Our Speakers

Jane Kirtley

SILHA PROFESSOR of MEDIA ETHICS and LAW,
University of Minnesota, Hubbard School of Journalism and Mass Communication

Prof. Kirtley served as Executive Director of The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press for 14 years. Before that, she practiced law in New York, Virginia, and Washington, D.C., and was a reporter for newspapers in Indiana and Tennessee.  She was a Pulitzer Prize juror in 2015, and is a long-time member of the board of the Sigma Delta Chi Foundation. Prof. Kirtley’s J.D. is from Vanderbilt University Law School, and her bachelor and master of journalism degrees from Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism.

Jeanne Kilde

DIRECTOR
Religious Studies Program, University of Minnesota

Kilde is a cultural historian of religion in the United States, holding a Ph.D. in American Studies from the University of Minnesota. Her primary research focus is on religious space and architecture, a topic on which she has published two books with Oxford University Press and several articles and chapters.  Kilde was a founding member and co-chair of the Space, Place and Religious Meaning program unit of the American Academy of Religion. She is currently editing the Oxford Handbook of Religious space and directing the “Houses of Worship in the Twin Cities,” which is mapping the historical religious landscape of Minneapolis and St. Paul to examine interactions among religious and ethnic groups.

Her teaching focuses on theoretical and methodological issues related to the study of religions and on the history of religious diversity in the U.S., topics that frequently intersect with the First Amendment protections of religion.  Her course on Theory and Methods in the Study of Religion examines the many issues related to defining the slippery category of “religion,” and her course on the Christian Right and Left in America examines the intersection of religion and politics in the U.S.  She has published on the public effort to limit religious freedom in the case of the so-called “Ground Zero mosque” in a 2011 article, “The Park 51/Ground Zero Controversy and Sacred Sites as Contested Space” (Religions). In 2014, she served as a panelist on Minnesota Public Radio’s “The Daily Circuit with Kerri Miller” to discuss local and national efforts to restrict mosque building in the Twin Cities.

Kilde is regularly invited to addresses scholarly and community groups, nationally and internationally, on subjects related to religious diversity and religious space.

Cleo Krejci

EDITOR in CHIEF
The Minnesota Daily

Cleo Krejci is the Editor in Chief of the Minnesota Daily. She hopes to work in investigative journalism after graduating this spring with majors in Journalism and English and a minor in Spanish.

Bill Moran

INSTRUCTOR 
College of Design, University of Minnesota

Bill Moran teaches printing history and typography at the University of Minnesota’s College of Design. He is a third generation letterpress printer and serves as Artistic Director of Hamilton Wood Type & Printing Museum in Two Rivers, Wisconsin which houses the largest collection of printing equipment and wood type in the U.S.

Andy Mannix

STAFF REPORTER
Minneapolis Star Tribune

Andy Mannix covers Minnesota federal courts and law enforcement agencies for the Star Tribune. He joined the paper in January 2016 and previously covered statewide in-depth criminal justice/prisons and Minneapolis City Hall.

Mannix’s work for the Star Tribune includes an investigative series on abuses that exacerbated the mental health crisis in Minnesota prisons, leading to the first-ever laws regulating solitary confinement in the state in 2019. Through leaked documents, he exposed how Minneapolis police were inappropriately urging paramedics to sedate people with ketamine during emergency calls. Those stories prompted several investigations into the police and hospital, including by the FDA and former Acting U.S. Attorney Sally Yates. He’s also reported on several high-profile officer-involved shootings in recent years.

Prior to joining the Star Tribune, Mannix wrote about a variety of topics, such as crime, LGBT rights and politics, for publications including The Seattle Times, MinnPost, City Pages and The Minnesota Daily. Mannix teaches at the University of Minnesota journalism school, of which he’s an alumnus. He holds a master’s degree from University of California-Berkeley.