Robert F. Kennedy Jr. will inspire SUNY Fredonia students to think and act for the benefit of the world at large when he comes to campus this fall as the Williams Distinguished Visiting Professor to deliver the Maytum Convocation Lecture on Wednesday, Sept. 21, at 4 p.m. in King Concert Hall. After his talk, he will take questions from the audience. A book-signing with Mr. Kennedy will follow at approximately 5:45 in the Williams Center.
 
Admission to the lecture is free and open to the public, but tickets are required. The university’s Central Ticket Office in the Williams Center is issuing tickets on a first-come, first-served basis. Four tickets is the maximum any person can receive.
 
“The lecture will to launch another invigorating academic year at SUNY Fredonia,” President Dennis L. Hefner said. “Mr. Kennedy has written and spoken extensively on environmental issues that impact all of us.”
 
SUNY Fredonia’s 2005-06 convocation theme, “Leaving Global Footprints,” will be introduced by Mr. Kennedy’s lecture, and be highlighted throughout both the fall and spring semester with events which have been proposed and organized by faculty and staff. “No American family has left larger global footprints over the past half-century than the Kennedys,” President Hefner said.
 
The speaker is the third of 11 children born to Ethel and the late Robert F. Kennedy. He is a lawyer, environmentalist, and radio host on the Air America Radio network. Well-known for prosecuting polluters of the Hudson River, he and fellow environmental attorney John Cronin created a partnership with Pace University and the Riverkeepers organization to enable law students to try cases against further polluters of the Hudson River under a special court order. Kennedy is the co-author with Mr. Cronin of the book, The Riverkeepers, which chronicles the exploitation of the Hudson River and the subsequent activism of those who worked to save it by employing environmental law and the energy of the environmental movement.
 
Mr. Kennedy graduated from Harvard University and the University of Virginia Law School. He is Senior Attorney for the Natural Resources Defense Council, one of the largest environmental advocacy organizations in North America, and is president of the Waterkeepers Alliance, which supports people who want to protect a body of water or watershed in their community.
 
Sharing the middle name of Francis with his father, Mr. Kennedy felt especially close to St. Francis while growing up, and has written the children’s illustrated book, St. Francis of Assisi: A Life of Joy. The book reflects not only his lifelong connection to this saint, but his passion for nature. The book weaves together the major threads of Francis’s life: his early kindness to beggars in his family's fabric shop; his call to and ultimate rejection of a military career; his estrangement from his wealthy father; and his ministry to lepers, the impoverished, and animals.