Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Jody Williams to Speak at Rutgers University April 15

The lecture will take place in the Multipurpose Room of the Busch Campus Center, 604 Bartholomew Road, Piscataway, at 8 p.m. The program, which represents the 2009 Susan and Michael J. Angelides Lecture, is free and open to the public.

Presented by the Institute for Women’s Leadership, the annual lecture is an endowed series featuring pathbreaking women leaders in many areas of achievement.

Williams, a teacher and aid worker, served as the founding coordinator of the International Campaign to Ban Landmines (ICBL). She led an unprecedented effort to grow ICBL to more than 1,300 organizations in 95 countries working to eliminate antipersonnel land mines.  For her work, she and the ICBL were awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1997. At that time, Williams became the 10th woman – and third American woman – to receive a Nobel Prize in the award’s almost 100-year history.

In 2006, Williams helped to establish the Nobel Women’s Initiative, which promotes the efforts of women’s rights activists, researchers and organizations working to advance peace, justice and equality for women..

 Since 2003, Williams has been a Distinguished Visiting Professor of Global Justice in the Graduate College of Social Work at the University of Houston. In 2007, she was appointed the “Sam and Cele Keeper Endowed Professor in Peace and Social Justice.”