Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a resolute defender of the environment, will deliver the Lock & Chain and Chimes/Hennings Lecture, “Our Environmental Destiny,” at 11 a.m. Feb. 25 in Graham Chapel for the Assembly Series.
Kennedy serves as senior attorney for the National Resources Defense Council and as president of the Waterkeeper Alliance.
He also is a clinical professor and supervising attorney at the Environmental Litigation Clinic at Pace University’s School of Law. The clinic takes a leading role in protecting New York City’s water supply and reservoirs.
Kennedy has also assisted several tribes in Latin America and Canada in successfully negotiating treaties protecting traditional homelands. He helped lead the fight to turn back anti-environmental legislation during the 104th Congress.
His reputation is built on a number of successful legal actions: prosecuting governments and companies for polluting the Hudson River and Long Island Sound; winning settlements for the Hudson Riverkeeper; arguing cases to expand citizen access to the shoreline; and suing sewage treatment plants to force compliance with the Clean Water Act.
Kennedy has published the books Judge Frank M. Johnson, Jr., A Biography (1978) and The Legend of City Water: Recommendations for Rescuing the New York City Water Supply (1991), which he co-wrote with David Gordon. He wrote his latest book, The Riverkeepers (1997), with John Cronin.
Kennedy has written numerous articles on environmental law and litigation as well as on environmental justice and advocacy issues. He has been published in The New York Times, Atlantic Monthly, The Wall Street Journal, Esquire, The Village Voice, The Boston Globe, The Washington Post and Pace Environmental Review, among others.
In addition, he is a licensed master falconer — he wrote the New York State Apprentice Falconer’s Manual.
A Harvard University graduate, Kennedy also studied at the London School of Economics and earned a degree from the University of Virginia Law School. He earned a master’s degree in environmental law from Pace University.
Assembly Series lectures are free and open to the public, though public seating for Kennedy’s talk will be limited.
For more information, call 935-4620 or go online to wupa.wustl.edu/assembly.
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