Simon's award requires him to give lectures at various Islamic law schools. Additionally, Simon plans to collect Asian writings and cases to expand his textbook Law and Philosophy, and he has also started an ambitious program to establish Malaysia’s first philosophy department in the University’s Center for Civilization Dialogue.

Simon received his B.A. in Philosophy from St. Lawrence University (1967), his Ph.D. in Philosophy from Washington University (1973), and his J.D. from the University of Illinois Law School in 1991. In 1988, he served as Fellow in Liberal Arts at Harvard Law School. In addition to over forty articles, his publications include Democracy and Social Injustice (1995); Law & Philosophy (2000); Justice and Genocide (2005); and two forthcoming works Minority Rights and Wrongs and Global Injustices on Trial. He founded and edited Injustice Studies, an electronic journal, and he regularly consults for the United Nations Working Group on Minorities and the American Bar Association Central/Eastern European Law Initiative. He served on a drafting committee for Albania's new constitution, and as a practicing attorney, he has represented a Diaspora Rwandan group in an extradition case to the Ad Hoc War Crimes Tribunal for Rwanda. He has held multiple visiting appointments and fellowships, including a Fulbright to serve on the University of Ljubljana Law Faculty in Slovenia in 1999.