MONMOUTH, Ill. — Heidi M. Hurd, dean of the
College of Law at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, will be
the featured speaker at Monmouth College’s 147th commencement exercises at
Monmouth College on May 9.
A scholar of law and philosophy, Hurd was named
the college’s 11th dean last July. She holds the titles of David C. Baum
professor of law and professor of philosophy, and she also co-directs the
university’s new program in law and philosophy.
“Not only are we getting an outstanding individual
with a great academic reputation to give our commencement address, but we
are also continuing a connection that has greatly benefited our students,”
said Monmouth College president Richard Giese. “Through the years, several
of our students have attended the University of Illinois’ law school and
have gone on to great things in that profession.”
Hurd, who most recently taught at the University
of San Diego Law School, spent most of her career as a professor at the
University of Pennsylvania Law School, where she also served as associate
dean for academic affairs and co-founded and directed the Institute for
Law and Philosophy.
During her years at Penn, she was a visiting
professor at the University of Virginia School of Law and the University
of Iowa philosophy department, and she spent several summers teaching law
and political theory in Germany, Hungary and the Ukraine.
At San Diego, she was named the Herzog Research
Professor of Law and last spring she was a visiting research fellow at the
Australian National University’s Research School of Social Sciences.
The author of “Moral Combat” (Cambridge University
Press, 1999), Hurd has published articles in the Journal of Contemporary
Legal Issues, Law and Philosophy, Legal Theory, the Boston University Law
Review, the Michigan Law Review, the Notre Dame Law Review, the Southern
California Law Review and the Yale Law Journal.
She is co-editor-in-chief of Law and Philosophy.
In 1999, she provided testimony before the U.S. House Judiciary Committee
on the Hate Crime Prevention Act of 1999.
Hurd graduated with honors from Queen’s University
in Kingston, Ontario, Canada, in 1982. She received a master’s degree in
philosophy in 1984 from Dalhousie University. She completed her law degree
in 1988 at the University of Southern California and earned a doctorate in
philosophy in 1992, also at USC.
The commencement exercises will begin at noon on
Wallace Hall plaza, weather permitting. The public is invited.
