“Here you have on display the greatness of Fordham,” Father McShane said at the June 4 induction ceremony, part of the 2022 Jubilee reunion festivities. “This is something that Fordham rejoices in.”
Turning to the inductees, he added: “We will point to you when we want to tell students who we want them to imitate, what we want them to become.”
Established in 2008, the Hall of Honor recognizes members of the Fordham community who have exemplified and brought recognition to the ideals to which the University is devoted. The 2022 inductees are
- Reginald Brewster, LAW ’50, a Tuskegee Airman and World War II veteran who fought against racism and inequality, earning a Fordham Law degree after the war and practicing civil law for six decades
- Elizabeth A. Johnson, C.S.J., one of the world’s most prominent and influential Catholic theologians, who served as a distinguished professor of theology at Fordham for 27 years and is a former president of the Catholic Theological Society of America
- Jim Dwyer, FCRH ’79, a two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist who through his writing was both a critical conscience of New York City and a passionate celebrant of its residents, skilled at drawing public attention to wrongful convictions and the mistreatment of society’s most marginalized people
- Herb Granath, FCRH ’54, GSAS ’55, a former Fordham trustee and an Emmy Award-winning ABC executive who helped guide the television network’s expansion, developing flagship stations including ESPN and the History Channel
- Jack Keane, GABELLI ’66, a retired four-star general, former vice chief of staff of the U.S. Army, and 2020 recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom, who began his military career as an ROTC cadet at Fordham
- Joe Moglia, FCRH ’71, who has excelled in business and football, as CEO and chairman of TD Ameritrade and as head football coach at Coastal Carolina University, where he currently serves as the executive director for football and executive advisor to the president
- Peter Vaughan, Ph.D., a decorated Vietnam War veteran and pioneer in the field of social work who served for 13 years, from 2000 to 2013, as dean of Fordham’s Graduate School of Social Service
“This year’s class, each person that has been inducted, represents really the best about Fordham, and they enrich Fordham,” Father McShane said. “Think about it. Very, very diverse backgrounds, very diverse interests. Excellence in all things.”
Three of the inductees—Brewster, Dwyer, and Granath—were honored posthumously at the ceremony, which took place on the lawn outside of Cunniffe House, the Rose Hill home of the Hall of Honor.
Sister Johnson, who retired from the Fordham faculty in 2018, said returning to Rose Hill to be honored at Jubilee felt “awesome, humbling, and beyond imagination.”
Father McShane called her the “most important feminist pioneer theologian in the United States.”
“She changed the way in which we thought about God, and therefore the way we can encounter God,” he said. “I said years ago, when she was honored before, that she dances with questions and she delights in the dance, and she teaches her students to do the same.”
Father McShane described Moglia as someone who “takes great delight in shattering expectations and stereotypes.”
“He is as much at home on the gridiron as he is in the boardroom, and that says a lot,” he said, calling him “a natural-born leader” who “leads with authority.”
The honor put Moglia in an especially select group: He is now only the fourth person in Fordham history—after Wellington Mara, William D. Walsh, and Joseph A. O’Hare, S.J.—to have received the Founder’s Award and been inducted into both the Fordham University Athletics Hall of Fame and the Hall of Honor.
“I give Fordham a lot of credit for any of the things that I’ve done in my life—whether it’s my personal life or professional life, whether as a football coach or in the business world—and so to be ultimately inducted into the Hall of Honor is something that’s very, very special to me,” Moglia said.
Peter Vaughan is “one of my greatest heroes,” Father McShane told the audience, describing him as “ an extraordinarily effective dean” and “a recognized authority that everyone in the profession looked to for wisdom—not only wisdom but heartfelt wisdom, as Peter is somebody who has always balanced heart and mind.”
Speaking of General Keane, Father McShane said that one of his greatest qualities is the care and understanding he has demonstrated for members of the military.
“This man, who was a Fordham ROTC cadet, is looked up to—wisely and rightly—by graduates of West Point, who recognized his wisdom, his courage,” he said.
Father McShane called Dwyer, who died in October 2020 at the age of 63, “the master of the written word” and “the master of his craft.”
“His great gift was seeing the grace and glory and goodness in the moment—the sacrament of the moment and the saint of the moment,” he said. “His last, last columns, they were simply extraordinary because they took the people of the city seriously and raised them to heroic heights, because in Jim’s heart, that’s what they deserved.”
Two of Dwyer’s three brothers, Patrick and Phil, attended the ceremony. For a time in the 1970s, each of them was enrolled at Fordham: Patrick graduated from Fordham College at Rose Hill in 1975 and went on to earn a master’s degree from the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences two years later and a Fordham Law degree in 1980. Phil graduated from Fordham College at Rose Hill in 1980, one year after Jim, who was editor-in-chief of The Fordham Ram.
“Fordham was a great experience for all of us—and for Jim especially,” Phil said. “He did so well here, and he continued on to help a lot of people in a lot of different ways, so it’s nice to see that recognized.”
