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Our students at Kent State deserve to hear the best public minds that are out there.
It's incumbent upon us as an institution to ensure that our students and our faculty get
to hear public intellectuals talk about issues of the day in a very public forum. We want
to make sure that we have speakers who are tops in their field and who will appeal to
a wide variety of constituencies, especially students and faculty but not limited to just
them, to include community members and our broader community at large.
We expect that the Presidential Speaker Series to happen three times a year. We have asked
the faculty to nominate individuals that they think should be members of a Presidential
Speaker Series and we have a process put in place to determine who those speakers will be
I really wanted to get the Presidential Speaker Series going right away. Mr. Ratcliff is a
controversial, dynamic and very well known photographer. I happen to be interested in
photography. We have two different photography programs here on campus. Trey Ratcliff has
the number one travel photography blog in the world. His photographs are shown in The
Smithsonian. This is a very influential and very well-spoken young man. His photography
is done in what is called HDR, High Dynamic Range photography which allows you to see
things that you otherwise wouldn't see with your point and shoot camera. Trey Ratcliff
is, uh, is an artist first and foremost. He happens to express his artistic vision through
photography but in the process of learning about photography and becoming the great artist
that he is, he's also recognized that you have to sell your work and you have to have
people buy your work and he's come to make the argument that you should give your work
away on the internet, in fact, on his website he says "Steal this picture, please" because
he feels that the more people see art the more they will want art and that legitimate
businesses, companies and advertising agencies will, in fact, pay for his product rather
than just download it. He makes the assertions that if you want to download one of his photographs
for your own personal use to hang in your dorm room or hang in your living room go ahead
and do it. He makes them available in high-resolution and makes it easy for you to download his art.