Two Honorary Degrees Awarded, one to Law School Alumnus and one to
Human Rights Champion

A highlight of the 120th Commencement ceremony included the conferral of SUNY honorary doctorate degrees on J.Mason Davis Jr. '59, a UB Law graduate and distinguished civil rights attorney from Alabama, and Irene Zubaida Khan, Secretary General of Amnesty International:

J. Mason Davis Jr. '59

J. Mason Davis Jr. '59, of the Birmingham law firm Sirote & Permutt P.C., is the first African-American to practice as a senior partner of a major Alabama law firm. An Alabama native, he had to come north to Buffalo for law school because African-Americans were denied entrance to all of the schools of the University of Alabama system.

But once he entered practice after his UB Law education, he told the audience, "I handled along with two other lawyers more than 100 lunch counter sit-in cases in Huntsville, and we were fortunate to be successful in all of our cases in the Huntsville city courts and the Birmingham court of appeals. I also handled two of the very early racial discrimination cases in employment in the state of Alabama, and I handled more than 100 voter discrimination cases in both Huntsville and Birmingham.

"These were my favorite, because of my own encounter with discrimination with the three members of the voting board of registrars. In 1958 I had finished my second year in law school, and my mother told me, 'You go down and register to vote.' There was a requirement that you be literate. Well, I went before the three registrars, and they asked me to interpret the 14th Amendment to the Constitution. They didn't know I had just had a year of Constitutional law. So I started talking, and I talked for about 30 minutes, and by that time the lady who was the chairman of the board said, 'Just a minute. How do you know all that?' I said, 'If you had read my application, you would have seen that I am a third-year law student at the State University of New York.' The woman slammed her hands on the table and said, 'Oh, hell, just let that n----- vote.'"

Irene Zubaida Khan

Also receiving an honorary degree was Irene Zubaida Khan, secretary general of the international human rights organization Amnesty International.

"I see this award as a recognition of the work that many people around the world are doing for human rights," Khan said. "People like me who stand as a symbol of large human rights organizations get a lot of recognition. But I see this degree as a recognition of all the men and women who are working around the world, in villages, in remote rural communities, in urban slums, who are fighting for justice for all."

To the graduates she said, "This is a moment of great challenge. You are going into a world of uncertainty, of an economic crisis but I would say it's actually a human rights crisis. There is worry about jobs, about homes, but there is also a shortage of clean water, of land, of food, and behind it all a story of deprivation and discrimination, of racism and xenophobia, of insecurity and above all of exclusion – people whose voices are not being heard but who are affected most horrendously by this economic crisis. You are privileged and empowered with your knowledge to go out there, and the question you must ask is, what are you going to do about it?

"Law is a shield – it protects people – but law is also a sword that we can use to fight with. In whatever you do, stand up for justice."