LATROBE, PA – Saint Vincent College will host Ross Hetrick, president of the Thaddeus Stevens Society, during “A Celebration of Due Process,” scheduled to begin at 6 p.m. on Tuesday, Oct. 13, inside the Fred M. Rogers Center on campus.
“One hundred sixty years ago, Congress passed and sent to the states a document that is one of the key foundations of individual liberty,” said Dr. Bruce Antkowiak, C’74, JD, event organizer, professor of law and director of the College’s pre-law program. “The Fourteenth Amendment offers protection against the government’s deprivation of life, liberty and property without due process of law and the guarantee that states must afford equal protection of the law to all.”
Stevens (1792-1868), a lawyer and congressman from Pennsylvania, was one of the principal authors of the Fourteenth Amendment. He was a forceful opponent of slavery and a champion of the rights of those freed from slavery by the Civil War. His political acumen led him to skillfully manage the amendment’s passage by Congress when such an outcome was hardly a certainty.
During the event, a trio of professors from the College’s Alex G. McKenna School of Business, Economics and Government will provide brief presentations about Stevens and the Fourteenth Amendment. They will discuss research they have conducted on aspects of the search for a definition of rights through time.
The presenters include Dr. Jerome C. Foss, assistant vice president of academic affairs and Core Curriculum, founding director of SVC Honors and professor of political science; Dr. Jason Jividen, associate professor and chair of the Political Science Department, and Philip M. McKenna Endowed Chair in American and Western Political Thought; and Antkowiak.
Hetrick will then present himself as Stevens to recount the congressman’s efforts at the time of the amendment’s passage and engage faculty and students in a discussion of this critical milestone in American history.
The Gettysburg-based Thaddeus Stevens Society is a nonprofit organization started in 1999 to promote, preserve and protect Stevens’ legacy. In addition to seminars, the Society sponsors trips to historic places associated with the late abolitionist and supports efforts to restore sites related to Stevens.
The free event is open to the public and no preregistration is required. The event is being funded by a generous donation from the Mizner Law Firm of Erie.
