On September 12, 1997, the day of her departure from the presidency of the Irish Republic, Mary Robinson was in her element.

She had chosen to make a tour of a social housing project in Smithfield, Dublin, her last official public act before departing that afternoon for Geneva and her new post as United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights.

Her trip to the development was both a fitting end to her presidency and start to her new job. Ever since Robinson first entered politics as a Irish senator almost 30 years ago, her career has been motivated by compassion for the disadvantaged and a strong commitment to human rights.

Robinson, who will give the keynote address at today's Commencement, will devote her remarks to commemorating the 50th anniversary of the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which forms the centerpiece of her agenda at the U.N.

Robinson has followed a remarkable path to fame. Rising from the youngest professor of law ever appointed to Trinity College, to the first woman Irish president and finally to U.N. high commissioner, Robinson has become one of the most powerful and fearless voices for human rights in the world.

Now she faces an uphill fight against the entrenched bureaucracy of the U.N. and the restrictive protocol of international diplomacy, but if her record of overcoming obstacles is any indication, it is a fight she is up to.

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Mary Terese Robinson was born May 21, 1944, in Baline, County Mayo, in western Ireland. Both her parents were doctors.

She attended Trinity College in Dublin and came to Harvard in 1967. She received a masters of law degree in 1968.

After leaving Harvard, Robinson returned to Trinity to become a professor of constitutional law.

At 25, she was the youngest law professor in the university's 400-year history.

But Robinson faced--and overcame--barriers in her academic career from the outset, says Dick Walsh, political editor of the Irish Times.

"She took on her male colleagues and competed and never sought any concessions," Walsh says.

She won election to the Irish Senate representing Trinity (universities are represented in the upper house of the Irish legislature), a seat she held until moving on to the presidency.

While at Trinity, Robinson became a vocal advocate for human rights, fighting in the courts for the rights of women, married and separated couples, children, the handicapped, homosexuals (who were subject to life imprisonment under an obscure 19th century law), the poor and the unemployed.