen, CNN’s national security analyst and a Fellow at Fordham Law School’s Center on National Security, American intelligence zeroed in on the world’s most wanted man in part because the compound had no internet connection.

In a Q&A with NBC Chief Foreign Correspondent Richard Engel, Bergen, author of Manhunt: The Ten-year Search for Bin Laden From 9/11 to Abbottabad (Crown, 2012) recounted the quest to produce Bin Laden’s whereabouts. The May 18th event, which drew more than 200 to the McNally Amphitheatre, was sponsored by Fordham Law School’s Center on National Security.

Like the tarp that veiled the solitary acre from overhead surveillance, the lack of electronic links to the outside world insulated Bin Laden from peering eyes. It also isolated the scion of an exceedingly wealthy Saudi family, metamorphosed into the 21st century’s most notorious terrorist.

“He created a prison of his own making,” Bergen said of Bin Laden, who, 10 years after coordinating terror attacks that killed nearly 3,000 people on American soil, was living a hermit-like existence inside a walled-in, three-story structure on a hill overlooking Abbottabad.

But the most significant indication that Bin Laden in fact lived in the compound was his courier’s visits, said Bergen. Establishing the connection between Bin Laden and his courier took both technological prowess and human derring-do.

Although intelligence evidence pinpointed Bin Laden in Tora Bora, Afghanistan, in the days immediately after Sept. 11, political and military reluctance to expose hundreds of troops to a lethal counterattack let him slip away. From there, the trail grew cold, both because of Bin Laden’s and Al Qaeda’s keen awareness of the Americans’ electronic eavesdropping capabilities, and because those close to Bin Laden—thought to be a prophet of Islam—would never have turned him in, said Bergen.

As the 20th hijacker in U.S. custody, Mohammed al-Qahtani, and others yielded more information, the presumed courier, Abu Ahmed al-Kuwaiti, came into focus as a conduit to Bin Laden, Bergen said.

It would take until June 2010 for American intelligence officials to geolocate Kuwaiti’s cell phone and, eventually, the courier himself. Eventually Bin Laden’s courier (and confidant) unwittingly led CIA operatives to the compound.

But despite growing evidence of Bin Laden’s presence at the compound, Obama administration officials were divided on how to attack the compound.

“There was no definitive proof Bin Laden was even living there,” said Bergen, who toured the compound before it was razed.

For a year, the Americans watched the house, all the while coming up with schemes to arrive at certainty of his presence. As the smoke bomb scenario and dozens of others came into play, Obama’s cabinet members thrashed out potential ploys and their consequences, with some discouraging the raid (including Vice President Joseph Biden), others backing a drone attack (then-Defense Secretary Robert Gates), and yet others backing the raid (then-CIA Director Leon Panetta and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton).

Estimates on the success of a clandestine raid ranged from 40 percent to 90 percent, Bergen said. Eventually, Obama calculated any operation had even odds of succeeding and gave the orders for the ultra-secret mission.

Three weeks of rehearsals, in North Carolina and in Nevada, on quickly built models of the Abbottabad compound ensued. And on April 30, 2011, Obama—whom Bergen described as “very, very comfortable with the use of military power”—gave the green light to Operation Neptune Spear.

On a moonless night, dozens of Navy SEALS moved covertly from Afghani airspace and into Pakistan. About 90 minutes after the helicopters had lifted off from eastern Afghanistan, Bin Laden spoke his last words to his youngest wife, said Bergen, which were: “Don’t turn on the light.”

Moments later, he was shot once through the eye, and once through his chest.

He had never reached for his nearby AK-47.