Kornheiser among four alumni to be honored at Commencement

Four Harpur College of Arts and Sciences alumni will receive honors at three Harpur Commencement ceremonies on Sunday, May 21.

Author/playwright Nathan Englander ’91 and sports journalist/TV personality Tony Kornheiser ’70 will receive honorary degrees. U.S. Ambassador Amy Hyatt ’78 and former Goldman Sachs partner Mitchell Lieberman will receive Harpur Alumni Awards.

Kornheiser and Lieberman will speak at the 8:30 a.m. ceremony, while Englander will speak at the noon ceremony. Hyatt will deliver her remarks at the 3:30 p.m. ceremony.

Student speakers are James Shih (8:30 a.m.); Khadijah Collins (noon); and Dyana Beretaz (3:30 p.m.).

Tony Kornheiser ’70

Anthony “Tony” Kornheiser graduated from Binghamton University in 1970 with a bachelor’s degree in English. He began his career as a journalist at Binghamton, writing for the student newspaper and working at the student radio station, WHRW. During his career, he has written for Newsday, The New York Times and The Washington Post. Known for his irreverent style, he was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Commentary in 1997.

Widely known for his work in radio and television, he has hosted The Tony Kornheiser Show on radio in various forms since 1992, co-hosted Pardon the Interruption on ESPN since 2001 and served as an analyst for ESPN’s Monday Night Football from 2006-’08.

Kornheiser has won numerous awards, including a Sports Emmy for Outstanding Studio Show-Daily for Pardon the Interruption. He was also ranked No. 1 of America’s Top 20 Local Sports Midday Shows for 2015 by Barrett Sports Media. He has published four books and contributed to popular magazines including Sports Illustrated, Esquire and ESPN Magazine.

A member of the Binghamton University Foundation Board and a regular philanthropic contributor to the student newspaper (Pipe Dream), Kornheiser established the Tony Kornheiser Newspaper Scholarship that is awarded to a student who volunteers for Pipe Dream. He has also contributed to the University’s annual fund in support of Harpur College, the Anderson Center for the Performing Arts and Athletics, as well as the Memorial Courtyard endowment.

Mitchell J. Lieberman ’80

Mitch Lieberman graduated from Binghamton University with a bachelor of arts in both biological science and political science before entering the business world.

He enjoyed a 30-year career at Goldman Sachs (GS), becoming a managing director in 1997, and a partner in 2000. During his tenure at Goldman Sachs, he served on the Securities Division Operating Committee and was the president at GS Trust Company and a director of GS Cayman Trust. He rose to the position of global co-head of its Global Securities Services, a business unit that includes the Prime Brokerage, Clearing and Fund Administration businesses, and retired in 2010.

Lieberman was also a director at the Options Clearing Corporation in Chicago from 2001 until 2009.

He currently serves as a director of the Binghamton University Foundation board and is a member of its Investment Committee. He is also the treasurer of Jewish Family Service of MetroWest New Jersey and is a board member of the R Baby Foundation.

Nathan Englander ’91

Nathan Englander, distinguished writer-in-residence at New York University, is an award-winning author, playwright and translator. He earned his bachelor’s degree from Binghamton University in 1991, attended Hebrew University in Jerusalem, then returned to the United States where he earned his MFA in fiction from the University of Iowa.

Englander’s first book, For the Relief of Unbearable Urges, won the PEN/Faulkner Malamud Award and the Sue Kaufman Prize for First Fiction from the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

His second book was a novel, The Ministry of Special Cases, and his third book – What We Talk About When We Talk About Anne Frank – was a 2013 Pulitzer Prize finalist, and won the 2012 Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award.

His work has been featured in The Best American Short Stories, The O.Henry Prize Anthology and The Pushcart Prize, and The New Yorker selected him as one of the “20 Writers for the 21st Century.” He won the Bard Fiction Prize, a Guggenheim Fellowship in Fiction, was a Dorothy & Lewis B. Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers Fellow, and has been a fellow at The American Academy of Berlin.

Amy J. Hyatt ’78

Amy J. Hyatt is the United States Ambassador to the Republic of Palau. With 32 years in the Foreign Service, she has served as deputy chief of mission and chargé in Helsinki, Finland; consul general in Melbourne, Australia; and management counselor in Cairo, Egypt. She was diplomat in residence at Arizona State University. Other overseas postings were in Korea, Thailand, the Philippines, the Czech Republic and Norway. Her Washington assignments have included the Bureau of East Asian and Pacific Affairs, where she managed several overseas missions, and the Bureau of Intelligence and Research, where she focused on North Korea.

Hyatt graduated from Binghamton University in 1978, with a bachelor’s degree in political science and history, and received her JD from Stanford University in 1981. She obtained a Master of Strategic Studies at the National Defense University, National War College in 2000.

She has studied Korean, Czech, Norwegian, Arabic, French and Spanish.

Prior to entering the Foreign Service, Hyatt was a litigation attorney in San Francisco. She has three grown children who attended international schools at each of her postings and speak multiple languages.