The induction ceremony will be held at Cunniffe House at 5:30 p.m. on Saturday, June 4, just prior to the Jubilee gala.

Established in 2008, the Hall of Honor recognizes members of the Fordham community who have exemplified the ideals to which the University is devoted. This year’s inductees include a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, a world-renowned theologian, and a retired four-star general and recipient of the Medal of Freedom.

Reginald T. Brewster served as a Tuskegee Airman during World War II, a group that included the first Black military aviators in the U.S. Armed Forces. In many ways, the Airmen were fighting two wars, he told Fordham News in 2018: one abroad and one at home. “The discrimination [in the United States] was sharp,” he said. “It was very critical and sometimes it was even hurtful.”

Upon returning to the U.S., he studied government and math at Fordham College before earning a J.D. from Fordham Law School in 1950 and embarking on a five-decade career as an attorney. When he died in 2020 at the age of 103, the Black Law Students Association at Fordham Law School said that through “his groundbreaking efforts,” he “served as a trailblazer for all Black students who attend Fordham today.”

Sister Elizabeth A. Johnson, C.S.J., who retired in 2018 after 27 years as a distinguished professor at Fordham, is a beloved teacher and one of the most influential Catholic theologians in the world, internationally known for her work in systematic, feminist, and ecological theology, among other fields.

In her particularly influential 2007 book, Quest for the Living God: Mapping Frontiers in the Theology of God, she examined how God is understood differently by men, women, poor and oppressed people, Holocaust victims, and people of a variety of faiths. “Faith,” she once said, “is hope that the world is good and that our efforts can make a difference.”

Jim Dwyer, who died in October 2020 at the age of 63, chronicled the life of New York City with conscience and compassion in a four-decade career as a journalist and author. A 1979 graduate of Fordham College at Rose Hill, he sought to tell the stories of everyday New Yorkers and give voice to those on society’s margins, including working-class immigrants, racial and ethnic minorities, and people convicted of crimes they did not commit.

Through his reporting and writing—for New York Newsday, the Daily News, and The New York Times—he worked to help the public understand the impact of major issues and events, most notably 9/11, as well as the inner workings of government agencies and how their decisions affect people’s lives. He won two Pulitzer Prizes for his work and was widely regarded as a generous colleague, friend, and mentor.

Herb Granath, a two-time Fordham graduate and trustee emeritus, was a pioneering force in cable television. A former president of the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences, he started his career as an NBC page while he studying physics at Fordham. After graduating in 1954, he enrolled at the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, earning a master’s degree in communication arts one year later. He steadily climbed the ranks of entertainment juggernauts, moving from NBC to ABC to ESPN and the Broadway stage. He became chairman of the board of ESPN after ABC purchased the cable channel in 1984, and he was responsible for the creation of several channels that are now household names, including A&E, the History Channel, Lifetime, and the Hallmark Channel.

Granath, who died in November 2019 at the age of 91, earned numerous awards, including two Tonys, an Emmy for lifetime achievement in international TV, and an Emmy for lifetime achievement in sports. He often spoke about the value of his Fordham education, noting that a course in logic was among the most influential he ever took. “It is amazing to me in American business how little a role logic plays,” he told Fordham Magazine in 2007. “It has been a hallmark of the way I approach business.”

Jack Keane, a retired four-star general and former vice chief of staff of the U.S. Army, grew up in a housing project on Manhattan’s Lower East Side and was the first member of his family to attend college. He began his military career at Fordham as a cadet in the University’s ROTC program. After graduating in 1966 with a bachelor’s degree in accounting, he served as a platoon leader and company commander during the Vietnam War, where he was decorated for valor. A career paratrooper, he rose to command the 101st Airborne Division and the 18th Airborne Corps before he was named vice chief of staff of the Army in 1999.

Since retiring from the military in 2003, Keane has been an influential adviser, often testifying before Congress on matters of foreign policy and national security. He was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2020, becoming the sixth Fordham graduate to receive the nation’s highest civilian honor. In a 2017 interview with Fordham Magazine, he described the Jesuit education he received at Fordham as a transformational experience. “The whole learning process was about your own growth and development as a human being—not just intellectually but also morally and emotionally. I don’t think I would have been as successful as a military officer if my path didn’t go through Fordham University.”

Joe Moglia coached both high school and college football after graduating from Fordham College at Rose Hill in 1971, but in 1984, the New York native made a career change to finance, blazing a trail of ascent at Merrill Lynch and then at the helm of TD Ameritrade over 24 years. He returned to coaching in 2009, finishing his career with six seasons as the head coach at Coastal Carolina University, where he led the team to a 56-22 cumulative record and three Big South Conference titles before stepping down in 2019.

He is currently executive director for football and executive advisor to the president at Coastal Carolina and is chairman of Fundamental Global and Capital Wealth Advisors. Last year, he was inducted into the Fordham Athletic Hall of Fame, and in November, he was honored with a Fordham Founder’s Award. His career is the subject of the 2012 book by Monte Burke titled 4th & Goal: One Man’s Quest to Recapture His Dream. And Moglia has authored books on both coaching and investing—The Perimeter Attack Offense: The Key to Winning Football in 1982 and Coach Yourself to Success: Winning the Investment Game in 2005.

Peter B. Vaughan, Ph.D., served as dean of Fordham’s Graduate School of Social Service for 13 years. When he stepped down in 2013, he received the President’s Medal for “his collaborative and visionary leadership as an educator, and for his lasting impact on the University’s ability to lead well and serve wisely in the years ahead.”

