Binghamton University announces four honorary degree recipients

Binghamton University announced that Govindasamy Viswanathan and Binghamton alumni Alexander S. Vindman, Yasmin L. Hurd and Lee Ranaldo will receive State University of New York (SUNY) honorary doctorates this year during the University’s Commencement, May 9-11, 2024.

• Govindasamy Viswanathan, founder and chancellor of Vellore Institute of Technology in India, which has partnered with Binghamton’s Thomas J. Watson College of Engineering and Applied Science for almost 15 years, will be awarded the Doctor of Laws during Watson’s ceremony at 8:30 a.m. May 10.
• Alexander S. Vindman ’98, a retired lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Army and former director of European affairs for the U.S. National Security Council, will receive the Doctor of Laws during the College of Community and Public Affairs ceremony at 12:30 p.m. May 10.
• Yasmin L. Hurd ’82, an internationally renowned neuroscientist, will be awarded the Doctor of Science during the Harpur College of Arts and Sciences ceremony at 8:30 a.m. May 11.
• Lee Ranaldo ’78, a musician, visual artist, writer and co-founder of the band Sonic Youth, will receive the Doctor of Music during the Harpur College of Arts and Sciences ceremony at 4:30 p.m. May 11.

The recipients will present remarks following the awarding of their honorary degrees. All four ceremonies will be held in the Events Center on Binghamton’s campus in Vestal, N.Y.

Binghamton University’s Office of the President invites nominations of individuals who represent what the University values and strives to instill in its graduates. Their accomplishments may be scholarly, artistic or a life of outstanding service. Nominees are considered by the President’s Honorary Degree Advisory Committee, the SUNY chancellor, the SUNY Honorary Degree Committee and the SUNY Board of Trustees before honorees are selected. Recipients are recognized with a SUNY honorary degree: Doctor of Fine Arts, Doctor of Humane Letters, Doctor of Laws or Doctor of Science. In awarding honorary degrees, Binghamton University celebrates the recipients’ achievements and claims them as having a special relationship with the University.

Brief bios of the four honorary degree recipients follow.

Govindasamy Viswanathan

Govindasamy Viswanathan, founder and chancellor of Vellore Institute of Technology (VIT) in India, has a strong background in educational administration and is recognized for his humanitarian efforts and entrepreneurship.

Born in Tamil Nadu, India, he holds bachelor’s and master’s degrees in economics from Loyola College and a law degree from Madras Law College. He also completed an Advanced Management Program at Harvard Business School (2003) and received an honorary doctorate from West Virginia University (2009).

Viswanathan was a member of Parliament (1967–77) who advocated for the working class. He also served two terms in the Tamil Nadu State Legislature. He was minister for food, cooperation and dairy development, where he implemented measures that lowered essential commodities costs, improved bank functions and reduced corruption.

In 1984, he established Vellore Engineering College, which became VIT in 2001. VIT now has four campuses and serves over 88,000 students from across the globe. It has been recognized as an institution of eminence by the Indian government and is known for its academic excellence, commitment to students, and addressing the educational needs of socially and economically disadvantaged students.

Viswanathan also received several national and international awards and was the past president and chief patron of the Education Promotion Society for India.

Viswanathan promotes community service through multiple projects, including the Centre for Sustainable Rural Development and Research Studies, Support the Advancement of Rural Students and the G.V. School Development Programme. He founded the Universal Higher Education Trust in 2011 to aid underprivileged students from the Vellore district in pursuing higher education.

Additionally, Viswanathan founded a center for sustainable development of rural communities and launched the Clean Palar Project to clean up the Palar River. He also initiated a project that planted one million trees in Vellore.

Alexander S. Vindman ’98

Alexander S. Vindman, a retired U.S. Army lieutenant colonel, is a former director for European affairs at the U.S. National Security Council.

Born in Kyiv, Ukraine, Vindman and his family immigrated to the U.S. in 1979. He received his bachelor’s degree in history from Binghamton University, where he was in the Reserve Officers’ Training Corps. He was commissioned as a second lieutenant in the Army’s Infantry Branch in 1999. Later, he earned a master’s degree in Russian, Eastern European and Central Asian studies from Harvard University and a doctorate from Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, where he is now a senior fellow at the Foreign Policy Institute.

During his military service, Vindman completed tours in South Korea, Germany and Iraq. He was awarded the Purple Heart for wounds sustained from a roadside bomb in Iraq in 2004. He also received nearly two dozen commendations and decorations for his meritorious and valorous service.

