Steve Rickard '79 is telling bad lawyer jokes to a class at Adrian College. Tomorrow at the AC Homecoming, he will be presented with the Alumni Humanitarian Award for his work on human rights, but today he's the "honorary professor" of two political science classes, and so he can do what he wants.

"Why does California have more lawyers and New Jersey has more toxic waste dumps?" Steve asks. "New Jersey got first pick." The students laugh/groan. Following the law of most jokes, they don't laugh because the joke is funny so much as because the joker tells it anyway. And it helps that Steve is a guest, that he's wearing a suit and tie, that he went to Yale Law School. That he's making fun of himself.

"No one likes making fun of lawyers more than lawyers," he says. "What do you call 5,000 lawyers chained to the bottom of the sea? A good beginning."

At the beginning of class, someone gave his bio a quick read. But after a string of "State Department" this and "Some Kind of Committee" that, it still might have been somewhat unclear who he is or why he's here.

It's a good question. The award apparently isn't for his jokes. Here are some of the real reasons: he helped convince Congress to recognize the Dalai Lama and the Tibetan Government in Exile as the true representatives of the Tibetan people. He worked closely on the Leahy Law, which, for starters, has helped the U.S. hold the Columbian military accountable for gross human rights violations. And he helped create a joint project between the Sierra Club and Amnesty International that campaigns on behalf of environmentalists being imprisoned or threatened around the world.

Holly Burkhalter, a leading human rights activist and close friend of Steve's, sums him up like this: "In my view, Steve Rickard is the most talented and best loved human rights activist in Washington.You are damned lucky to call him an alum."

A Warm Heart, a World Parish

If lawyers do like lawyer jokes, it's not hard to imagine the Rickard family dinner table. Every one of Steve's three full-blooded siblings is a lawyer, and so the volley of lawyer cut-downs would make it nearly impossible to slip in a "Please pass the butter." But it was at the family dinner table that the Rickard children learned, among other things, to talk quickly and effectively.

"When you're raising a family of eight, you're debating all the time," explained Steve's father, William D. "Tex" Rickard.

Eight? For the readers counting heads, something doesn't add up-Dad, Mom, four little lawyer kids. But there were actually more: Tex and his wife Mary Helen adopted two girls, ages 12 and 14, when Steve was a toddler. After Tilda and Evelyn Norburg's parents died in a plane crash, they joined the Rickard household. "When Steve was two or three years old, all of a sudden he had two older sisters," Tex says.

This sort of generosity was typical of the Rickards. Tex was a Methodist minister for more than 50 years, and his church had more than 1,000 members. Helping others was a way of life. In addition, there was always a steady flow of news about issues from across the globe. "When you grow up in a minister's home, you are very aware of what's going on in other countries, and what's going on all over the world," Steve's brother Ron explains. "We always had missionaries visit our church. Human rights were a concern for everyone in the family, but especially for Steve."

Today Steve doesn't view himself as a particularly religious person. However, he still credits his church roots.

"It means a lot to me to be Methodist. People say Methodists don't believe anything, but it's not really true," he says. "First of all, there are doctrines, but there's one really important theme that goes all the way back to John Wesley, and that is, 'A warm heart and a world parish.' It's the idea that Methodists are not to go away into closets. They're to be active participants in the world, trying to make it a better place."

Adrian College

When Steve finished high school, he chose Adrian over the honors college at the University of Michigan. "What makes Adrian special, or any small liberal arts college special, is the relationship between the faculty and the students," Steve says. He'd seen a bond form between his older brother Ron and political science professor Paul deLespinasse. Then when Steve got to Adrian, a similar thing happened to him with another political science professor. "Ken Ross was really my mentor," he says.

