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====== 2025 Commencement Speech: Diane Foley, president of the James W. Foley Legacy Foundation   ======

**//[[https://www.youtube.com/live/qYHc7WfIkt0?si=tKO6K83DoWKBS5CB&t=2725| A recording of the commencement speech can be found online.]]//**

Thank you Tom, President Ah Yun, Marquette trustees and faculty and graduates. 

Thank you Marquette University for this honorary degree which belongs to Jim and all who knew him

Thank you for the James Wright Foley archives and for embracing John and I as family.

Marquette graduates, what an exciting day for you and those who love you.

Today, I want to challenge each one of you to aspire to live as men and women of moral courage.

Just as Jim has challenged me. As Tom said, in 2012 our son Jim was kidnapped while working as a conflict reporter in Syria. 

He was starved and tortured for two years before being publicly beheaded in August of 2014 for being an American journalist. His murder was witnessed on television across the world.

Our story is told in the film Jim - The James Foley Story and the book that Colum McCann helped me write, American Mother.

Our son, James Wright Foley was born in Evanston, Illinois the night our muffler fell off our old Pontiac, loudly announcing to all of Chicago that Jim was about to be born.

He was the oldest of our 5 children, a dutiful altar boy, a fair soccer player, a good student and a friendly person.

But he had a gift for listening and a deep curiosity about our world, its history and other cultures. He was a voracious reader, even taking a book to Red Sox games and he was a very proud Marquette University graduate of 1996.

But Jim was also an ordinary person, with hopes and dreams like you and I until tested. When tested, our ordinary son became truly extraordinary and you too can become extraordinary.

You have been educated in one of the Jesuit's finest universities. Your professors have challenged you to think critically and embrace your values. Marquette has prepared you to make a difference in the world. But what does that actually mean?

Start by asking yourself what really matters to you and what gives you joy and purpose. 

I believe it was the Holy Spirit that lead Jim eleven hundred miles from our New Hampshire home to Marquette University. Jim wanted to make a difference and Marquette made that possible.

Once he came here, he made this campus his home and that choice forever changed his life.

As a Marquette mother I witnessed a gradual, but profound awakening in our son Jim. He loved every minute of Marquette's rigorous academics, rugby, the social life, basketball games; but he began also, to see the world in a different light.

As a freshman, he was invited to tutor struggling students in the inner city of Milwaukee. His eyes were opened to the struggles of an underprivileged segment of our society.

During Spring Break, he and friends volunteered at Native American reservations and Habitat for Humanity, like so many of you have done. In fact this year, Marquette University was ranked #1 in the nation for its community service. That is because of you.

Jim inhaled your motto, Be the Difference and left Marquette with his heart on fire for good.

After he graduated, Jim taught in Phoenix in an inner city middle school for Teach for America. Though he doubted his ability as a teacher, he dedicated himself to helping his students complete the 8th grade, while completing his two Master's degrees in Creative Writing and Journalism, he helped unwed mothers at UMass Amherst and young felons at the Cook County jail acquire their GED.

Teaching those with few opportunities mattered to Jim, but how about you? What matters to you? What will you chose to do with the gift of your life? 

After Jim's brutal beheading by ISIS in 2014, I was so angry with our government for repeatedly telling me that Jim was their highest priority, when in reality, our government had already chosen not to negotiate for his release. 

I begged God to transform my bitterness and anger into something good. What would Jim have wanted? Jim was compassionate, even raising funds for an ambulance when he was working in Syria.

Jim was challenging me and so was my God.

I implored God to pour his grace into my heart. I asked him to replace my bitterness with forgiveness. But how could I, a retired nurse practitioner possibly challenge our government to do better?

I had no lobbying experience, no political expertise. I didn't have the faintest idea on how I was going to do it, but I had to try, because Jim would have stepped up for others.

Jim's spirit was challenging me with the injustice of our government abandoning him and the six other Americans and the horror of the terrorist acts of hatred and I had a deep desire to somehow keep Jim's goodness and moral courage alive.

You know for an entire year after Jim's murder, we received buckets of mail daily filled with prayers and donations to make a difference in Jim's name.

This generosity and love of Jim's friends and his spirit challenged us to establish the James W. Foley Legacy Foundation just three weeks after his murder.

The Foley Foundation lead our nation to create our first US hostage enterprise which has freed 160 fellow Americans from captivity abroad. Each of those hostages who have returned home are its own miracle, every single person matters.

We work to inspire moral courage to create these heroic homecomings and protect our courageous journalists. In addition, your own Diedrich College of Communication was the first undergraduate journalism program to pilot the Foley journalist safety curriculum that is currently being used nationwide by over 25 schools.

But today I challenge you to find your purpose. What injustice do you want to correct. Listen to the movements of your heart, as Saint Ignatius teaches us. Notice what disturbs you, what gives you joy. These are God's clues to your life purpose.

Dear graduates, expect that life will challenge you. You too will have setbacks and losses and when you do, remember you always have a choice. You have the choice to bring good into this world, or not. Pope Francis challenged us to be pilgrims of love, hope and mercy.

Jim reflected on the meaning of his own life the last time he was at Marquette University. He had just returned from a six week captivity in Libya when he said, "For some reason, I have physical courage, but that is nothing compared to moral courage. If I don't have the moral courage to challenge authority, to write about things that might have reprisals on my career, if I don't have that moral courage, we don't have journalism."

You know, Jim's words haunted me and challenged me, because they don't just apply to journalists, but to everyone of us, no matter what we chose to do.

Each of us has the choice, everyday to speak out, instead of being silent, to hope instead of giving up, to show mercy instead of resentment. Moral courage lives deep within us, forever testing us, always asking for attention. It is often defined by discomfort, it stirs us. Moral courage calls us, it even chooses us and at the end of the day, it defines us.

So when your time comes and you are tested, and you will be, will you meet the moment? I know you will.

Dearest graduates I pray that God will give you the strength to pick yourself up when you are discouraged or hurt, our country, our world, desperately needs each of you.

We need your goodness and your compassion to be the difference in our world.

So go forth to excel and to lead. Be faithful and always seek to serve.

God is counting on you. You are truly our hope for the future.

God bless the Marquette class of 2025.

Thank you.
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