Ohio University’s Kennedy Lecture Series was established in 1962 by a gift from OHIO alumni and stalwart supporters Edwin L. and Ruth Kennedy. The Kennedy Lecture Series aims to bring speakers who appeal to a broad cross-section of the OHIO community to the Athens Campus to discuss significant issues in American life.

2018-2019 Speakers

Molly Hughes, Production Designer
Monday, September 10, 2018
7:30 p.m. in Memorial Auditorium
Admission is free, doors open at 6:30 p.m.

Molly Hughes has spent more than a decade working as an Art Director, most notably in London on the Harry Potter franchise films with Academy Award-winning Production Designer Stuart Craig. She also served as an Art Director on Steven Spielberg’s War Horse and as

Supervising Art Director on Tony Gilroy’s The Bourne Legacy.

Since making the leap to Production Designer in 2012 with director Max Nichols’s Two Night Stand, starring Miles Teller, she has worked with Oscar-winning directors Amy Berg and Charlie Kaufman, as well as the renowned Norwegian director, Joachim Trier, on his first English language film, Louder Than Bombs.

Hughes designed the highly acclaimed box office success, The Fault in Our Stars, for Temple Hill Entertainment and Fox 2000, with director Josh Boone—a collaboration revisited for Boone’s next film, X-Men: The New Mutants, to be released in summer 2019.

She recently wrapped production on the Walt Disney motion picture, The One and Only Ivan (based on Katherine Applegate's Newbery Medal-winning and best-selling novel) with acclaimed theater director Thea Sharrock.

Anita Hill, J.D.
From Social Movement to Social Impact: Putting an End
to Sexual Harassment in the Workplace
Monday, April 1, 2019
7:30 p.m. in Memorial Auditorium
Admission is free, doors open at 6:30 p.m.

Anita Hill is University Professor of Social Policy, Law, and Women's, Gender and Sexuality Studies at Brandeis University. She is a women's rights icon and the chair of the Commission on Sexual Harassment and Advancing Equality in the Workplace, which the entertainment industry formed in response to the #MeToo movement.

In 1991 at the Senate Judiciary confirmation hearing for Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, Ms. Hill courageously testified that Justice Thomas had sexually harassed her.

In the process she inspired a generation of activists to fight sexual harassment and the unequal treatment of women. Anita speaks about how to end sexual harassment by creating positive change within organizations. She offers powerful insight into how women can defend their rights to equal opportunity, and help foster organizational cultures that uphold respect for women and human dignity.

Hill’s latest book, Reimagining Equality: Stories of Gender, Race and Finding Home (Beacon Press, 2011) combines the study of commercial and anti-discrimination law with an examination of culture and society to address the 2008 foreclosure crisis and its ongoing impact.