Congratulations graduating seniors on your upcoming graduation and achievements!
We are sure you are eager to celebrate your achievement with classmates, family,
and friends at Commencement on Sunday, May 7, 2023.
Baccalaureate Ceremony – 8:00 a.m. – Historic Woodworth Chapel
Speaker: Bishop Vashti Murphy McKenzie, Interim President and General Secretary for the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the USA
Interim President and General Secretary
Bishop McKenzie was elected and consecrated as the 117th bishop of the African Methodist Episcopal Church in 2000. She was the first female elected to episcopal office in the more than two-century-old AME Church and is the first female to serve as President of the Council of Bishops and President of the General Board. She has served as presiding bishop in Southern Africa – Botswana, Swaziland, Mozambique and Lesotho and in the United States in Tennessee, Kentucky and Texas.
She no stranger to ecumenical ministry. She has been a delegate, preacher and/or presenter to ecumenical bodies including the World Methodist Council and the World Council of Churches.
Bishop McKenzie is a graduate of the University of Maryland, College Park, Howard University, School of Religion and has an earned doctorate from United Theological Seminary.
Bishop McKenzie has been active in social justice issues for more than three decades. She was appointed in 2009 by President Barack Obama to be on the inaugural White House Commission of Faith Based and Neighborhood Partnership. This group worked on behalf of Americans committed to improving their communities, no matter their religious or political beliefs. She was named by Huffington Post in 2014 as one of the 50 Most Powerful Women Around the World.
She is the author of six books including Not Without a Struggle and Journey to the Well. Her newest book is The Big Deal of Taking Small Steps to Move Closer to God. The book shows how to develop a stronger relationship with God with a more effective Christian lifestyle by taking small steps that lead to big changes.
Bishop McKenzie has been appointed to a two-year term as Interim President and General Secretary. In this role, she will provide executive leadership to a diverse covenant community of 37-member communions with 30 million Christians and 100,000 congregations from Protestant, Anglican, historic African American, Orthodox, Evangelical and Living Peace traditions which have a common commitment to advocate and represent God’s love and unity in the public square.
Since 1950, the National Council of Churches has worked in a common expression of God’s love and promise of unity.
She is the third woman and the first African American woman to serve as General Secretary and the first woman to serve in the combined role of President and General Secretary. She is also the current National Chaplain for Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Incorporated.
https://nationalcouncilofchurches.us/staff-2/bishop-mckenzie/
Commencement Ceremony – 10:00 a.m. – Campus Greens in front of the Historic Woodworth Chapel
Speaker: Kristen Clarke, Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights at the U.S. Department of Justice
Kristen Clarke is the Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights at the U.S. Department of Justice. In this role, she leads the Justice Department’s broad
federal civil rights enforcement efforts and works to uphold the civil and constitutional rights of all who live in America.
Assistant Attorney General Clarke is a lifelong civil rights lawyer who has spent her entire career in public service.
Assistant Attorney General Clarke began her career as a trial attorney in the Civil Rights Division through the Department of Justice’s Honors Program. In 2006, she joined the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, where she helped lead the organization’s work in the areas of voting rights and election law across the country. Ms. Clarke worked on cases defending the constitutionality of the Voting Rights Act, presented oral argument to the D.C. District Court in Shelby County, Alabama v. Holder, and has provided testimony on federal and state voting rights legislation. In 2011, she was named the head of the Civil Rights Bureau for the New York State Attorney General’s Office, where she led broad civil rights enforcement actions.
Under her leadership, the Bureau secured landmark agreements with banks to address unlawful redlining, employers to address barriers to reentry for people with criminal backgrounds, police departments on reforms to policies and practices, major retailers on racial profiling of consumers, landlords on discriminatory housing policies, school districts concerning issues relating to the school-to-prison pipeline and more. In 2015, Ms. Clarke was named the president and executive director of the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, one of the nation’s leading civil rights organizations founded at the request of John F. Kennedy.
There, she led the organization’s legal work in courts across the country addressing some of the nation’s most complex racial justice and civil rights challenges.
Assistant Attorney General Clarke was born in Brooklyn, New York. After graduating from Choate Rosemary Hall, she received her A.B. from Harvard University and her J.D. from Columbia Law School.
https://www.justice.gov/crt/meet-assistant-attorney-general
