Professor Hilbert is a former civil rights plaintiffs’ attorney and one of the plaintiffs’ lawyers on the 1995 Minneapolis NAACP desegregation lawsuit. He has written on issues of school segregation and is active in issues of education and civil rights, currently serving as the chair of the St. Paul NAACP education committee and as a member of the joint Integration Task Force established by the St. Paul School District and the St. Paul Federation of Teachers.