Juan González, street-smart scholar and columnist for the New York Daily News , will deliver the Daniel W. Kops Freedom of the Press lecture Tuesday, Oct. 26, at 4:30 p.m. in the Hollis E. Cornell Auditorium of Goldwin Smith Hall at Cornell University.

The talk, free and open to the public, is titled "How Long Must We Wait? The Struggle for Racial and Ethnic Equality Within the American News Media."

"Juan González has a long history as a writer and community activist who draws on his experiences to empower both the Puerto Rican community he grew up in and Latino communities across the nation," said Vilma Santiago-Irizarry, Cornell associate professor of anthropology who nominated the speaker. "Importantly, González is neither exclusionist nor parochial in his activism or in his writing. He is a committed journalist who has gained widespread support among New York City residents because he addresses systemic issues and political problems that affect all of them, not just narrowly drawn and defined ethnoracial constituencies."

González has been a columnist at the New York Daily News since 1988. He has won numerous awards for his investigative reporting, including the George Polk Award in 1998, and was recently elected President of the National Association of Hispanic Journalists. His most recent book, Fallout: The Environmental Consequences of the World Trade Center Collapse, documents the alleged cover-ups by Environmental Protection Agency and government officials regarding health hazards at Ground Zero in New York. He also is the author of the book, Harvest of Empire: The History of Latinos in America .

The Kops Freedom of the Press Fellowship Program was established in 1990 by Daniel W. Kops, a 1939 graduate of Cornell and a former editor of the Cornell Daily Sun , to bring distinguished speakers to Ithaca and Cornell annually to discuss issues relating to freedom of the press.