Jonathan Kozol to speak at Kent State’s Stark campus tomorrow

Kent State’s Stark campus will host Jonathan Kozol as the second speaker in this year’s Featured Speaker Series tomorrow night.

Kozol will present “The Shame of the Nation” at 7:30 p.m. in the Timken Great Hall of the Professional Education and Conference Center at the Stark campus.

Kozol is an educator, activist and award-winning author whose writing focuses on the shortcomings of the American public education system.

His first book, Death at an Early Age, chronicled his experiences while teaching in the Boston public schools. It sold more than 2 million copies in the United States and Europe and won the National Book Award in 1968.

His most recent book, The Shame of the Nation: The Restoration of Apartheid Schooling in America, focuses on the segregation that still exists in American public schools today.

Pamela Bash, the senior development associate at the Stark campus and the coordinator of this year’s Featured Speaker Series, said a variety of Kozol’s books will be on sale at the event. Kozol will be available for a book signing after the speech.

The presentation is free and open to the community, but seating is on a first-come, first-serve basis.

– Rebekah Mosora