Kurt Schmoke, dean of the Howard University School of Law and former mayor of Baltimore, will deliver the Commencement address at Hamilton College on Sunday, May 22, at 10:30 a.m. Hamilton's commencement ceremony will take place on the Main Quadrangle, or in the event of inclement weather, in the Margaret Bundy Scott Field House.
Schmoke was the first African-American elected as mayor of Baltimore, in 1987, and served for three terms. Born in Baltimore in 1949, he attended the city's public schools and earned a bachelor's degree in history from Yale University, after which he attended Oxford University as a Rhodes Scholar. He earned a law degree from Harvard Law School in 1976.
During his tenure as mayor, Schmoke initiated programs in housing, education, public health and economic development. In 1992, President George Bush awarded him the national Literacy Award for promoting adult literacy, and in 1994 President Bill Clinton praised his programs to improve public housing and enhance community economic development. The Clinton Administration designated Baltimore one of six Empowerment Zone cities in 1994.
Schmoke's community-development projects included the transformation of the Sandtown-Winchester community in West Baltimore and the neighborhoods surrounding The Johns Hopkins medical institutions in East Baltimore. He strongly supported housing and was in the forefront of the national effort to tear down dilapidated, crime-plagued high-rise public housing developments and replace them with lower density, low-rise, mixed-income communities that better supported the healthy development of families.
Schmoke's other public service includes his appointment as assistant director, White House Domestic Policy Staff, under President Jimmy Carter.
Schmoke completed his third term as mayor of Baltimore in 1999 and did not seek re-election. A former partner in the international law firm of Wilmer, Cutler and Pickering, he was the State's Attorney from 1982 to 1987. He was appointed a fellow of the Yale Corporation, the governing body of Yale University, in 1989, where he served two six-year terms. Schmoke was appointed dean of the Howard University School of Law in January 2003.
Approximately 430 Hamilton students will receive bachelor's degrees during the commencement ceremony that marks the end of the college's 193rd academic year. Previous Hamilton Commencement speakers have included Delaware Congressman Mike Castle, a 1961 Hamilton graduate (2004), PBS news anchor Jim Lehrer (2003), former EPA Administrator and New Jersey Governor Christie Whitman (2002), and Iowa Governor Tom Vilsack, a 1972 Hamilton graduate (2001).
