An expert in philosophy, theology and law and former chair of the Department of Philosophy and Religion at the University of Tulsa, F. Russell Hittinger, Ph.D., lectured at Benedictine University on October 27 and 28, 2010 as part of Benedictine University's "Visiting Scholar in Catholic Thought" lecture series.
Since 1996, he is the incumbent of the William K. Warren Chair of Catholic Studies at the University of Tulsa, where he is also a Research Professor in the School of Law. He specializes in issues of philosophy, theology and law. From 2002-2005 he was the Chair of the Department of Philosophy and Religion.
He has taught at Fordham University and at the Catholic University of America, and has taught as a Visiting Professor at Princeton University, New York University, Charles University in Prague, and at the Pontifical Università Regina Apostolorum in Rome.
For the academic year 2007-08 he was the Robert J. Randall Distinguished Visiting Professor in Christian Culture at Providence College.
Since 2001, he is a member of the Pontificia Academia Sancti Thomae Aquinatis (Pontifical Academy of St. Thomas Aquinas), to which he was elected a full member (ordinarius) in 2004, and to the consilium or governing board (as consiligere) in 2006. This is the Academy founded by Pope Leo XIII.
On Sept. 8, 2009, Pope Benedict XVI appointed Professor Hittinger as an ordinarius in the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences. He is one of two lay academics in the world to serve on two Pontifical academies.
His books and articles have appeared on the University of Notre Dame Press, Oxford University Press, Columbia University Press, Fordham University Press, the Review of Metaphysics, the Review of Politics, several law journals (American and European).
In 2000, he was a Senior Research Fellow at the Notre Dame Center for Ethics and Culture, where he is on the board of Advisors.
His most recent book Thomas Aquinas and the Rule of Law [Tommaso D’Aquino e La Rule of Law]. English-Italian. A Cura Di Fulvio Di Blasi (Classici della Filosofia Contemporanea) (Rubbettino, Soveria Mannelli, 2007). The First Grace: Re-Discovering Natural Law in a Post-Christian Age was published in Jan. 2003. His essays on papal social doctrine appeared last year in a two-volume work Law and Human Nature: Teachings of Modern Christianity (Columbia University Press, fall 2005).
His current book, Paper Wars: The Papacy and the Modern State will be published by Yale University Press next year. He is under contract with Emory to finish a book entitled Aquinas’s Questions on Law: A Primer
In 2003, to mark the centenary of the death of Pope Leo XIII, Professor Hittinger gave a lecture to Ministry of Culture of the Italian Government. In 2004 he gave “Secularity and the Anthropological Problem,” as the Inaugural Claude Ryan Lecture in Catholic Social Thought, McGill University in Montreal.
In December 2006, he addressed the President, Prime Minister, and Speakers of the Polish Parliament in the Royal Castle in Warsaw. His keynote address culminated a week-long celebration of human rights and the Polish constitution. In spring 2008, he gave the keynote address to the Pontifical Academy of Social Science.
His article “Privacy and Liberal Legal Culture” was part of a collection of articles that won the Silver Gavel Award of the American Bar Association in 1991. In May 1997 the John Templeton Foundation placed him on the Templeton Honor Roll for Teaching in the Liberal Arts. He has twice received the Josephine Yalch Zekan Award for the Best Scholarly Article in Faith and Law.
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