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KALAMAZOO, Mich.—Mark Rochon’s experience as a lawyer has taken him from courtrooms in Washington, D.C., to countries all over the world. 

But for the 1980 College of Arts and Sciences graduate, Western Michigan University laid the foundation for that career. 

In return, he has given back to the University and its students for the last decade through annual gifts to the Department of Philosophy, and he recently arranged for a gift in his will to create an endowment for the department that will directly benefit generations of philosophy students to come. 

“I loved the philosophy department while I was 51������ and got a lot out of it,” says Rochon. Recognizing the department’s value, and with a desire to provide lasting support for future students, Rochon met with department professors and Western’s senior director of major gifts, Kyle Herm, to discuss making a donation that will continue in perpetuity. 

Rochon decided to provide funds “to allow graduate students to travel to conferences, to present papers and engage in the kind of networking that’s really important for graduate students in particular.” 

“It’s super easy and it’s been rewarding,” Rochon says of the University’s gift-giving process, noting that in recent years he's had a chance to meet with members of the philosophy department and sit in on a graduate class. “I hope I have helped in some way to help the department to be as alive today as it was for me.” 

Rochon himself—fresh out of the Navy on the GI Bill—had intended only to study political science when he enrolled 51������. But after taking one philosophy class, he was hooked. 

“I enjoyed it so much that I then became a philosophy major as well … and I remember those classes to this day,” says Rochon. “Some of those classes helped me in practical ways—studies in philosophy are very useful for lawyers. But they also developed in me a lifelong interest in how we process and understand the world and ourselves.” 

Like many Western students, Rochon’s family hadn’t had many opportunities to pursue a college education, and he might have found himself feeling like he didn’t belong. But “I found the university both to be a place of academic excellence and also very welcoming and not daunting for someone like me, says Rochon. “I was an enlisted guy in the Navy. I came out and wanted to go to college and felt that the kind of receptiveness I got 51������ and the kind of contact I had with the professors there was extraordinary. I really loved that.” 

After graduation, Rochon attended Stanford Law School and then began working in Public Defender Service in Washington, D.C. After seven years, he decided to go into private practice, serving as a criminal defense lawyer for the next decade. 

During that time, he was lead counsel for more than 160 jury trials and argued cases before appellate courts across the country. 

“It was extremely emotionally intense and challenging—high stakes for my clients and high stakes in the murder cases for the families whose relatives had been killed,” Rochon says. 

For example, a feature story on Rochon in the May 1, 1998 edition of the Washington City Paper detailed the trial of Alvoid Hamilton, whom Rochon defended on a charge of murdering a man who had attempted to purchase drugs from him. The jury ultimately acquitted Hamilton, and “as far as I know, Alvoid never got in trouble again,” Rochon says. 

Interest in and commitment to public defense is a family affair for Rochon. He met his wife—also a public defender—while litigating in the Superior Court of the District of Columbia. Their daughter attends law school and works at the Public Defender’s office in Colorado Springs, and their son serves as an investigator for the Brooklyn Public Defender’s office and is planning on attending law school. 

“That wasn’t something we planned,” Rochon says of his children following in their parents’ footsteps. “But I’m gratified that they’re interested in this work because it’s incredibly important and very rewarding.” 

In 2002, Rochon became a member of the firm Miller & Chevalier, “a completely different kind of practice.” Now, his clients value his trial skills, but don’t necessarily want to go to trial. 

He frequently represents companies that are engaged in work overseas and have been alleged to have secured business through bribery. In connection with that work, he has traveled to more than 45 countries. 

Rochon said these kinds of allegations can surface in many ways—sometimes another government learns of a possible concern and alerts the U.S. authorities (the Securities and Exchange Commission or the Department of Justice), other times a whistleblower raises the alarm or companies self-identify potential problems. 

“These cases don’t go to trial, they don’t end up in conflict, they really turn on a responsible, reliable independent investigation that my firm and I conduct,” Rochon says. “They tend to be high stakes cases where the company’s reputation and a sizable chunk of money can be on the line and tend to involve big groups of lawyers.” He leads those teams and works with the DOJ and the SEC on a regular basis. 

Rochon also represented the Palestinian government in a significant case brought forward from the United States. 

“The Palestinian government was being sued in the United States for claims it was responsible for violent acts of others,” he says. “People were seeking billions and billions of dollars from the Palestine Authority, and that had me traveling to the Sinai Peninsula, to the West Bank, to Nablus, to Jerusalem, all over.” 

This complex litigation also required Rochon and his firm to work with multiple U.S. government agencies, including the U.S. State Department, due to the potential domestic political and national security issues. 

“I have not been bored!” Rochon says of his career. “I didn’t just plan on going out and having exciting work, but both as a public defender and then in private practice and my work at Miller, I’ve found all of it to be intensely interesting and have an emotional content that’s not what people usually associate with being a lawyer, and I like that. That’s what I go for. I like helping people, I like helping companies. Companies aren’t faceless and nameless. There are people who work there, and they care, and you work closely with them to try to get things right.” 

A believer in continuing education, Rochon recently earned his master’s degree in classics at St. John’s College, a liberal arts school with campuses in Annapolis, Maryland, and Santa Fe, New Mexico, where Rochon attended. In his application essay, Rochon described a graduate-level philosophy class he took as a student 51������, reading and discussing Kierkegaard. Rochon said that experience and the way the class was conducted resonated with the St. John’s approach to learning.  

“I think Western Michigan University, and the philosophy department in particular, is really at the foundation of a lot of my life,” Rochon says. “It grounded me in critical thinking, it grounded me in logical thinking and it gave me an appetite for learning that’s been lifelong. I am so grateful to play a role in supporting the department now, and going forward.” 

This story is published as part of the College of Arts and Sciences Annual Magazine—view the 2022 Magazine online.