Editor’s Note: The Armenian Bar Association honored Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein and Robert Tembeckjian, administrator and counsel, New York State Commission on Judicial Conduct, at its public servants dinner Thursday night at the Yale Club. Here, in edited form, are Tembeckjian’s remarks:

These are not easy days to be in public service.  Our national leadership has strayed so far from the idealism embodied in the call of our 35th president to ask what we could do for our country.  It has now become a daily routine of the 45th president to denigrate the devoted men and women of our civic institutions: a respected court is derided as “disgraceful” for disagreeing with him, an honorable public servant is disparaged for directing a “witch hunt,” a dignified United States senator is ridiculed for having become a prisoner of war, ancient cultures are denigrated in malicious stereotype, and an entire gender is devalued and abased.