'Divided Baltimore' Class Welcomes Guest Speaker Kevin Shird, Youth Advocate and Baltimore Native, Nov. 14
November 11, 2016
Contact: Public Affairs
Phone: 410.837.5739
The University of Baltimore's class, "Divided Baltimore: How Did We Get Here? Where Do We Go?" welcomes Kevin Shird, speaker and author of Uprising in the City, during its Monday, Nov. 14 session. Shird will give a presentation on youth advocacy followed by a question-and-answer session with the audience. The class will be open to the greater community, but seating is limited and only students formally enrolled in the course are guaranteed a seat. The class will begin at 5:30 p.m. in the H. Mebane Turner Learning Commons, Town Hall, 1415 Maryland Ave.
Shird has had a remarkable impact on young people worldwide with his advocacy work and his life story. He began dealing drugs in Baltimore at the age of 16. After serving several years in federal prison, he transformed his life to become an advocate for youth and policy change. He has designed and implemented school-based programs and initiatives to help teenagers avoid the pitfalls of communities struggling with violence and substance abuse, and he lectures to students at colleges and universities across the country about substance abuse prevention, public health policy, prison reentry and incarceration.
Shird has worked with the White House Office of National Drug Policy to promote substance abuse awareness in the United States, as well as the planning committee of the Clemency Project led by the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund. In 2014, Baltimore Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake appointed Shird to the Heroin Treatment and Prevention Taskforce to develop comprehensive strategies designed to impact the heroin epidemic in Baltimore City.
His latest book, Uprising in the City, explores the unrest in Baltimore following the death of Freddie Gray, who died while in police custody in April 2015. In the book, Shird describes the protests and violence he observed, offers solutions on how to break the cycle of problems that have plagued Baltimore for decades, examines other urban American cities that face similar issues—and portrays Baltimore as having the potential to become a champion of change and to set a precedent for the nation. Shird's first book, Lessons of Redemption, released in 2014, received international acclaim for its eye-opening depiction of the underground drug economy in Baltimore. His work on social issues affecting the community has been featured in The Baltimore Sun.
Shird is one of several guest speakers scheduled for this semester's "Divided Baltimore" class, which is being taught by Yale Gordon College of Arts and Sciences lecturer Ron Kipling Williams, M.F.A. '16. Now in its third semester, the interdisciplinary course was launched by the University last fall as a way to build on an historical understanding of how Baltimore became segregated, what that means for people who live on either side of the divide, why it is in everyone's self-interest to correct the problem, and how we might do so.
Learn more about the "Divided Baltimore" course.