STARKVILLE, Miss.--Harvard Law School professor and author Randall L. Kennedy will speak Monday [Feb. 1] as Mississippi State launches the university's Black History Month observance.
Sponsored by the Richard Holmes Cultural Diversity Center, the public program begins at 7 p.m. in the Bettersworth Auditorium of Lee Hall.
Kennedy, 55, is considered among America's preeminent voices on race, with a reputation for fearlessness in tackling sensitive issues. His 2002 bestseller, "Nigger: The Strange Career of a Troublesome Word" (Pantheon) sparked a national debate on the history and sociology of the controversial and insulting term.
A native of Columbia, S.C., he holds degrees from Princeton and Oxford universities and the Yale University Law School. At Harvard, he is the Michael R. Klein Professor of Law.
Among Kennedy's other books: "Interracial Intimacies: Sex, Marriage, Identity and Adoption" (Vintage, 2004) and "Race, Crime, and the Law" (Random House Value Publishing, 1998). [For additional biographical information, visit www.law.harvard.edu/faculty/directory/index.html?id=36.]
For more information on the program, contact Ra'Sheda Boddie at 662-325-2033 or rboddie@saffairs.msstate.edu.
For more information about Mississippi State University, see http://www.msstate.edu/.
