Colleen Carroll Campbell, author, columnist, television and radio host and former White House speechwriter, will be the 62nd speaker in the Saint Vincent College Threshold Series at 8 p.m. Thursday, April 15 in the Robert S. Carey Student Center Performing Arts Center. Her talk is entitled, “Hooking Up or Getting Hitched: Love, Freedom and Marriage in the 21st Century.”
Campbell began her career as a reporter at the Memphis Commercial Appeal before becoming a news and editorial writer for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. In 2000, Campbell won a $50,000 Phillips Foundation Journalism Fellowship to write The New Faithful: Why Young Adults Are Embracing Christian Orthodoxy (Loyola Press, 2002).
A Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Marquette University, she began work toward a doctorate in philosophy at Saint Louis University but interrupted her studies to become one of six speechwriters to President George W. Bush. Campbell worked directly with the President on major policy addresses, writing speeches on education, the faith-based initiative, the fight against AIDS and judicial appointments.
Currently a fellow at the Washington, D.C.-based Ethics and Public Policy Center, Campbell is a contributor to such national media outlets as The New York Times, Weekly Standard, National Review Online, and First Things, and host of "Faith & Culture," a television and radio interview show that airs on EWTN, the world's largest religious media network, and on Relevant Radio and Sirius Satellite Radio. She also appears as a guest commentator on FOX News, CNN, MSNBC, and PBS, and is an op-ed columnist for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch and writes a religion blog for The Washington Post.
Ms. Campbell has traveled across the country discussing what she learned about the spiritual yearnings and religious commitments of young Americans while interviewing hundreds of college students and young professionals for The New Faithful. Her research focused on the attraction that many feel toward a challenging, countercultural Christian faith, as well as the challenges they encounter in attempting to live their faith and values in our postmodern age. She also writes and speaks on a variety of other topics related to religion, politics and culture.
She lives in St. Louis with her husband and children. Her website is www.colleen-campbell.com.
Campbell will be introduced by Saint Vincent College President Jim Towey.
Admission is free of charge for Campbell’s presentation at Saint Vincent College. However, all seats in the Robert S. Carey Student Center’s Performing Arts Center are reserved and admission will be by ticket only. Requests for reservations may be made by email to threshold@stvincent.edu
Please note that tickets will be held at the Box Office at the Carey Center for pickup when attendees arrive for the presentation; no tickets will be mailed in advance. Tickets not claimed by 7:50 p.m. will be released.
Saint Vincent College established the Threshold Lecture Series in 1981 when the Kennametal Foundation of Latrobe made a substantial grant to the College for the creation of an ongoing series of lectures and cultural events.