RANDALL KENNEDY TO SPEAK AT ADRIAN COLLEGE CONVOCATION posted 2/3/04

Randall Kennedy will speak at convocation in Dawson Auditorium on Feb.11 at 12:15 p.m.

Kennedy is a professor at Harvard Law School. He is a graduate of Princeton University and Yale Law School, and was a Rhodes Scholar. He served as a clerk to Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall. He was awarded the Robert F. Kennedy Book Award for "Race, Crime and the Law". Mr. Kennedy writes for a wide range of scholarly and general interest publications, and sits on the editorial boards of The Nation, Dissent, and The American Prospect.

Professor Kennedy's most recent book, "Interracial Intimacies: Sex, Marriage, Identity, and Adoption," published in the spring of 2003, looks at the explosive issue of inter-racial intimacy. His book, which "puts a tracer on" America's most famous derogatory word, is a must-read for all students of American life. When followed through popular culture, the court system, academia, and disparate racial communities, the word "nigger" and its relative acceptability is in constant flux. It has been used to remove judges and inflame juries, as a term of endearment and one of derision, and to ban as well as celebrate certain books.

Dawson Auditorium is located on Charles Street on the Adrian College campus. (campus map)

Release by Rebekah Hoffman '07