Lafayette Will Award Four Honorary Degrees at Commencement

Portia Simpson Miller

Lafayette will award honorary degrees to four distinguished individuals at the College’s 179th Commencement Saturday, May 24.

Visit the Commencement website

Harry L. Ettlinger, a member of the “Monuments Men” of World War II, will be awarded an honorary Doctor of Humanities degree. Kevin Mandia ’92, senior vice president and chief operating officer of FireEye, will receive an honorary Doctor of Public Service degree. Roger Ross Williams, Academy Award-winning producer and director of documentary films, will be awarded an honorary Doctor of Arts degree.

The College announced previously that The Honorable Portia Simpson Miller, prime minister of Jamaica, will be the Commencement speaker and will receive an honorary Doctor of Public Service degree.

Harry Ettlinger, Courtesy NJIT

Commencement will be held 2:30 p.m. on the Quad. The academic procession will begin 2:15 p.m. The annual Baccalaureate service will be held 10:30 a.m. the same day, also on the Quad. In case of rain, one or both ceremonies may be held in Kirby Sports Center.

Ettlinger was a member of the Monuments, Fine Arts, and Archives section, known as the Monuments Men. Working under the auspices of the Allied Armies during and after World War II to protect cultural treasures from destruction, they returned about five million stolen or displaced items. The story is told in the 2014 feature film The Monuments Men. In it, the character of Sam Epstein, played by actor Dimitri Leonidas, is inspired by Ettlinger’s experience.

Kevin Mandia ’92

Mandia is a global authority in the field of information security. In 2004, he founded the computer security company Mandiant and served as its chief executive officer prior to its acquisition by FireEye in 2014. He gained international recognition in 2013 when a study by Mandiant reported that a Chinese military unit was responsible for cyber attacks on U.S. corporations, organizations, and government agencies. Foreign Policy named him to its list of Leading Global Thinkers of 2013.

Roger Ross Williams

Williams, a native of Easton, Pa., is the first African-American to win an Oscar for directing and producing a film. His first film, Music By Prudence, won the Academy Award for Best Documentary Short Subject in 2010. He is the director and producer of God Loves Uganda, a feature-length documentary that focuses on the relationship between American evangelical missionaries and homophobia in Uganda. Scheduled to be released on DVD in May, it has been screened at theaters and festivals in the United States and abroad since its premiere at the 2013 Sundance Film Festival.