An award-winning journalist, a hall of fame basketball coach, a nationally recognized library conservationist, a global financial executive and a renowned computer scientist will be recognized with honorary degrees from Syracuse University at the 2024 Commencement on Sunday, May 12, at the JMA Wireless Dome.
Hilton Als, writer at The New Yorker; Jim Boeheim ’66, G’73, former Syracuse men’s basketball coach and special assistant to the director of athletics; husband and wife, William “Bill” Brodsky ’65, L’68, chairman of a specialized investment firm and an investment management firm, and Joan Breier Brodsky ’67, G’68, a National Museum and Library Services Board member; and Lynn Conway, inventor of methods for designing Very Large Scale Integrated silicon chips, will be honored for their outstanding achievements in their professional careers and the difference they have made in the lives of others.
Hilton Als (Photo credit: Ali Smith)
Als is an award-winning journalist, critic and curator. He has been a staff writer at The New Yorker since 1994. Prior to The New Yorker, Als was a staff writer for the Village Voice and an editor-at-large at Vibe. He has received numerous awards for his work, including the Pulitzer Prize for Criticism (2017), Yale’s Windham-Campbell Literature Prize (2016), the George Jean Nathan Award for Dramatic Criticism (2002-03) and a Guggenheim Fellowship (2000).
His first book, “The Women,” was published in 1996. His next book, “White Girls,” was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award and the winner of the Lambda Literary Award in 2014. His most recent book, “My Pinup,” a meditation on love and of loss, of Prince and of desire, was published in November 2022.
In 2017, he curated the critically lauded exhibition “Alice Neel, Uptown,” which traveled from David Zwirner, New York, to Victoria Miro, London and Venice. In 2019, Als presented “God Made My Face: A Collective Portrait of James Baldwin” at David Zwirner, New York, followed by Frank Moore at, David Zwirner, New York (2021) and Toni Morrison’s “Black Book,” at David Zwirner, New York (2022). He curated a series of three successive exhibitions for the Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, of the work of Celia Paul (2018), Lynette Yiadom-Boakye (2019) and Njideka Akunyili Crosby (2022). In 2022, he curated “Joan Didion: What She Means” at the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, which traveled to the Perez Art Museum Miami in 2023. He curated Jared Buckhiester “No heaven, no how,” which opened March 2024 at the David Kordansky Gallery in Los Angeles.
Als is currently a teaching professor at the University of California, Berkeley, and has also taught at Columbia University’s School of the Arts, Princeton University, Wesleyan University and the Yale School of Drama.
Jim Boeheim
Hall of Fame member Jim Boeheim had a remarkable run as head coach at his alma mater, Syracuse University. Boeheim guided the Orange to winning records in 46 of 47 campaigns. Syracuse made 35 trips into the NCAA Tournament, including Final Four appearances in 1987, 1996, 2003, 2013 and 2016. The Orange won the national championship in 2003. Boeheim retired from coaching after the 2023 season but continues to work for the University.
Boeheim was inducted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame in 2005. He was also honored with the John R. Wooden “Legends of Coaching” Award.
Boeheim enrolled at Syracuse in 1962 and was a walk-on with the basketball team. The Orange were 22-6 overall his senior year and earned the program’s second-ever NCAA Tournament berth. He earned a bachelor’s from the College of Arts and Sciences and the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs and a master’s from the Maxwell School. In 1969 he turned to a career in coaching and was hired as a graduate assistant at Syracuse. In 1976, he was named head coach.
A four-time BIG EAST Coach of the Year, Boeheim has been honored as NABC District II Coach of the Year 10 times and USBWA District II Coach of the Year on four occasions. In the fall of 2000, he received Syracuse University’s Arents Award, the school’s highest alumni honor.
Boeheim was named 2001 USA Basketball National Coach of the Year. He has served as an assistant coach for the U.S. Olympic teams that won gold medals in 2008, 2012 and 2016, and the World Cup in 2010 and 2014.
A champion of many charitable causes, Boeheim and his wife started the Jim and Juli Boeheim Foundation with the goal of enriching the lives of kids in need.
Joan Breier Brodsky (Photo credit: Richard Shay)
Joan Brodsky graduated from the College of Arts and Sciences in 1967 with a bachelor’s in Latin language and literature and went on to graduate from the School of Information Studies (formerly the School of Library Science) in 1968 with a master of science degree.
Joan is passionate and knowledgeable about rare book and cultural heritage conservation and has been active nationally for many years, including sitting on the board of the Newberry Library in Chicago, as a Trustee for the Abraham Lincoln Museum and Library, as well as the library advisory board of the Jewish Theological Seminary. She also served on the Advisory Board for the School of Information Studies and has been a member of the Syracuse University Libraries Advisory Board since its founding.