Ross, now retired, says Steve was exceptional. "He was the kind of student you don't so much teach as you try to encourage," Ross recalls. "He was a self-starter, a fast and capable learner who was interested in a great many things." His activities included theatre, debate, and student government (of which he was president). He carried close to a 4.0 GPA, and had internships in Washington with Congressman David Stockman, then in Brussels with the Department of Defense at the U.S. Mission to NATO. But what may have impressed Ross more was his social conscience. "He was also interested in serious things, where the world was headed and the great problems of the world-basic questions of justice. And he saw his studies as preparing him for a career where he could make the world a better place."

Steve says that it was at his job in Shipman Library that human rights really came into focus. "I was reading the New York Times, and I read a story about Methodist missionaries in Brazil who were being tortured. And until I read that article, I kind of thought torture was something the Nazis did.I didn't have any appreciation that there was torture in the world today. And I think the fact that they were torturing Methodists did for me what is the basis for many people's social activism, which is that they identified with a victim."

Stop on Wall Street

After Adrian, Steve continued to shine. He scored in the top 0.3 percent on the Law School Aptitude Test. He earned a degree from Yale Law School, and then a master's in public administration from the Woodrow Wilson School at Princeton. His interest in international human rights continued, and he took courses and wrote papers on the subject.

After graduate school, he entered big time law. He took a position with White and Case, one of the largest international law firms in the world, where he worked on Wall Street and in Stockholm and Washington, and where he worked on human rights projects.

Eventually, though, he changed course. Steve's wife Kathryn says that what attracted her to him was that he "knew his own mind and was not afraid to take a stand on something."

"He always had a pretty strong vision of what he wanted to do-to pursue U.S. foreign policy, and in particular, human rights," she said. "And he had a vision for how to get there. He didn't know exactly, but he had a general outline, a strategy, and he followed opportunities as they became available."

Capitol Hill

The first opportunity that came along was a huge pay cut. Ken Ross, who has followed Steve's career closely through the years, says Steve's income dropped by $100,000 when he left Wall Street. And when Ross considers Steve's drive and ability, he makes a very specific prediction: "I know if he'd wanted to by now, he could easily be a multi-millionaire. But he decided to invest his talents in higher pursuits, and I greatly appreciate that."

So instead, he became the head foreign policy advisor to U.S. Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, where his work included creating scholarship programs for Tibetan and Burmese refugees, and forcing major changes in international programs in Burma to prevent a military junta from using aid for its own purposes. Then he became a senior advisor for the State Department, where he continued human rights work and earned big honors. Then he moved back to the private sector for such jobs as director of the Washington office of Amnesty International, where he helped train and organize grassroots human rights advocates to lobby effectively for human rights.

Holly Burkhalter, advocacy director for Physicians for Human Rights, says his mix of experience is rare.

"It is very unusual for a human rights activist to serve in government in the first place," Burkhalter says. "Steve has served in senior positions in both the executive branch and the U.S. Senate. When he came back to the human rights community, he enriched our work by really knowing how to get things done inside government."

Today, Steve is working on an independent project to promote the International Criminal Court [ICC], an institution designed to try people for crimes such as genocide.

"I spend a great deal of time trying to defeat legislation introduced by Senator Jesse Helms and Rep.Tom DeLay aimed at killing the ICC," he says.

Steve's office is across from the Capitol, but despite all the anthrax incidents in Washington a few months ago, his job is not particularly dangerous. He's mostly one of the office guys, a policy maker who works behind the scenes, and when he was on campus he said that this is a lot different than the front lines. "The people who are willing to risk their lives for human rights and freedom abroad are the real heroes," he said.

To illustrate his point, he mentioned Mexican human rights activist Digna Ochoa, who in 1999 was kidnapped and threatened with her life. In a strange twist of fate, Digna was attacked again on the same day Steve made these comments, just one day before Homecoming. This time, she was shot dead.

Of course, people like Digna Ochoa value their work enough to risk their lives for it, and Steve has been a leading player in making the good work they do possible. While an award from Adrian College may do little to truly recognize his contributions, it's fitting that we honor an alum who has served as an essential link in the hopes of oppressed people from across the globe.

Steve and his wife Kathryn live with their two children in Washington, D.C.