Honorary Degree Recipients
In addition to our 2025 Commencement Speaker, Sister Deirdre Byrne, POSC, these honored individuals will receive the Doctorate of Humane Letters during the 2025 Commencement exercises.
Denise Burke
Denise Burke serves as senior counsel with Alliance Defending Freedom, where she is a member of the Center for Public Policy. In this role, her efforts are directed toward protecting life from conception to natural death and defending the conscience rights of healthcare professionals.
In her current role, Burke helped craft the Mississippi Gestational Age Act which was challenged in court—a challenge that eventually resulted in the overturning of Roe v. Wade in the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization case on the Feast of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, June 24, 2022. Burke’s work on the overall legislative strategy and her expert legal assistance to attorneys for the State of Mississippi in the lower court defense of the law has contributed to the protection of women and their unborn children across the nation.
Prior to joining ADF, Burke served as vice president of legal affairs for Americans United for Life, where she routinely advised legislators, policy groups, and state attorneys general on life issues. In addition, Burke testified before legislative committees on the constitutionality of pro-life legislation.
Burke began her career with the Judge Advocate General’s Corps, United States Air Force, both on active duty and in the reserve. Rising to the rank of lieutenant colonel, she served as an instructor at the USAF JAG School and on the editorial board of the Air Force Law Review. In response to the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, Burke volunteered to serve again on active duty.
In recognition of her service, the Air Force awarded her the Meritorious Service Medal, the National Defense Service Medal, and the Global War on Terrorism Service Medal.
A member of the state bar of Texas, Burke is admitted to practice before the U.S. Supreme Court, the Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces, and multiple federal district and appellate courts.
She earned her bachelor’s degree in business management from the University of Maryland, followed by her Juris Doctor from Southern Methodist University.
Burke is the mother of graduating Benedictine College senior and nursing major, Leah Burke.
Kellie M. Fiedorek
Kellie M. Fiedorek serves as senior counsel and director of government affairs for Alliance Defending Freedom. In this role, Fiedorek brings over a decade of experience working with the public sector to equip and engage a broad alliance committed to protecting the Constitution and the rule of law.
Fiedorek was a member of the team that drafted Mississippi’s law that empowers women and protects life and worked with the Mississippi Attorney General’s Office as it defended the law. Her efforts contributed to the overturning of the egregious Roe v. Wade decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, restoring to the people and their elected representatives the right to protect the lives of women and their families.
Fiedorek is responsible for building strategic relationships and engaging leaders throughout the public sector and broader alliance. She also helps to direct and implement the team’s vision to engage allies in ADF’s advocacy efforts and provide career development to help them secure positions of leadership throughout the legal system. She serves a key role working on a number of the organization’s leadership and training programs, including the ADF Summit, the Blackstone Legal Fellowship, Legal Academy, and Policy Allies Workshop.
Previously, Fiedorek authored federal and state legislation and advised elected officials and policy organizations on how to protect the sanctity of life, First Amendment freedoms, and Title IX. She has testified before state legislatures across the country, and, from 2012 to 2015, she litigated important cases advancing religious liberty and marriage.
Fiedorek earned her bachelor’s degree in theology from the University of Dallas in 2006 and her juris doctor from Ave Maria School of Law in 2009. She is a Blackstone Fellow from the class of 2008. She is a member of the Florida and District of Columbia bars and is admitted to practice before the U.S. Supreme Court and multiple federal appellate courts.
Erin M. Hawley
Erin Morrow Hawley serves as senior counsel and Vice President to the Life and Regulatory practice teams at Alliance Defending Freedom. Before joining ADF, Hawley practiced appellate law at Kirkland and Ellis LLP, Bancroft LLP, and King & Spalding LLP, all in Washington, D.C.
Hawley has litigated extensively before the U.S. Supreme Court as well as numerous federal courts of appeals and state courts of last resort. She also worked at the Department of Justice, serving as counsel to Attorney General Michael Mukasey.
Hawley served as co-counsel to Mississippi in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health in front of the Supreme Court, successfully defending the Gestational Age Act as a legitimate exercise of state authority.
Her work led to the most pivotal success for the pro-life movement in the last 50 years and set the stage for the future of the pro-life movement in America.
As an academic, Hawley served as an associate professor of law at the University of Missouri where she taught constitutional litigation, federal income tax, tax policy, and agricultural law.
She also taught constitutional law as a senior fellow at the Kinder Institute for Constitutional Democracy. Her scholarship focuses primarily on federal courts and has been published in numerous top journals.
Hawley is a frequent commentator on legal issues. Her work has been quoted or featured in the Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, US News, USA Today, Fox News, the Washington Examiner, World, the Legal Times, and the Hill, among others. Hawley has also written a book on motherhood, entitled “Living Beloved: Lessons from My Little Ones About the Heart of God.”
Hawley is a former law clerk to U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice John G. Roberts and Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit.
Hawley received her bachelor’s degree in animal science from Texas A&M University and her law degree from Yale Law School where she served as a Coker Fellow in Constitutional Law and on the Yale Law Journal. Hawley is an active member of the Missouri, Virginia, and District of Columbia bars and is admitted to practice before the U.S. Supreme Court and various federal courts of appeals.
Hawley and her husband, U.S. Senator Josh Hawley, have three children, the youngest often accompanying Erin on trips related to the Mississippi law and the Dobbs case.