IWU News Services News Releases

30 March 1998 CONTACT: Stew Salowitz, 309-556-3206

Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., to Speak at IWU

Attorney and activist Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., will speak on environmental issues at Illinois Wesleyan University on Friday, April 3. Kennedy' speech, which is free and open to the public, will be at 7 p.m. in the Main Lounge of the Memorial Student Center on campus.
Kennedy, a son of the former U.S. Attorney General, New York senator and Democratic presidential hopeful, serves as chief prosecuting officer for the Hudson Riverkeeper organization, a New York-based environmental advocacy group, and as senior attorney for the National Resources Defense Council. He is also a clinical professor and supervising attorney at the Environmental Litigation Clinic at Pace University School of Law in New York, where he earned a master's degree in environmental law.
He has worked on environmental issues across the Americas and has assisted several indigenous tribes in Latin America and Canada in successfully negotiating treaties protecting traditional homelands.
Kennedy is the co-author, with John Cronin, of the 1997 book, "The Riverkeepers," which recounts the organization's legal and public relations battles against the polluters of the Hudson River. In the book, they trace the grass-roots environmental activism that culminated in the formation of Riverkeepers in 1983. Since then, the group has filed close to 100 lawsuits, reportedly induced polluters to pay close to a half billion dollars to help restore the river, achieved a landmark agreement to protect New York City's water supply, and spawned a number of similar groups.
The New York City watershed agreement, which Kennedy negotiated, is regarded as an international model in stakeholder consensus negotiations and sustainable development.
Kennedy's articles have appeared in numerous periodicals, including Atlantic Monthly, Esquire, The Wall Street Journal, and the New York Times, and he is the author of two other books: "New York State Department of Environmental Conservation" (1987) and "Judge Frank M. Johnson, Jr., A Biography" (1977).
A graduate of Harvard University, Kennedy studied at the London School of Economics and received his law degree from the University of Virginia Law School. Earlier in his career he served as assistant district attorney in New York City. He has worked on several political campaigns and was state coordinator for his uncle Edward M. Kennedy's 1980 presidential campaign.