Environmental activist Robert F. Kennedy Jr. will speak at the University of Illinois Foellinger Auditorium on Wednesday evening.

Kennedy's speech at 7 p.m. is free and open to the public. Doors will open for UI students with valid I-cards at 6 p.m., and to the public at 6:30 p.m.

Kennedy is chief prosecuting attorney for the Hudson Riverkeepers, senior attorney for the Natural Resources Defense Council and president of the Waterkeeper Alliance. His 2004 book "Crimes Against Nature" challenged the environmental policies of the United States.

His newest film, "The Last Mountain," examines the struggle to save West Virginia's Coal River Mountain, the last mountain in the state's southern coal region untouched by the mining practice of mountain top removal. Citizens who oppose the practice argue that dynamiting the top of a mountain to mine the coal within is unsafe and pollutes the air and water.

A partner in Silicon Valley's VantagePoint Ventures Partners' clean-tech investment team, Kennedy was named one of Rolling Stone magazine's "100 Agents of Change."

He is the son of the late U.S. Sen. Robert Kennedy, who was assassinated in 1968 while running for president, and the brother of Chris Kennedy, chairman of the UI Board of Trustees.

The lecture is sponsored by the Illini Union Board and the Illinois Leadership Center, and is partially funded by a grant from Caterpillar.