Dees also will be awarded an honorary degree from the College.

Dr. Benjamin Hooks, civil rights leader and former head of the NAACP, will be the speaker at the Sunday morning Baccalaureate Service, which will begin at 10:30 a.m. in Phelps Stokes Chapel. Currently Distinguished Professor of political science at the University of Memphis, Hooks served as executive director of the NAACP from 1977-92.

The day's other public events include the Nurses Pinning Service at 9 a.m. in Union Church and a reception from 4-5 p.m. in the Old Seabury Gymnasium for graduates and guests following Commencement.

Dees is chief trial counsel and chair of the executive board of the Southern Poverty Law Center, a non-profit group that maintains a pool of lawyers who specialize in lawsuits involving civil rights violations and racially motivated crimes. Co-founded by Dees in 1971 and supported today by contributions from 500,000 citizens across the nation, the Center has won millions of dollars in cases involving free speech, women's rights, the Ku Klux Klan and the White Aryan Resistance.

Dr. Benjamin Hooks

A proponent and teacher of tolerance, Dees is also the founder of "Teaching Tolerance," an award-winning Center project aimed at countering racist groups. Through the program, free tolerance education kits are provided to more than 75,000 schools across the country and the program's magazine "Teaching Tolerance" to more than 600,000 educators.

Other activities in which Dees has been involved include construction of the Civil Rights Memorial in Montgomery, Ala., dedicated in 1989, and efforts to educate people about America's radical militia movement. He published "Gathering Storm: America's Militia Threat" in 1996. He also has written an autobiography "A Season for Justice;" and "Hate on Trial: The Case Against America's Most Dangerous Neo-Nazi." Dees has twice been portrayed in major motion pictures.

A graduate of the University of Alabama School of Law, Dees has won numerous awards for his legal and educational work at the Center. His honors include being named "Trial Lawyer of the Year," by the Trial Lawyers for Public Justice and receiving the National Education Association's Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Award and honorary degrees from colleges and universities throughout the country.