David Muir
Undergraduate ceremony Commencement speaker
Honorary degree: Doctor of Media

David Muir, an award-winning correspondent and anchor for ABC’s flagship evening news program, exemplifies the qualities of a new generation of broadcast journalists—comfortable working in the hyperfast environment of digital media, but grounded in the news values intrinsic to the best journalism of every era.

Mr. Muir got an early start on developing those qualities. He was a devoted watcher of TV news broadcasts by the age of 12, and, starting in middle school, he worked as a news intern at a local TV station and endlessly practiced writing broadcast news scripts.

It is little wonder that Mr. Muir describes his post as anchor and managing editor of World News Tonight with David Muir as his dream job—he made himself one of America’s most prolific broadcast journalists since joining ABC News in 2003.

Mr. Muir has reported from across the globe, including China, the Middle East, South America, Eastern Europe, Africa, and throughout the United States. He has covered the top breaking news stories of the past decade, much of the time while juggling ABC’s weekend news broadcasts and 20/20.

In August 2005, he was inside New Orleans’ Superdome as Hurricane Katrina hit, and remained in the city to cover the crisis. Mr. Muir reported from Haitiafter the devastating 2010 earthquake, and from Fukushima, Japan, following the 2011 tsunami and nuclear power plant accident. He covered Egypt’s Arab Spring uprising from Tahrir Square, and earned the prestigious Edward R. Murrow Award for his reporting on the devastating famine in war-torn Mogadishu.

He was one of ABC’s lead correspondents for the 2012 presidential election, and anchored the network’s coverage of the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver and the 2008 Summer Games in Beijing.

His willingness to go where the story is, often in the face of danger, is a hallmark of Mr. Muir’s approach to journalism. In his new post, he has taken the anchor desk to Havana, Cuba—after his exclusive with President Obama on the United States’ historic move to reset relations with the country—and to the Syria-Lebanon border to report on child refugees working to support their families.

Prior to joining ABC News, Mr. Muir distinguished himself as an anchor and correspondent for WCVB-TV, the ABC affiliate in Boston. He spent a month in the Middle East reporting on the war in Iraq, spent several weeks in Florida covering the 2000 presidential election recount, and won Associated Press honors as part of the team tracing the path of the 9/11 hijackers. Mr. Muir got his start in broadcast news with WTVH-TV in Syracuse, New York, where his reports from Israel and the Gaza Strip, following the 1995 assassination of Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, earned him awards and acclaim.

Mr. Muir has won multiple Emmy Awards and Edward R. Murrow Awards for his journalism.

A magna cum laude graduate of Ithaca College, Mr. Muir attended the Institute on Political Journalism at Georgetown University and studied at the University of Salamanca in Spain.