135th Commencement Address
Streaming Media
Document Type
Event
Publication Date
5-17-2024
Abstract
The 2024 commencement speaker, Stephen M. Rasche, J.D., was honored by the University with the Presidential Medal, with Dean Payne providing an introduction of Rasche’s career as an international authority on the displacement and persecution of religious minorities, a founding member of Catholic University in Erbil, Iraq, and author of the critically acclaimed book, The Disappearing People: The Tragic Fate of Christians in the Middle East.
In his commencement address, Rasche urged the graduates to remember there are “so many paths to take [...] to leverage this one life you have, to do the one thing that we are all ultimately called to do: that is, to serve.” He then reflected on the arc of his life and career that led him from practice in international project development to Iraq in the middle of a war to help a beleaguered Archbishop build a university from nothing, figuring out how to apply the many skills he had gained from his legal training to help take care of nearly 200,000 displaced human beings. In looking back on his work to protect the lives of those impacted by war and genocide, Rasche pointed to the “many fingerprints on all this work,” noting that “I can honestly say, and say it here, in this place, that down deep in those critical years, quite in the middle of it all, are the fingerprints of a lawyer, using all of his skills, however imperfectly, praying daily to God for guidance, so that he could use those skills in service for the good.”
Recommended Citation
Rasche, Stephen M., "135th Commencement Address" (2024). Commencement Addresses. 20.
https://scholarship.law.edu/commencement/20