Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to Give Environmental Talk at MHC March 24

Robert F. Kennedy, an environmental lawyer and author who is a resolute defender of the environment, will deliver a lecture at Mount Holyoke titled "Our Environmental Destiny" Friday evening, March 24. Students can meet him at 4 pm in Mary Woolley's New York Room.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr., an environmental lawyer and author who is a resolute defender of the environment, will deliver a lecture at Mount Holyoke titled "Our Environmental Destiny" Friday, March 24, at 7:30 pm in Mary Woolley's Chapin Auditorium. His speech is sponsored by the College's Center for Environmental Literacy (CEL) and the president's office. Kennedy will be available to meet students at 4 pm in Mary Woolley's New York Room.

"This high-profile event should reinforce the historic nature of this year's Earth Day for the Mount Holyoke campus. We're delighted to host Robert Kennedy," says Aaron Ellison, CEL director. April 22 marks the thirtieth anniversary of Earth Day, which was established to raise the nation's consciousness about environmental issues. Interestingly, John F. Kennedy played an important role in the development of the event. In 1963, President Kennedy gave national visibility to environmental issues by going on a nationwide five-day conservation tour, "spelling out in dramatic language the serious and deteriorating condition of the environment," said Senator Gaylord Nelson, founder of Earth Day. "For many reasons, the tour didn't achieve what I had hoped for," Nelson said. "It did not succeed in making the environment a national political issue. However, it was the germ of the idea that ultimately flowered into Earth Day."

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has continued and expanded upon his uncle's legacy of environmental activism. An accomplished environmental lawyer, Kennedy has successfully prosecuted governments and companies for polluting the Hudson River and Long Island Sound; won settlements for Riverkeeper, an independent environmental organization founded in 1983; argued cases to expand citizen access to the shoreline; and sued sewage treatment plants to force compliance with the Clean Water Act.

Kennedy serves as chief prosecuting attorney for Riverkeeper and senior attorney for the Natural 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. Kennedy's environmental efforts have been widespread. He has assisted several indigenous tribes in Latin America and Canada in treaties to protect their homelands. He is also credited with leading the fight to protect New York City's water supply, which involved a
watershed agreement that is regarded as an international model in stakeholder consensus negotiations and sustainable development.

The coauthor of the best-selling book The Riverkeepers (1997), Kennedy has published articles in the New York Times, Atlantic Monthly, and the Wall Street Journal. A graduate of Harvard, Kennedy received his law degree from the University of Virginia. He also holds a master's degree in environmental law from Pace University. Earlier in his career, he served as assistant district attorney in New York City.

President John F. Kennedy on a national conservation tour to draw attention to the deteriorating condition of the environment, September 1963. The tour planted the seeds for Earth Day, established six years later in 1969.