SIU law dean honors mentor

Dean Peter C. Alexander of the Southern Illinois University School of Law has established a scholarship as a tribute to one of his mentors.

John A. Maher, dean of the Dickinson School of Law at Penn State University from 1989 to 1994, hired Alexander as a law professor in 1992. They bonded, and Maher said he was broken-hearted when Alexander left in 2003 to head the SIU law school.

But he understood that Alexander, an SIU law graduate, was “a Saluki all the way. That was very clear from day one.”

Creation of the John A. Maher Scholarship Prize Endowment was a surprise and honor for the emeritus dean who taught at Dickinson for 33 years and coached moot court teams for 25 years.

Now a consultant on trade regulation law, Maher was a Pennsylvania securities commissioner, a savings bank director and an officer of several corporations.

Alexander remembers him as someone who felt that all people were important, irrespective of race, gender, ethnicity, sexual orientation or national origin.

“By most accounts, someone in John’s position – a very successful high-powered attorney who moved up the ranks of legal education and became a very well-respected dean – might be regarded as someone of privilege who might not be expected to think about the have-nots,” he said.

In Maher’s view, diversity is a fact of America, not an objective. “Our educational ideal should be to produce cosmopolitans, not people who are hung up on perpetuating diversity, but people who go forward every day and build the new world,” he said.

Alexander has seeded the scholarship endowment with a $10,000 contribution. The initial $1,000 award will be presented in April to a law student who reflects the Maher characteristics of professionalism, compassion, graciousness and a demand for excellence.

“We do a lot to celebrate academic and sports success,” Alexander said, “but it is equally important to recognize contributions by students who, by just being themselves, make the law school a better place.”