Virtual lecture on morality, race, and the environment features acclaimed Harvard professor Cornell William Brooks

Event concludes the 2021 New England Aquarium Lecture Series

WHAT: The New England Aquarium Lecture Series welcomes Cornell William Brooks, distinguished professor, civil rights attorney, ordained minister, and former president and CEO of the NAACP. Brooks will examine the responsibility humans have to the environment, a responsibility that can be morally described as “a calling.” At the moment, when many American cities are being economically revitalized and the global environment is existentially threatened, history morally calls urban residents and suburban neighbors to protect our environment—with a boldly different citizen activism.

The Aquarium Lecture Series is presented free to the public through the generosity of the Lowell Institute.

WHEN:  Monday, June 21 at 6:30 p.m.

HOW:  Register here for the free lecture. Participants will receive a confirmation email with a Zoom link.

WHO: Cornell William Brooks is the Hauser Professor of the Practice of Nonprofit Organizations and Professor of the Practice of Public Leadership and Social Justice at the Harvard Kennedy School. He is also Director of The William Monroe Trotter Collaborative for Social Justice at the School’s Center for Public Leadership, and Visiting Professor of the Practice of Prophetic Religion and Public Leadership at Harvard Divinity School He is the former president and CEO of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), a civil rights attorney, and an ordained minister.

Under his leadership, the NAACP secured 12 significant legal victories, including laying the groundwork for the first statewide legal challenge to prison-based gerrymandering. He also reinvigorated the activist social justice heritage of the NAACP and conceived of and led the 2015 “America’s Journey for Justice” march from Selma, Alabama, to Washington, D.C., over 40 days and 1,000 miles.

Professor Brooks holds a J.D. from Yale Law School and a Master of Divinity from Boston University’s School of Theology, where he was a Martin Luther Kind, Jr. Scholar. He is a fourth-generation ordained minister in the African Methodist Episcopal Church.

MEDIA CONTACT:

Pam Bechtold Snyder – psnyder@neaq.org, 617-686-5068