usc law family >> 2018 commencement
STANDOUT CEREMONY Standout Ceremony for FOR LLM COMMENCEMENT Representing 46 countries, Class of 2018 is Gould’s most diverse ever By Diane Krieger
Decked out in their black master’s gowns with purple hoods, 442 graduate and international law students queued up on the Great Lawn of USC Village — a short march from the end of their academic journey. Minutes later, they entered the tent to the strains of “Pomp and Circumstance,” cheered by loved ones holding camera phones overhead to record the moment. May 11, 2018, marked USC Gould’s 15th LLM ceremony, and the inaugural year of three new graduate degrees: the LLM in Alternative Dispute Resolution, the Master of Dispute Resolution and the Master of Studies in Law. It was USC Gould’s most diverse class ever — representing 46 countries. Appropriately, diversity and inclusion were the evening’s major themes. The keynote speaker was Egyptian diplomat Lamia Mekhemar, consul general in Los Angeles and former ambassador to the Holy See (Vatican). Mekhemar drew lessons from her own life as “a Muslim woman from the Middle East” to underscore the importance of working toward inclusion. She shared anecdotes about her father and husband, who both faced political repression and accepted the consequences of standing up for what’s right. She lamented the social exclusion of a homeless woman in Alexandria — a ghost from Mekhemar’s childhood,
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whose cry, “I have no place to stand,” still rings tragically in the ambassador’s ear. And she celebrated the uplifting story of an Egyptian boy from a poor village who is today an international sports celebrity and unofficial Arab cultural ambassador. It is a triumph of inclusiveness, Mekhemar said, that Mohammad Salah’s humble origins didn’t hold him back. The Liverpool soccer star has become “an icon for youth not only in Egypt and the U.K., but all around the world,” she said. His inclusion has powerful ripple effects. “The team’s fans are chanting: ‘If Mo Salah is Muslim, I want to be a Muslim too.’” USC Gould Dean Andrew Guzman referenced another iconic figure — the American cowboy — in his welcome remarks. “I want to encourage you to embrace the cowboy nature of American law and the American legal professions,” he told the international students, making the Old West archetype a metaphor for the takeaways they should carry into their professional lives. “As you head out in the world to do the incredible things I know you’ll do,” Guzman said, “I hope you’ll adopt one feature of the best cowboys: be the one in the white hat. Pursue justice, defend those who deserve defending. Respect the rights of every person.”
