Dean David M. Schizer Awards The Medal For Excellence to Jeh Charles Johnson '82

 

February 3, 2012

 

I am very pleased to present Columbia Law School’s Medal for Excellence to Jeh Charles Johnson, Class of 1982.

 

As I mentioned, Jeh currently serves as the General Counsel of the Department of Defense, where he has been deeply engaged in many of the most important and challenging legal issues of our time.

 

For example, just over a year ago, Jeh worked with General Carter Ham to prepare an in house study for the Defense Department on the effects of repealing the “don’t ask, don’t tell policy.” That report played a key role in persuading Congress to repeal the policy.

 

Jeh has particular reason to be proud of his role in repealing “don’t ask, don’t tell” because of his family history. His uncle, Robert B. Johnson, served with the Tuskegee Airman during World War II, the nation’s first African-American combat unit. In 1945, Jeh’s uncle was part of the Freeman Field Mutiny, in which a group of airmen were arrested for entering an all-white officers’ club at Freeman Field in Indiana. They were imprisoned for 10 days until General George Marshall, the Army Chief of Staff, personally intervened. Three years later, President Truman integrated the U.S. Military by executive order.

 

So Jeh is part of a proud family tradition of service to the military, and I should add that he also served with distinction as the General Counsel of the Air Force during the Clinton Administration. Jeh is also a highly accomplished litigator, who has served as an Assistant United States Attorney and as a litigation partner at Paul Weiss. I know a number of his colleagues from Paul Weiss are here with us today.

 

For his personal and professional achievements, Jeh Johnson exemplifies the highest ideals of our intellectual community. It is, therefore, a great pleasure for us to recognize Jeh with the Medal for Excellence, the Law School’s highest honor. Please join me in congratulating Jeh Johnson.

  

  

 

Thank you, Dean.

 

I have fond memories of Columbia Law School and Morningside Heights. Some of you will regard what I am about to tell you as strange: In December when I was home for the Holidays I was Christmas shopping in Manhattan. I got tired of that, had some time to kill before my dinner reservations with family on the Upper West side, so I hung out in the law library. I sat in the same Southeast corner of the library, with the view of the Triboro Bridge, where I routinely sat 30 years before as a student. The one thing new (this is for the class of 1982, and this how I know I’m getting old), the busts are of people who were friends of mine.

 

I accept this award with a good deal of humility.  

 

First, because of the many illustrious individuals who have come before me, including two of my former law partners, Simon Rifkind and Judith Thoyer, who is here.

 

Second, because I am the lawyer for the U.S. military. Whatever I achieve in my professional life as a lawyer pales in comparison to the bravery and commitment, and the standards for excellence, of our men and women in uniform.

 

On September 7, 2011, in a place far away from this ballroom at the Waldorf, Navy Lieutenant Brad Snyder, who is the nephew of one of my deputies, was a member of an explosives ordnance disposal team. Lieutenant Snyder went into a mined area in Afghanistan to clear a safe passage for a medic trying to get to others who had been wounded in battle. An IED exploded in his face, causing severe facial trauma and, at age 27, took his eyesight, probably for the rest of his life. Despite severe pain and injuries to his face and the loss of his sight, Lieutenant Snyder refused a stretcher and safely guided the medic to those who were wounded.

 

Lieutenant Snyder spent weeks in treatment and recuperation at Bethesda and a VA hospital in Georgia, but within 11 weeks Brad ran a 10k race, and is now training for a half-marathon in February, and the 2012 summer Paralympics. He tells friends and family “I am not going to let blindness build a brick wall around me.”

 

Stories like this are common among these brave young people. So, I accept this award knowing that “excellence” is a relative term, and that it is in the eye of the beholder. Thank you.