YSU Lectures to Feature Kevin Smith, Martin Sheen

YOUNGSTOWN, Ohio – Actor and activist Martin Sheen, filmmaker Kevin Smith and legal analyst Nancy Grace are among the featured speakers in Youngstown State University’s Skeggs Lecture Series.

YSU released information Thursday on the Skeggs, Centofanti Symposium and Thomas Colloquium series, all of which will be held at Stambaugh Auditorium and start at 7 p.m. The slate also features a lecture by retired NFL player and entrepreneur Eddie George and a panel focusing on moving forward from tragedy.

This year’s Skeggs lectures kick off March 19 with Dan Abrams, founder of the Abrams Media Network, and Grace, who formerly hosted her eponymous celebrity news and current affairs show on Headline News that ran from 2005 to 2016. Abrams is a best-selling author and chief legal affairs anchor for ABC News, and Grace manages a radio crime show on SiriusXM and author of the Hailey Dean mystery thriller series.

Tickets will be available Feb. 4.

The second Skeggs lecture of the year, on July 5, will feature Smith, whose films include “Clerks,” “Chasing Amy” and “Dogma.” His recent television credits include executive producing AMC’s “Comic Book Men,” which focused on the New Jersey comic book store he owns, and writing episodes of “The Flash” and “Supergirl” for the CW Network.

Tickets will be available May 20.

Sheen will complete this year’s Skeggs lineup with his Oct. 16 lecture.

An actor whose career spans five decades and includes leading roles in “Apocalypse Now” and as President Jed Bartlett in NBC’s “The West Wing,” Sheen is also known as an environmental activist. He was among those arrested while protesting construction of the Waste Technologies Industries Incinerator in East Liverpool in 1991.

Tickets will be available Sept. 9.

Tickets will be available beginning Feb. 11 for the March 26 Thomas Colloquium featuring George, who played for Ohio State University and won the Heisman Trophy in 1995, and went on to play for the Houston Oilers and the Dallas Cowboys. Since the end of his football career, he has been a motivational speaker, actor and entrepreneur.

The Centofanti Symposium will present “A Panel Discussion on Survival and Moving Forward.” The April 11 program will feature:

• Sue Klebold, mother of Columbine high School shooter Dylan Klebold.
• Fred Guttenberg, father of Jamie Guttenberg, one of those killed in the Stoneman Douglas High School Shooting.
• Kaitlin Roig, a former teacher at Sandy Hook Elementary School, where a gunman killed 26 people including 20 first-grade students before taking his own life.
• Angel Colon, a survivor of he Pulse nightclub shooting.
• Susan Bro, mother of Heather Heyer, who was killed by a white supremacist in Charlottesville, Va.

Tickets for the panel will be available March 4.

Tickets to all lectures are free and available on a fist-come, first-served basis with a limit of four tickets per person. Tickets can be ordered through the Stambaugh Auditorium box office Monday through Friday, 9 a.m. to 6 p.m., or online at www.StambaughAuditorium.com.

Copyright 2024 The Business Journal, Youngstown, Ohio.