Vindman became a foreign area officer with expertise in Russia and Eastern Europe. Fluent in Russian and Ukrainian, he served in U.S. embassies in Kyiv and Moscow and was a Eurasian specialist in Washington, D.C. In 2018, Vindman was appointed director for European affairs at the National Security Council, where he developed and oversaw policies managing national security issues at all levels.

He became prominent in October 2019 when he was subpoenaed and testified at former President Donald Trump’s Senate impeachment trial on charges of abuse of power and obstruction of justice, stemming from a phone call Trump had with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in July 2019.

Vindman retired from the military in 2020 and is now head of the national security think tank, the Institute for Informed American Leadership. He is also an executive board member for the Renew Democracy Initiative, a senior advisor to VoteVets and a senior fellow at the Kettering Foundation. Additionally, he wrote the New York Times bestselling memoir, “Here, Right Matters: An American Story,” and leads the Here Right Matters Foundation.

Vindman frequently shares his expertise on national media outlets and remains engaged with decision-makers in Washington and Kyiv.

Yasmin L. Hurd ’82

Yasmin L. Hurd is an internationally renowned neuroscientist whose translational research examines the neurobiology of substance use disorders and related psychiatric disorders with a primary focus on opioid abuse and the developmental effects of cannabis.

Hurd was born in Jamaica and grew up in Brooklyn, N.Y. She graduated from Binghamton University with a degree in biochemistry and psychology (1982). She completed a PhD in medical science at the Karolinska Institutet in Stockholm, Sweden, where her work in micro-dialysis led to neuropharmacology advances. She also completed a postdoctoral fellowship at the National Institutes of Health and was a staff fellow at the National Institute of Mental Health before joining the Department of Clinical Neuroscience faculty at the Karolinska Institutet (1993).

In 2006 she joined the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai as professor and director of the MD/PhD program, where she also founded the Diversity in Biomedical Research Committee. Since 2014, she has been director of Mount Sinai’s Addiction Institute. She also serves as the Ward-Coleman Chair of Translational Neuroscience and a professor of psychiatry and neuroscience at the Icahn School.

Based on her significant contributions to medicine and science, Hurd was elected to the National Academy of Medicine (2017) and the National Academy of Sciences (2022).

Hurd has published over 140 papers in leading journals and is the principal investigator for several federal and nonfederal grants. She occupies numerous national leadership positions, including chairing the Board of Scientific Counselors of the National Institute on Drug Abuse and the National Institutes of Health Study Section on Pathophysiology of Mental Disorders and Addictions. She has also been a member of the MacArthur Foundation Neuroscience Network and other notable national scientific organizations.

Lee Ranaldo ’78

Lee Ranaldo is a musician, visual artist and writer. He co-founded the alternative rock band Sonic Youth and has been a prolific figure in avant-garde music, poetry and art for over four decades.

Ranaldo earned a bachelor’s degree in studio art from Binghamton University in 1978.

He began his music career by playing with various bands before forming Sonic Youth in 1981 with Thurston Moore and Kim Gordon. Under his contribution, Sonic Youth played a crucial role in merging experimental music and New York’s no-wave scene with mainstream alternative rock. Critics hailed the band, which influenced a generation of indie-rockers and contributed to the rise of an alternative arts scene encompassing underground films, comics, conceptual art, experimental music and fashion. The band was instrumental in mainstreaming what was once considered “fringe.”

Ranaldo performed with Sonic Youth until 2011, while also pursuing a number of solo projects. In 1987, he released his first solo album, “From Here to Infinity.”

Rolling Stone magazine ranked Ranaldo #33 on its “Greatest Guitarists of All Time” list in 2004, and in 2012, he and Thurston Moore were jointly awarded the #1 spot on SPIN magazine’s top 100 guitarists list.

Ranaldo was nominated for a Grammy award in 2017 for his work on “Music of Morocco From the Library of Congress.” Since then, he has released over 50 recordings as a solo artist, with his band and through collaborations. He has also authored a dozen books on topics such as travel, poetry and art.

Recently, Ranaldo has been performing live with Leah Singer, presenting their Contre-jour performances, which are large-scale, multi-projection sound and light events. In November 2021, he released his solo acoustic composition called “In Virus Times” on Mute Records. Additionally, Sonic Youth released its “Walls Have Ears” album in February 2024 on Goofin’ Records.

Ranaldo has exhibited his art in galleries and museums worldwide. He has also been an artist-in-residence at various institutions, including La Comisión Nacional Evaluadora de la Actividad Investigadora in Paris, the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design in Canada and Villa Arson in Nice, France.