Almost 200 people from UVA and the local community came to Garrett Hall yesterday to hear from renowned civil rights lawyer Bryan Stevenson, recipient of the 2025 Thomas Jefferson Medal in Citizen Leadership. Stevenson delivered an impassioned speech on the imperative of striving for justice and common humanity. 

In introducing Stevenson, Batten Dean Ian H. Solomon noted Stevenson’s abiding dedication to helping the poor, the incarcerated, the wrongly accused, and others whom society largely has forgotten or neglected. 

“As I think about all the people I know, and the leaders I watch across all sectors of business, law, politics, arts, it is really hard for me to find someone who inspires me more through their work and commitment than Bryan Stevenson,” the dean said. “He stands up for those who need a fierce moral advocate, and he fights for their human rights.” 

Stevenson is founder and executive director of the Equal Justice Initiative, a nonprofit organization in Montgomery, Alabama which has saved more than 140 prisoners from execution and leads numerous anti-poverty and anti-discrimination efforts. He has argued and won multiple cases at the U.S. Supreme Court, including a landmark ruling that banned mandatory life-without-parole prison sentences for all children 17 or younger. He is the author of the New York Times bestseller, “Just Mercy,” made into an award-winning movie, and has received the MacArthur Genius Award, National Humanities Medal, and an ACLU National Liberty Medal. 

In his remarks at Garrett Hall, Stevenson delivered his message of fighting for justice, fairness, and love with sermon-like fervor. 

“Now more than ever, the study of leadership and public policy is something we should be taking very seriously,” he said, adding that he’s  worried about the current “narrative of fear and anger which I see raging all across the world,” and the resulting injustice, oppression, even violence against certain groups of people.

“In our country it's very easy to separate yourself from the problems of the people who are disfavored. You can just move away. You can shield yourself,” he said. “It's becoming a bizarrely rare thing to sit down and say, oh, let's figure out how we can trust one another, how we can hear one another, how we can journey together,” he said. 

And yet that is the way we find our way back to our humanity, he said. Based on his own experience of working directly with incarcerated individuals and their families, he believes effective leadership means being “proximate” to the people and communities one serves. 

“In doing that, I learned some things, not only about the people I represent, but about myself. I learned that in proximity to the condemned, the imprisoned, the disfavored, you often have the opportunity to harness the power of mercy and love and grace, and see something beautiful.” 

Asked by one of the Batten students in attendance what sustains him in his lifelong fight for justice, Stevenson said he is continually reminded of the bravery of the men and women before him who struggled for freedom, naming Rosa Parks, John Lewis, and Martin Luther King, Jr. — and his own great grandparents, who were enslaved just 60 miles from UVA in Caroline County, he said. 

“I think they would be ashamed of me if I said, well, that's too hard for me to do. I can't do that, because that's uncomfortable, not convenient.  I want to make them proud. And so I have to be willing to stand, even when people say, sit down. I have to be willing to speak, even when people say, be quiet.”  

In the end, Stevenson said, he maintains a strong hope and vision for the country. He noted that the enslaved African-Americans who were freed after the Civil War, who had endured unimaginable brutality and indignity, didn’t leave America, but instead chose to stay, and devoted themselves to building communities for their families and descendants.

“I actually think there's something better waiting for us in this country. I do. I think there's something that feels more like freedom, more like equality, more like justice. And it's waiting for us. But we won't get there … if we don't find the courage to stand up to fear and anger when it manifests itself.” 

Today, as part of the university’s annual Founder’s Day celebration, Stevenson spoke at Monticello and later received the Thomas Jefferson Medal, the highest honor bestowed by UVA and the Thomas Jefferson Foundation, given in recognition of national and international leaders in the fields of citizen leadership, law, and architecture. 

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