Randy Cecil, an activist with the Irish Northern Aid Committee, will speak at Coastal Carolina University at 7 p.m. Monday, April 14 as part of the annual Erase the Hate series.

The event, sponsored by Coastals Office of Student Activities, is free and open to the public in the auditorium in E. Craig Wall Sr. College of Business Administration.

Cecil is a regional director and member of the national executive of the Irish Northern Aid Committee (INAC), an American-based support organization for the Irish republican movement. Founded in 1971, this charitable and educational organization has raised support for innocent victims of the ongoing dispute in Ireland. It has been the foremost grassroot organization to inform the American public about the conflict in the six Irish counties administered by the English.

Cecil is from an Irish family from County Sligo, Ireland and maintains a second residence about one mile from where his mothers family originated as a tribe some 3,000 years ago. His duties with Irish Northern Aid include administration of committees in Delaware, southern Pennsylvania, Maryland, Virginia and North Carolina. He has spoken on college campuses in Maryland and Washington, D.C., and regularly attends meetings of Richard Haass director of policy planning at the U.S. Department of State.

Last year, Coastals Erase the Hate series sponsored Judy Shepard, whose 21-year-old son Matthew was killed by anti-gay violence in Colorado in 1998.

For more information, contact Coastals Office of Student Activities at 349-2303.