Dan Cathy, CEO and chairman of Chick-fil-A, is set to speak in two locations in Oxford today.
Cathy’s first appearance will be at an LOU Lead Talks event presented by the Oxford-Lafayette County Chamber of Commerce and Chick-fil-A. The hour-long event will be at the UM Jackson Avenue Center in Auditorium A and is open to the public. Breakfast will be provided by Chick-fil-A.
The on-campus event is part of the Leadership Luncheon series that takes place on campus each spring. This year’s event is sponsored by Ole Miss Athletics, Ole Miss Business, the Meek School of Journalism and New Media, the UM Department of Nutrition and Hospitality Management and hottytoddy.com.
The event will be at 11 a.m. in The Pavilion, and according to a post on the Facebook page of Oxford’s Chick-fil-A on West Jackson Avenue, the restaurant will be giving away free dessert cards to the first 1,500 people at the event.
A protest of Cathy’s speech has been planned by junior general studies major Jaz Brisack, who was recently named the university’s 15th Harry S. Truman Scholar.
A Facebook post she made cites the CEO’s support of “anti-gay and anti-woman hate groups” as the reason for organizing the protest. The protesters will be passing out flyers before and during the speech.
