By CANTON WINER & KELLY KULTYS
MANAGING EDITOR & NEWS EDITOR

In December, Richard Engel was abducted, tossed in the back of a truck and blindfolded while on assignment in Syria. Now four-months free from his captors, he will deliver Fordham’s 168th Commencement keynote address on May 18.

Engel, NBC News’ chief foreign correspondent, and his network production team were captured after entering Syria in December. They were held — blindfolded and bound — for five days in an unknown location believed to be near the small town of Ma’arrat Misrin.

“Every now and then [we] had guns pointed on our heads,” Aziz Akyavas, a member of Engel’s crew, told Turkish television channel NTV. “It was not pleasant.”

Though the identity of the group that kidnapped Engel remains unclear, Engel said that the captors spoke “openly about their loyalty to the government” of President Bashar al-Assad.

“We were told that they wanted to exchange us for four Iranian agents and two Lebanese people who are from the Amal Movement,” Engel said on NBC’s “Today” show on Dec. 18. Amal, a Lebanese political party, is an ally of Hezbollah, which the United States designates a terrorist organization.

The prisoners were in the process of moving to a new location early in the evening on Dec. 17 when their captors ran into a checkpoint manned by members of Ahrar al-Sham, a Syrian rebel group. After an ensuing confrontation and firefight, which resulted in deaths of two captors, Engel and his fellow captives were freed.

This was not the first time Engel found himself in a potentially dangerous situation. After graduating from Stanford University in 1996, Engel, now 33, went to Egypt in search of the big story of the century. In his four years in Cairo, Engel worked as a freelance reporter and learned Arabic.

Engel went on to report for ABC News from Jerusalem when the Second Intifada broke out in 2000. As the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq became imminent, Engel — still freelancing — resolved to enter the country on his own. Posing as an antiwar activist (and with the help of a $400 bribe), Engel was able to enter Iraq. As bombs began to pummel the gulf state, ABC started to use his reports regularly.

When he took a brief break and returned home, Engel decided to break from ABC.

“I frankly wanted a new start,” Engel said.

He instead signed with NBC as a foreign correspondent and returned to the explosions and gunfire of Baghdad. Engel went on to file reports from Lebanon during the 2006 Israeli-Hezbollah conflict and from Kabul covering Afghanistan’s 2009 presidential election. In 2011, he reported on the Egyptian revolution and the Libyan civil war.

Engel’s work has garnered him many prestigious awards. His first recognition came in 2006 from his report Baghdad E.R. in the form of the RTNDA Edward R. Murrow Award. He received the Medill Medal for Courage in Journalism after he created a documentary about his time in Iraq titled War Zone Diary. Two years later, he added the Peabody Award to his list of achievements for Richard Engel Reports: Tip of the Spear, a report on Army Viper Company fighting in the mountains of Afghanistan. Most recently, in 2011, the Radio and Television Correspondents’ Association awarded Engel the David Bloom Award for Excellence in Enterprise Reporting for his embedded coverage of the Charlie Company 2-508 of the 82nd Airborne in Afghanistan.

Student response to the announcement of Engel has been very positive, a marked difference from years past.

“Great choice, world traveler, extremely accomplished journalist,” Will Germain, FCRH ’13, said. “I’m sure he knows a ton about important happenings all over the world and that might give him some good insights to share with graduates.”

Last year’s announcement of John Brennan, FCRH ’77, as commencement speaker sparked heated debate on campus and the creation of an online petition opposing the decision. This year, however, many students say they find Engel’s journalistic background appealing.

“I was genuinely excited when I heard that he was going to be our commencement speaker,” Festa said. “He is someone that I have watched on the news for quite some time and his work is respectable and heroic. To have him as our speaker this year is especially timely and relevant due to what he recently overcame in Syria and I am looking forward to what he will say to our class.”

“I’m excited that Fordham will be having another high profile journalist coming to speak,” Stephen Erdman, FCRH ’13, executive president of USG, said. “It’s kind of interesting that Fordham is developing a history of hosting media figures for commencement.”

“I think he’s cool,” Nate Schiller, FCRH ’13, said. “Honestly, I didn’t know who he was at first, but his resume is legit and it’s cool to have a legitimate media person as our commencement speaker as a Communications major.”

Engel joins a prestigious list of Fordham commencement speakers including Brennan, Brian Williams, Tom Brokaw and Vin Scully.