Instructor: Sheila Suess Kennedy
Date: Thursday, May 10
Time:  12-3 p.m.
Location: IWC
Cost: $75 nonmembers, $48 members, $42 student members/teacher members/senior members/military members/librarian members
Walk-in registrations are Welcome!

Black Lives Matter, Dreamers, #metoo, gun control, global warming. Most of us have strong opinions about these issues, among others, and would like to be able to express ourselves in a way that might help effect change on the local, state, or national level. But how?

Sheila Suess Kennedy’s op eds and blog posts on current events never fail to bring clarity, insight, and even humor to the wide range of topics she writes about. They pop up frequently on Facebook pages, with comments like “Yes!” Right on!” “What she said!”

Now you can learn the strategies she uses to write passionately, in a compelling voice. “In an op-ed, you will have approximately 750 words in which to give a reader sufficient background/context to understand the importance of the issue, and convey two or three “take-aways,” Kennedy says. “A blog post will lose readers if it is much longer than 750.” Participants in this class will consider the importance of accuracy in presenting their ideas and learn methods to determine the credibility of available information upon which they intend to rely. They will participate in an exercise to help them establish a topic and takeaways, identify their audience, and come up with an eye-grabbing title. You’ll leave the class with the draft of a blog post or op ed you can hone toward publication.

Sponsored by the PEN America’s Press Freedom Incentive Fund

Sheila Suess Kennedy is Professor of Law and Public Policy at the School of Public and Environmental Affairs at Indiana University Purdue University Indianapolis. She is a Faculty Fellow with both the Center for Religion and American Culture and the Tobias Center for Leadership Excellence, an adjunct professor of political science and founder of the Center for Civic Literacy at IUPUI.

Professor Kennedy holds a B.S. from Indiana University, and received her J.D. with honors from I.U. in 1975, where she was managing editor of the Indiana Law Review. She practiced real estate, administrative and business law in Indianapolis, first at Baker & Daniels and later as a partner with Mears, Crawford, Kennedy & Eichholz, and served as Corporation Counsel for the City of Indianapolis from 1977-1980. In 1980, she was the Republican candidate for Indiana’s then 11^th Congressional District seat. Professor Kennedy was president of Kennedy Development Services from 1987-1992, when she became Executive Director of the Indiana Affiliate of the American Civil Liberties Union. She joined the faculty of the School of Public and Environmental affairs in 1998.

Ms. Kennedy is the author of eight books, What’s a Nice Republican Girl Like Me Doing at the ACLU?(Prometheus Books); Free Expression in America: A Documentary History (Greenwood Publishing); Pickin’ Fights With Thunderstorms: A Love Story (Kern) ; Charitable Choice at Work: Faith-Based Jobs Programs in the States (with Wolfgang Bielefield)(Georgetown University Press), God and Country: America in Red and Blue (Baylor University Press); Distrust, American Style: Diversity and the Crisis of Public Confidence (Prometheus Books), American Public Service: Constitutional and Ethical Foundations (with David Schultz), and Talking Politics: What You Need to Know Before You Open Your Mouth (Georgetown University Press). She was also the co-editor of To Market, To Market: Reinventing Indianapolis, an analysis of Indianapolis’ privatization experience under former Mayor Stephen Goldsmith (University Press of America).

In addition to her books, Professor Kennedy has published numerous book chapters and articles in scholarly journals and law reviews. She has been a columnist for the Indianapolis Star, Inequality.org and The Indiana Word, and she continues to write regular columns for the Indianapolis Business Journal. Professor Kennedy blogs daily at www.sheilakennedy.net, and is a frequent contributor to other blogs and periodicals. 

Sheila and her husband Bob have five grown children and four perfect grandchildren.

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