Calendar of Events

Allen Hurlbert '94, PhD
Associate Professor
Department of Biology
University of North Carolina

In the Hurlbert Lab, we ask questions about the structure of ecological communities and the processes that are responsible for determining the patterns of diversity, composition, turnover and relative abundance both within local assemblages and around the globe. Our work spans vertebrate, invertebrate and plant communities, and we use a variety of approaches from manipulative experiments to modeling to working with global-scale data sets.

The Amherst Political Union welcomes Paul Smith ’76, P’09 for a talk on "Vote Suppression, Gerrymandering and the Supreme Court."

Smith was elected to the Amherst College Board of Trustees in 2016. He is a Distinguished Visiting Professor from Practice at Georgetown Law School and vice president for litigation and strategy at the Campaign Legal Center, which seeks to protect voting rights, to defend reasonable campaign finance regulation and to enforce government ethics rules. Before taking these positions in 2017, he practiced law at the firm of Jenner & Block LLP, where he became one of the most prominent Supreme Court advocates of his generation. He has handled many cases involving civil rights and civil liberties, notably in the areas of free speech, voting rights and gay rights. He has argued 21 cases before the U.S. Supreme Court, including the landmark gay-rights case Lawrence v. Texas, as well as Brown v. EMA, which established the First Amendment rights of video game producers.

Smith has received multiple awards for his work promoting civil rights and civil liberties, including the 2010 Thurgood Marshall Award from the American Bar Association. He is a member and former chair of the board of the American Constitution Society, and a former member and co-chair of the board of Lambda Legal. He also is on the boards of the Folger Shakespeare Library, the Castleton Festival and the Electronic Privacy Information Center.