Vaughan’s distinguished social work career is rooted in his undergraduate days at Temple University, when during the civil rights movement he was involved in court watching and voter registration efforts. He later served in the U.S. Army during the Vietnam War and found himself tending to the mental health needs of soldiers on the front lines. For much of his career, Vaughan worked with communities of color, focusing especially on the health of African American boys. He was a professor at Wayne State University in Detroit and later became acting dean of the University of Pennsylvania School of Social Work before he came to Fordham.

In 2012, the National Association of Social Workers presented him with its Knee/Wittman Lifetime Achievement Award. “Ours is a profession of hope, and I never miss a chance to pass it on to students when I am able to,” Vaughan told Fordham graduates at the Graduate School of Social Service diploma ceremony in 2013. “As you leave today to begin meaningful and illustrious careers, I hope you will live every day to make the world a better place—and keep hope alive.”

Jubilee 2022 will be held on the Rose Hill campus from June 3 to 5. Learn more and register today.

“Herb Granath’s passing is a great loss to Fordham, and of course to his family and loved ones—and in the latter category I would include everyone who ever had the pleasure of meeting him,” said Joseph M. McShane, S.J., president of Fordham. “Herb brought to Fordham a steadiness of heart, openness of spirit, and a strong faith that there was a world of possibilities waiting over the horizon. His great gifts of heart, mind, and spirit were readily apparent whenever Fordham’s Board of Trustees convened: when he spoke, we all listened, and listened intently.”

Born and bred in Brooklyn, Granath started in the television industry as an NBC page during his college years and steadily climbed the ranks of entertainment juggernauts, moving from NBC to ABC to ESPN and the Broadway stage. He made his name in the then-nascent world of cable television, rising to become chairman of the board of ESPN (and later chairman emeritus) after ABC purchased the cable channel in 1984. He’s the recipient of two Tony Awards and six Tony nominations, an International Emmy Award for Lifetime Achievement in International TV, and a U.S. Emmy for Lifetime Achievement in Sports.

His career was a tribute to a liberal arts education. He parlayed an undergraduate education in physics to a graduate degree in communications, and spoke specifically to the value of both degrees in advancing his career.

“One of the reasons I enjoyed physics was looking into the essence of things,” he said in an interview with Fordham just before the University honored him with its Founder’s Award, adding that a course in logic was among the most influential he ever took. “It is amazing to me in American business how little a role logic plays. It has been a hallmark of the way I approach business.”

His stint working evenings as a page at NBC inspired the young Granath to pursue graduate work in communications at Fordham. What followed was a career that redefined an industry. But when he saw the page position pinned to a bulletin board at Dealy Hall, he didn’t even know what the job entailed. He simply needed the work to get through school.

He also credited financial aid with helping him get his degree. He continued to generously support Fordham throughout his life and served as an honorary co-chair of Fordham’s Excelsior | Ever Upward fundraising campaign.

“Without financial help, I never would have been able to attend Fordham. Supporting the campaign is one way for me to repay the moral grounding I received at the University, which has served me well over the years both in my business and personal lives,” said Granath, who was elected to Fordham’s board in 1993.

At ESPN, Granath backed his business savvy with a sports fan’s enthusiasm. And while his love of sports helped the network grow to become one of ABC’s single largest profit centers, his other interests also spurred networks that would become household names, including A&E, The History Channel, and Lifetime.

In its infancy, during the 1980s, A&E was truly an arts and entertainment network that featured opera from La Scala and ballet from Paris, Granath said.

“It was gorgeous stuff,” he said. “We were the darlings of the critics.”

He also helped ABC branch into theater, managing its investments in partnership with the Shubert Organization. The relationship gave the network first dibs on plays that might make good television series. Ironically, Granath told his bosses at the network that he didn’t necessarily see Broadway as a profit-making venture.

In an amusingly understated 2004 interview for the McGannon Center TV Oral History Project, Granath told Fordham communications professor Albert Auster, “We got into something very early called Cats, we got into something called Phantom of the Opera, we got into Les Miserables, we got into the things that really have over the years turned out large sums of revenue and, therefore, profits for those who invested.”

Amidst the glamour of stage and screen, Auster noted that Granath maintained a low-key demeanor in an industry filled with massive egos. When asked how he managed to remain unassuming and rise so swiftly, Granath credited Fordham.

“Everyone knows that if you’re a Fordham graduate, no matter what it says on that piece of paper, you really majored in philosophy,” he said, which allowed him to take a “bit of a different point of view” and stay focused on what matters, a trait that came in handy in the entertainment business’s notoriously meandering meetings.

“My first reputation was established, I think, when I would sit back and listen to all this babble, and then about 20 minutes or so into the meeting, I’d restate the reason for the meeting. And people would go, ‘Wow, that guy really has it together,’” he said with a chuckle. “It’s a very simple prescription for success, but I’m afraid it may be all that simple.”

Granath held a number of other leadership positions, including trustee of the American Museum of the Moving Image, president of the International Council of the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences, governor of the National Academy of Cable Programming, director of the International Radio and Television Society, and president of the Veterans’ Bedside Network. He served in the U.S. Army, assigned to Special Services as a writer/producer.

For all his success, Granath said business should always take a back seat to family.

“Business is business. It’s part of a life,” he told Auster. “The things that are the most important to me are the fact that I’ve got a wife and four young people that we brought into this world and they, in turn, now are forming their families.”

Granath is survived by his wife of 61 years, actress Ann Flood, and four children, Kevin Granath (Danielle), Brian Granath (Kathleen), Peter Granath (Elizabeth), and Karen Charlton (Michael). He also leaves behind 11 grandchildren: Nicole, Caroline, Will, Terence, Gavin, Farrell, Benjamin, Amanda, Leigh, Jane, and Nolan.