Educator and social justice advocate Jonathan Kozel will speak on campus Thursday, March 29, at 7 p.m. in Kirkland Fine Arts Center.

Kozol has devoted nearly 50 years to the issues facing public education and to the challenge of providing equal opportunity within public schools to every child. Currently, he is the most widely read and highly honored education writer in America and was called “today’s most eloquent spokesman for America’s disenfranchised” by The Chicago Sun-Times.

His first book, “Death at an Early Age,” a description of his first year as a teacher, was published in 1967 and received the 1968 National Book Award in Science, Philosophy, and Religion. Regarded as a classic by educators, it has sold more than two million copies in the U.S. and Europe.

Among his other nationally award-winning major works are “Rachel and Her Children,” a study of homeless mothers and their children; “Savage Inequalities”; and “Amazing Grace: The Lives of Children and the Conscience of a Nation.”

Kozol has spent the past two years working with members of Congress and advisers to President Barack Obama to reduce the punitive aspects of No Child Left Behind while increasing the incentives and rewards that encourage urban districts.

The annual James W. Moore Lecture was established in 1991 to honor the late James W. Moore of Decatur. Moore’s children, Madeline and James “Mac” Moore, created an endowed fund to present speakers on campus who represent “innovative or progressive political or artistic views.”