Baylor Alumnus Will Present Annual Philosophy Homecoming Lecture

November 2, 2011
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Attorney Joe Hicks will present a lecture, "On Corporate Ontology: Is a Corporation a Person? And What Difference Does it Make?" at 3:30 p.m. Friday, Nov. 4, in Room 100 of Morrison Hall on the Baylor University campus. The event is free and open to the public.

Hosted by the department of philosophy at Baylor, Hicks will discuss what it means to treat a corporation as a legal "person," and what the role, limitation and importance is of such a word in human interaction. A reception will follow.

Hicks received his bachelor's degree from Baylor in 1959. At Baylor, he was a philosophy major and active in Baylor's debate program. After graduating, he went on to receive his divinity degree from Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary in 1962 and his doctoral degree in philosophy from Yale University in 1969. For several years, he taught philosophy, first at Mount Holyoke College in South Hadley, Mass., and then at Southern Methodist University (SMU) in Dallas.

While teaching at SMU, he received a grant to attend Harvard Law School for a year to study the relationship between his discipline and the law. There, he fell in love with law and was admitted as a regular student. He received his law degree from Harvard in 1975.
Since then, he has been an attorney in Boston. Hicks was with the Bingham McCutchen law firm from 1979 to 2006 and is now with the Greenberg Traurig firm. He has experience in corporate and securities law, mergers and acquisitions, corporate finance and international transactions. His clients range from a consumer goods retail chain with more than 500 properties in 12 states and more than $6 billion in annual revenue to young bioscience companies.
Each homecoming, the department of philosophy at Baylor sponsors a lecture by a departmental faculty member or a returning alumnus. For more information, contact the department at (254) 710-3368.
Morrison Hall is at 1410 S. Fifth St.
by Katy McDowall, student newswriter, (254) 710-6805