Austin D. Sarat to deliver public lecture April 23 as IIT Chicago-Kent's 2012 Centennial Visitor

Austin D. Sarat, the William Nelson Cromwell Professor of Jurisprudence and Political Science and chair of the Political Science Department at Amherst College, has been named IIT Chicago-Kent College of Law's Centennial Visitor for 2012. Professor Sarat will deliver the 2012 Centennial Lecture, "Keeping Civility in its Place: Dissent, Injustice and the Lessons of History," at 3:30 p.m. on April 23 in the Governor Richard B. Ogilvie Auditorium at IIT Chicago-Kent College of Law, 565 West Adams Street (between Clinton and Jefferson streets) in Chicago. The lecture is free and open to the public, but reservations are requested. A reception will follow the lecture. Please RSVP to Ms. Tasha Kincade, assistant to Dean Krent, at tkincade@kentlaw.iit.edu.

Professor Sarat is a distinguished scholar who has written, co-written, or edited more than 75 books in the fields of law and political science. A member of the Amherst College faculty since 1974, his primary research interest is the use of the death penalty which, he believes, provides a unique opportunity to examine American values and beliefs and how they are manifested in the American legal system. Professor Sarat's 2002 book, Mercy on Trial: What it Means to Stop an Execution (Princeton University Press), provides what the journal Theoretical Criminology called "a nuanced analysis of Governor [George] Ryan's high-profile and controversial mass commutation." His most recent book, Imagining Legality: Where Law Meets Popular Culture (University of Alabama Press 2011), is a collection of essays on the relationship between law and popular culture that examines how the law is perceived by the public through its depictions in the media.

Professor Sarat completed his undergraduate studies at Providence College and earned his master's degree and doctorate from the University of Wisconsin. He earned his law degree from Yale.

IIT Chicago-Kent College of Law is the law school of Illinois Institute of Technology, a private, Ph.D.-granting institution with programs in engineering, psychology, architecture, business, design and law. The Centennial Visitor lecture series was inaugurated in fall 1987 as part of a year-long celebration to mark the founding of IIT Chicago College of Law, forerunner of IIT Chicago-Kent, in 1888. Previous lecturers have included Hon. Harry T. Edwards of the U.S. Court of Appeals for District of Columbia Circuit, Hon. Stephen M. Schwebel of the International Court of Justice in the Hague, economist Jagdish Bhagwati, and Harvard Law School Dean Martha Minow.