Hugo Adam Bedau (September 23, 1926 – August 13, 2012) was the Austin B. Fletcher

Professor Professor (commonly abbreviated as Prof.) is an academic rank at universities and other post-secondary education and research institutions in most countries. Literally, ''professor'' derives from Latin as a "person who professes". Professors ...

of Philosophy, Emeritus, at

Tufts University Tufts University is a private research university on the border of Medford and Somerville, Massachusetts. It was founded in 1852 as Tufts College by Christian universalists who sought to provide a nonsectarian institution of higher learning. ...

, and is best known for his work on

capital punishment Capital punishment, also known as the death penalty, is the state-sanctioned practice of deliberately killing a person as a punishment for an actual or supposed crime, usually following an authorized, rule-governed process to conclude that t ...

. He has been called a "leading anti-death-penalty scholar" by

Stuart Taylor Jr. Stuart Taylor Jr. is an American journalist and author with conservative political leanings. He also served as a Nonresident Senior Fellow in Governance Studies at the Brookings Institution and practices law occasionally. He was a reporter for the ...

, who has quoted Bedau as saying "I'll let the criminal justice system execute all the McVeighs they can capture, provided they'd sentence to prison all the people who are not like McVeigh."

Career

Bedau earned his PhD from

Harvard University Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of high ...

in 1961 and subsequently taught at

Dartmouth College Dartmouth College (; ) is a private research university in Hanover, New Hampshire. Established in 1769 by Eleazar Wheelock, it is one of the nine colonial colleges chartered before the American Revolution. Although founded to educate Native ...

Princeton University Princeton University is a private research university in Princeton, New Jersey. Founded in 1746 in Elizabeth as the College of New Jersey, Princeton is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and one of the ...

and

Reed College Reed College is a private liberal arts college in Portland, Oregon. Founded in 1908, Reed is a residential college with a campus in the Eastmoreland neighborhood, with Tudor-Gothic style architecture, and a forested canyon nature preserve at ...

before joining Tufts in 1966. He retired in 1999. Bedau was a founding member of the National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty, and served many years on its board of directors, including several as chairman. He was a member of the

American Civil Liberties Union The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) is a nonprofit organization founded in 1920 "to defend and preserve the individual rights and liberties guaranteed to every person in this country by the Constitution and laws of the United States". T ...

, for whom he wrote on the death penalty. Bedau was the author of ''The Death Penalty in America'' (1st edition, 1964; 4th edition, 1997), ''The Courts, the Constitution, and Capital Punishment'' (1977), ''Death is Different'' (1987), and ''Killing as Punishment'' (2004), and co-author of ''In Spite of Innocence'' (1992). On the occasion of Bedau's retirement,

Norman Daniels thumb Norman Daniels (born 1942) is an American political philosopher and philosopher of science, political theorist, ethicist, and bioethicist at Harvard University and the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. Before his career at Harvard ...

said of ''The Death Penalty in America'': "It is the premier example in this century of the systematic application of academic philosophical skills to a practical issue, and the flood of work in

practical ethics ''Practical Ethics'', a 1979 book by the moral philosopher Peter Singer, is an introduction to applied ethics. The book has been translated into a number of languages. Summary Singer analyzes, in detail, why and how beings' interests should be ...

that has followed can rightfully cite Hugo's work as its starting point." Bedau also published ''Civil Disobedience: Theory and Practice'' (Pegasus, 1969) and a later volume on the theory of civil disobedience.

Personal life

Bedau married twice. His first marriage to Jan Mastin, by whom he had four children, including the philosopher

Mark Bedau Mark A. Bedau is an American philosopher who works in the field of artificial life. He is the son of the philosopher Hugo Bedau (1926–2012). Bedau teaches philosophy at Reed College. He is also the co-founder of the European Center for Living ...

, ended in divorce. His second marriage, in 1990, was to Constance E. Putnam, a medical historian.

References

External links

Faculty Profile at Tufts University
{{DEFAULTSORT:Bedau, Hugo Adam 1926 births 2012 deaths Philosophers from Massachusetts Harvard University alumni Tufts University faculty Neurological disease deaths in the United States Deaths from Parkinson's disease

Career

Personal life

See also

References

External links