The 83rd Attorney General of the United States (2015-2017), Loretta Lynch, will serve as the keynote speaker for Florida A&M University (FAMU) College of Law’s 2018 Annual Hooding Ceremony on Saturday, May 12, 2018.The Hooding Ceremony will be held at the Dr. Phillips Center for Performing Arts, 445 South Magnolia Avenue, Orlando, Florida 32801, from 10 a.m. to noon.
Former Attorney General Lynch will address more than 125 new graduates of the FAMU College of Law, including members of the Fall 2017, Spring 2018 and Summer 2018 classes. Members of the Spring 2018 classes will have the juris doctor degree conferred in Tallahassee, Florida, at the University’s Commencement Exercises on May 5, 2018. The FAMU College of Law’s Hooding Ceremony is a public event; however, seating is limited.
“We are truly honored to have a true trailblazer deliver the charge to our 14th graduating class since the re-establishment of the FAMU College of Law in Orlando,” said Interim Dean LeRoy Pernell. “Former Attorney General Lynch will offer a message that will serve to empower our next generation of change agents.”
One of the most highly accomplished public figures in America today, Former Attorney General Loretta Lynch has been a leading progressive voice during her 30-plus-year highly distinguished career. She is the first female African American Attorney General of the United States, appointed by U.S. President Barack Obama in 2015.
She also served as the head of the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of New York twice, under both U.S. President Bill Clinton and President Obama. Described by President Obama as “the only lawyer in America who battles mobsters, drug lords and terrorists, and still has the reputation for being a charming ‘people person,” she has been instrumental in shaping the direction of the nation on a number of tough issues. She improved the relationship between local law enforcement and the communities they serve, and she has taken bold stances on criminal justice reform.
Lynch has spent years in the trenches rising through the ranks as a prosecutor, aggressively fighting terrorism, financial fraud and cybercrime — all while vigorously defending civil and human rights.
While leading the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of New York, she became known for the high-profile civil rights conviction of two Brooklyn police officers who brutally assaulted Haitian immigrant Abner Louima.
While in private practice, Lynch served as a volunteer legal advisor for the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, established to prosecute those responsible for human rights violations in the 1994 genocide in that nation.