Commencement Speaker and Honorary Degree Recipients
Credit: Jenny Sherman Photography
Arthur C. Brooks, Ph.D., professor at the Harvard Kennedy School and the Harvard Business
School
Keynote Speaker and Honorary Degree Recipient
Arthur C. Brooks, Ph.D., is a social scientist and one of the world’s leading authorities on human happiness. He is a professor, columnist with The Free Press, podcast host, CBS News contributor, and internationally-acclaimed public speaker.
He is the author of 16 books, including the #1 New York Times bestseller The Meaning of Your Life, Build the Life You Want (co-authored with Oprah Winfrey), and From Strength to Strength. He lives with his family in Virginia. Learn more »
Diane M. Foley, president and founder of the James W. Foley Legacy Foundation
Honorary Degree Recipient
Diane M. Foley is a mother of five children and a retired family nurse practitioner, whose oldest son, American conflict journalist, James Wright Foley, was beheaded by ISIS in Syria 2014 for being an American journalist and Christian. The inspirational HBO documentary, Jim: The James Foley Story, recounts his ordeal.
After his horrific murder, she was inspired by Jim’s moral courage and the Holy Spirit to start the James W. Foley Legacy Foundation to inspire the moral courage to advocate for freedom for US nationals taken captive abroad and to safeguard journalists. Since 2015, she has been a leading advocate for Americans held captive abroad, working with U.S. Congress and successive presidential administrations to establish a U.S. hostage enterprise that helped free over 200 fellow Americans from captivity abroad and has strengthened journalist safety education.
Diane is also the co-author of American Mother with Irish American author Colum McCann, which is a memoir about her deep Catholic Christian faith that has sustained and challenged her advocacy, moral courage and forgiveness. In September 2015, she had the honor of meeting Pope Leo XIV and speaking at St Peter’s Basilica in the Vatican about her spiritual journey. and hostage advocacy. She earned her baccalaureate and master’s degree in nursing at the University of New Hampshire and was given an honorary Doctor of Letters from Marquette University in 2025.
Copies of American Mother will be available for purchase before and throughout the commencement ceremony.