Undergraduate Commencement
May 10, 2025

Honorary Degree: Doctor of Letters
Conferred on Diane Foley.

Diane Foley, president of the James W. Foley Legacy Foundation, will serve as Marquette’s 2025 undergraduate Commencement speaker, and Dr. Anne Basting, emerita professor of English at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and founder of the award-winning nonprofit TimeSlips.org, will speak at the Graduate School and Graduate School of Management ceremony. As part of the university’s Commencement ceremonies, Foley will receive an honorary doctor of letters degree and Basting will receive an honorary doctor of humane letters degree. 

“Diane Foley embodies the values central to our Catholic, Jesuit mission, and is an inspiring speaker with a compelling story of hope and compassion,” said President Kimo Ah Yun. “The legacy of James Foley and his moral courage lives on at Marquette, and Diane shepherds her son’s legacy. Her courage and resilience in the face of immense loss is inspiring, as is the forgiveness she has demonstrated in the years since. I look forward to hearing her speak at Commencement and I know our graduates will find inspiration as they leave Marquette to write their own stories.”  

Foley’s son Jim, a 1996 Marquette alumnus, was a freelance journalist captured and beheaded by ISIS in 2014. She became a national leader in hostage advocacy and founded the James W. Foley Legacy Foundation to advocate for freedom for innocent Americans held hostage or wrongfully detained abroad and for journalist safety. She has raised awareness about international hostage taking through her government advocacy, the documentary, “Jim: the James Foley Story,” and opinion pieces in The New York Times, The Washington Post and USA Today. 

Foley’s story of perseverance and forgiveness was chronicled in Colum McCann’s “American Mother,” a 2024 book that shares the heart-rending story of a mother who, in the course of confronting her son’s killer, gets to the elemental heart of violence and forgiveness. Seven years after Jim’s murder, Foley got the chance to spend three days with the murderer of her son in a Virginia courthouse, inspiring her to tell her life story. What unfolds is one of the most compelling narratives in recent literary history, channeled into searing reality by McCann, who takes readers on a journey of strength, resilience and radical empathy. 

Foley received a Marquette alumni award on behalf of Jim, who was honored posthumously with the university’s Service Award alongside the James W. Foley Legacy Foundation in memoriam of the 10th anniversary of his murder. She lives in New Hampshire with her husband, Dr. John W. Foley, and is the mother of four other children and seven grandchildren.