Kerry Kennedy — President, Robert F. Kennedy Center for Justice & Human Rights Thursday, April 9, 2015

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Thursday, April 9, 2015kennedy

Jorgensen Center for the Performing Arts

Free Admission

 

Presented in collaboration with Community Outreach, the Humanities Institute, and the School of Fine Arts.

Sackler Distinguished Lecture featuring Kerry Kennedy

4:00p.m.  – Reception

Co-sponsored by Community Outreach 20th Anniversary Commemoration

5:00p.m.  –  Performance

Dramatic reading of excerpts from the play Speak Truth To Power: Voice from Beyond the Dark by Ariel Dorfman based on the book by Kerry Kennedy with photographs by Eddie Adams.

Co-sponsored by the Humanities Institute in collaboration with the School of Fine Arts.  Directed by Vincent J. Cardinal, Chair of the Department of Dramatic Arts and Creative Director of Connecticut Repertory Theatre.

5:45p.m.  –  Sackler Distinguished Lecture

“Speak Truth To Power”

Kerry Kennedy

6:30p.m.  –  Audience Questions

Kerry Kennedy, Director Vincent J. Cardinal and actors

The Thomas J. Dodd Research Center is proud to present the 2015 Raymond and Beverly Sackler Distinguished Lecture by Kerry Kennedy, President of Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights.

Ms. Kennedy’s established RFK Human Rights in 1986 as the Robert F. Kennedy Center for Justice and Human Rights, and has devoted her life to the vindication of equal justice, to the promotion and protection of basic rights, and to the preservation of the rule of law. She has worked on diverse human rights issues such as children’s rights, child labor, disappearances, indigenous land rights, judicial independence, freedom of expression, ethnic violence, impunity, and the environment. She has concentrated specifically on women’s rights, exposing injustices and educating audiences about women’s issues, particularly honor killings, sexual slavery, domestic violence, workplace discrimination, sexual assault, abuse of prisoners, and more. She has worked in over 60 countries and led hundreds of human rights delegations. At a time of diminished idealism and growing cynicism about public service, her life and lectures are testaments to the commitment to the basic values of human rights.

In addition to the talk by Kerry Kennedy, this year’s Sackler Lecture features a dramatic reading of excerpts from the play Speak Truth To Power: Voices from Beyond the Dark by Ariel Dorfman based on the book by Kerry Kennedy with photographs by Eddie Adams.

Speak Truth to Power: Voices from Beyond the Dark, premiered at the Kennedy Center for Performing Arts in Washington D.C. in the year 2000, and broadcast as part of PBS’s The Kennedy Center Presents. The play chronicles the true-story accounts of heroic people withstanding horrific human rights abuses across the globe. It has been produced across the United States and performed around the world.

The dramatic reading is sponsored by the Humanities Institute in collaboration with the School of Fine Arts. Directed by Vincent J. Cardinal, Chair of the Department of Dramatic Arts and Creative Director of Connecticut Repertory Theatre.