This week, the second Republican 2016 presidential primary debate comes to Southern California’s Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley. Chapman University Dale E. Fowler School of Law Professor and nationally syndicated radio host Hugh Hewitt will serve as one of the co-panelists moderating the debate to be held on Wednesday, September 16 and which airs on CNN and the Salem Radio Network.

While Professor Hewitt’s tough and substantive questioning of Republican nominees may have caused more than an occasional reference to him in the media over the past few weeks, as a detailed profile titled “Who is Hugh Hewitt?” printed in the September 4, 2015 edition of The Washington Post points out – including a discussion of his faculty status here at Fowler School of Law –  Professor Hewitt is a serious expert and seasoned veteran in the fields of both law and politics.

Those facts have not escaped us here at Fowler School of Law, where Professor Hewitt serves as a full-time, tenured faculty member and where, for more than 20 years, he has been teaching classes and serving integral roles in faculty governance (including chairing at one time or another almost every major faculty committee). Professor Hewitt’s constitutional expertise and high-level governmental experience make it fitting that the principal course he teaches at Fowler School of Law is Constitutional Law. Hewitt also serves as the faculty advisor to one of Fowler School of Law’s two student-edited law journals, the Nexus Journal of Law & Policy. Professor Hewitt maintains this vibrant presence as a leader in the law school community, while also excelling as a lawyer, broadcast journalist and columnist at the same time.

Professor Hewitt is an honors graduate in government from Harvard College and received his JD from the University of Michigan Law School where he graduated Order of the Coif. He served for nearly six years in the Reagan Administration in a variety of posts including Assistant Counsel in the White House and Special Assistant to the Attorney General of the United States. Since returning to California in 1989 to oversee the construction of the Nixon Library in Yorba Linda, Hewitt has served as a member of the California Arts Council, the South Coast Air Quality Management District, and the Orange County Children and Families Commission.

Although we know him at Fowler School of Law as “professor of law,” Hewitt is likely best known to many as the host of his radio show, heard in more than 120 cities across the United States every weekday afternoon and which has an audience estimated at more than 2 million listeners every week. Hewitt also writes daily for his blog, HughHewitt.com, which is among the most visited political and law blogs in the United States. He is also a weekly columnist for The Washington Examiner and Townhall.com. In a 2006 profile of Hewitt for The New Yorker, the dean of the Columbia University School of Journalism told his readers that Hewitt was “the most influential conservative you have never heard of.” Professor Hewitt has been a frequent guest on CNN, Fox News Network and MSNBC, and has written for The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and the Los Angeles Times.

Professor Hewitt received three Emmys during his decade of work as co-host of the week-night television news and public affairs show Life & Times on PBS Los Angeles affiliate KCET-TV. He also conceived of and hosted the eight-part 1996 PBS television series Searching For God In America, and he authored a companion book by the same name. Indeed, Professor Hewitt is the author of more than a dozen books, including two New York Times best sellers. Among his books are: The Queen: The Epic Ambition of Hillary and the Coming of a Second “Clinton Era” (2015); The Happiest Life: Seven Gifts, Seven Givers & the Secret to Genuine Success (2014), Talking with Pagans (2013); The Brief Against Obama: The Rise, Fall, and Epic Fail of the Hope & Change Presidency (2012); The Good and Faithful Servant: A Small Group Study on Politics and Government for Christians (2009); The Fair Tax Fantasy (2009) (with Hank Adler); GOP 5.0: Republican Renewal Under President Obama (2009); The War Against the West (2008); Letter to a Young Obama Supporter (2008); A Mormon in the White House? (2007); Painting The Map Red: The Fight To Create A Permanent Republican Majority (2006); Blog: Understanding the Information Reformation That’s Changing Your World, (2005); If It’s Not Close, They Can’t Cheat (2004); In, But Not Of (2003); The Embarrassed Believer (1998); and First Principles: A Primer of Ideas for the College Bound Student  (1987).

Leading up to the debate, Professor Hewitt was profiled in The Washington Post articles “Who is Hugh Hewitt?” and “Meet the three people moderating Wednesday’s Republican presidential debate,” featured in Politico Magazine‘s Politico 50 list, and interviewed on Meet the Press with Chuck Todd and CNN.