In 2022, Joan was appointed by President Joe Biden to the National Museum and Library Services Board, which advises the Institute for Museum and Library Services, the largest federal funder of America’s museums, libraries and related organizations through grantmaking, research and policy development.
At Syracuse University, she is the founder and sponsor of the Brodsky Series for Advancement of Library Conservation. This sponsored program promotes and advances knowledge of library conservation theory, practice and application among wide audiences, both on campus, in the region and now online. This is an annual lecture series and workshop on book and paper conservation now in its 19th year.
In 2022, she and her husband Bill, a Syracuse University life trustee, funded the Conservation Lab in the Bird library and the Joan Breier Brodsky Media Preservation Vault in honor of Joan’s commitment to the preservation and conservation at the Bird Library.
Joan and Bill have been married for 57 years and reside in Chicago.
William “Bill” Brodsky (Photo credit: Richard Shay)
Bill is chairman of Cedar Street Asset Management, LLC, an investment management firm devoted to investing in equity securities in international markets, and chairman of Bosun Asset Management, a specialized investment firm.
During his combined 35-year career at the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME) and Chicago Board Options Exchange (CBOE), he was recognized as a global leader in the development of the future and options markets. His contributions to Chicago’s futures and options markets were a major factor in Chicago’s becoming the world’s preeminent city for the futures and options markets.
Bill served as chairman of the CBOE Holdings Inc. now known as CBOE Global Markets and its predecessor firms between 1997 and 2017. He also served as the chief executive officer of the CBOE from 1997 to 2013. During his CBOE tenure, he served as the chairman of the World Federation of Exchanges and the International Options Market Association. From 1985 to 1997, he was president and CEO at the Chicago Mercantile Exchange.
Bill, who earned a bachelor’s degree from the College of Arts and Sciences and the Maxwell School and a law degree from the College of Law, began his career in 1968 at the Wall Street-based investment banking and securities brokerage firm of Model, Roland and Co. Inc. In 1974, he joined the American Stock Exchange and ultimately was executive vice president for operations.
In 1982, he became executive vice president and chief operating officer of the CME. In 1985, he was appointed president and CEO of the CME.
In 2019, Governor J.B. Pritzker named him to co-chair the newly formed State’s Pension Consolidation Feasibility Task Force. In 2022, he was inducted into “The Order of Lincoln,” the state’s highest honor for professional achievement and public service.
Brodsky is chair emeritus of the board of directors of Navy Pier Inc., one of Chicago’s most iconic cultural destinations, and past chair of the board of directors of Northwestern Memorial Hospital. Brodsky was nominated by President Biden and confirmed by the U.S. Senate in 2022 to the Board of Directors of the Securities Investor Protection Corporation, which maintains a special reserve fund authorized by Congress to help investors at failed brokerage firms.
Lynn Conway
Conway is a renowned computer scientist who revolutionized global information technology by inventing methods for designing Very Large Scale Integrated (VLSI) silicon chips. Her work paved the way for the powerful microchips that animate modern high-technology systems.
As a young engineer at IBM Research in the 1960s, Conway made pioneering innovations in computer architecture. Sadly, IBM fired her in 1968 upon learning she was undergoing gender transition. She restarted her career in a new identity in “stealth-mode” after completing her transition.
While working at Xerox Palo Alto Research Center in the 1970s, Conway innovated breakthrough methods that enabled engineers to design very powerful, complex chips. In 1980, Conway’s seminal textbook “Introduction to VLSI Systems,” co-authored by Caltech Professor Carver Mead, became an instant classic, forever transforming computing and information technology. Professor John V. Oldfield brought the new VLSI methods into Syracuse right at the beginning of that revolution.
In the early 1980s, Conway became assistant director for strategic computing at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. In 1985 she joined the University of Michigan as professor of electrical engineering and computer science and associate dean of engineering.
When nearing retirement in 1999 she began quietly coming out as a trans woman, using her new website to share her story with friends and colleagues. Conway became active in transgender advocacy.
In 2012 Conway published a memoir that revealed how—closeted and hidden behind the scenes—she conceived the ideas and orchestrated the events that disruptively changed global industries.
Conway is a life fellow of the IEEE, fellow of the AAAS, winner of Computer Pioneer Award of the IEEE Computer Society, member of the Hall of Fellows of the Computer History Museum, a member of the National Academy of Engineering and holds five honorary degrees. In 2023 she was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame for the invention of VLSI. She was awarded the James Clerk Maxwell Medal by the IEEE and the Royal Society of Edinburgh.
In 2020, IBM CEO Arvind Krishna apologized on behalf of the company for IBM’s treatment of Conway back in 1968. She was also awarded the IBM Lifetime Achievement Award.
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