Description:

Come join PAS for our weekly lunch and lecture. Lunch provided by PAS.

Speakers:

Olanya Denish, CO (Clinical Officer)
Executive Secretary of the Northern Uganda Medical Mission
Pader, Uganda

James R. Walker, PhD, RN
Co-founder and Director of Grants and Fundraising for the Asteroidea Health Alliance
Adjunct Professor of Philosophy and Peace, Justice and Conflict Studies, DePaul University
Chicago, IL

Title: Peace and Healing: Community-Based Health Care in Northern Uganda

Abstract: Join us for a round-table discussion on the work being done by a group of Ugandan clinicians to meet the health care needs of their community in northern Uganda. Olanya Denish, clinician and co-founder of the Northern Uganda Medical Mission, will be speaking along with Dr. James Walker of DePaul University and the Asteroidea Health Alliance. Denish will discuss his experiences, both as a child growing up in the midst of the northern Ugandan civil war and also as a clinician attempting to rebuild his home community in the wake of that war. Denish, together with a small group of other Ugandan clinicians, have undertaken the project of building their district’s first ever hospital and currently operate a clinic in northern Uganda.

Bios:

Olanya Denish graduated in 2012 as a clinician with a diploma in clinical medicine and public health from the Gulu School of Clinical Medicine. He was born in the village of Kalongo, in the Agago District of Uganda. He set his sight on medicine at the age of eight when his mother passed away during childbirth. As a result, he is extremely passionate about reducing the high child and mother mortality rates in Uganda and hopes to one day specialize in gynecology. Denish is co-founder and a board member for the Northern Uganda Medical Mission which runs the NUMEM Health Center in Pader, northern Uganda. NUMEM is currently working on plans to build their district's first hospital. Denish is currently in his second year of medical school at Kampala International University.

James Walker received his PhD in philosophy from the University at Albany in 2004 and spent over a decade teaching philosophy at the university level. His research interests included ethical issues of war and non-violent means of achieving and maintaining peace, particularly in east and central Africa. He also worked on issues concerning the nature and problems of aid and development in these regions, emphasizing the need for grassroots efforts that empower local communities. In 2011, Walker returned to school and received his associates in nursing from Hudson Valley Community College in 2013 and became licensed as a Registered Nurse that same year. Walker worked as a grant writer and a member of the board of directors for a small NGO in the south of Uganda from 2010-2013. He then co-founded the Asteroidea Health Alliance in 2015 based upon his growing commitment to finding ways to promote the health of local communities in east and central Africa in a manner that does not continue the classical NGO model of maintaining power and control in organizations external to those communities, but rather works in a way where it is individuals and groups from those very communities that are in-charge of the programs and initiatives. Walker currently teaches in the Department of Philosophy and in the Peace, Justice, and Conflict Studies Program at DePaul University in Chicago. His current research focus is on how to decolonize the Western approach to, and narratives of, conflict, peace building, and NGO work in east and central Africa. Walker has traveled to Uganda on several occasions, as well as to Rwanda, and has worked closely with the local population on developing health care related programs and services.

Description:

Come join PAS for our weekly lunch and lecture. Lunch provided by PAS.

Speaker: Steve Howard, Director, Center for International Studies and Professor, School of Media Arts and Studies, Ohio University

Title: Why “Modern” Muslims? Talking about Modern Muslims: A Sudan Memoir

Abstract: Steve Howard wrote his book, Modern Muslims: A Sudan Memoir, in order to contribute to the conversation from within progressive, democratic Islamic reform movements, in this case, the Republican Brotherhood of Sudan. The movement had its origins as a small political party promoting Sudan’s independence from Egypt in the 1940s, founded by Mahmoud Mohammed Taha, an engineer. When his party did not succeed in the pre-independence period, Taha sought a Sufi retreat in his home town, and emerged with an understanding of the Qur’an that formed the basis of a social reform movement which in turn generated much controversy in Sudan. The movement remained small throughout its history, but it tried to make an impact on the role of Sudan’s women in Islamic society, on education, and on human rights issues. Taha was executed for the arcane crime of apostasy in 1985.

Howard will discuss this movement and his experience living with the Republican brothers and sisters. He explains why he felt “memoir” was the appropriate genre to capture his experience, and the role of memoir in the social science study of Africa.

Bio: Steve Howard is Director of the Center for International Studies at Ohio University and Professor in the School of Media Studies. He has a PhD in sociology and African Studies from Michigan State University and directed Ohio University’s African Studies Program for 25 years. His academic work includes several published articles on the Republican Brotherhood, as well as on children and childhood in Africa.

Description:

Come join PAS for our weekly lunch and lecture. Lunch provided by PAS.

Speaker: Paul Naylor, PhD Candidate, University of Birmingham, UK

Title: Concepts of Legitimacy in the Writings of the Fodiawa of Sokoto 1804-1837

Abstract: In 1804 Usman dan Fodio, his younger brother Abdullahi and his son Muhammad Bello (the Fodiawa), led a jihadist movement in the Sahel region that swept away existing forms of political and religious authority. They consolidated the territory gained in these conflicts into a massive administrative region we know today as the Sokoto Caliphate. Through arguments based on a wide knowledge of Islamic history, geography and eschatology, the Fodiawa put forward the intellectual case for their conquest and subsequent governance of the territory they had acquired in a great number of treatises written in Arabic. Based on a close reading of the Arabic texts produced in this period, I will demonstrate that by engaging with the Islamic past, the Fodiawa reinforced both the legitimacy of their own actions and their position as regional Islamic authorities. The Fodiawa began the jihad of 1804 as rebels fighting a central authority. By the time of Usman’s death in 1817, they had become the central authority faced with rebellions on all sides. Such reversals in power required new arguments for legitimacy. Furthermore, upon Usman’s death both Abdullahi and Bello sought to assume the leadership of the Sokoto project and used very different arguments from the Islamic past to claim their own forms of legitimacy.

Aside from making the case that the writings of the Fodiawa are not simply historical artefacts but vectors for legitimacy-making projects, I seek to contribute to debates on how legitimacy, power and authority are negotiated in Islamic movements of the past and present.

Bio: Paul Naylor is completing a PhD as part of a collaborative doctoral partnership program between the University of Birmingham (UK) and the British Library entitled "Arabic Sources for African History". At the British Library, he is responsible for cataloguing the library's collection of Arabic manuscripts of West African provenance. He completed a three month Pre-Doctoral Visiting Fellowship at the Program of African Studies in 2016.

Description:

Come join PAS for our weekly lunch and lecture. Lunch provided by PAS.

Speaker: Joshua Dankoff, Project Director for the Massachusetts Child Welfare and Juvenile Justice Leadership Forum

Title: Juvenile Justice in Cameroon, Sierra Leone, and Cote d'Ivoire: Reflections from a Practitioner Perspective

Abstract: The response to children who break societal rules differs across regions and the world. In West and Central Africa, there are also significant differences between and even within countries. This presentation will explore these differential responses to children accused of wrongdoing in three countries: Cameroon, Sierra Leone, and Côte d'Ivoire. Drawing from experience as an employee, consultant, and researcher for UNICEF, as well as a Fulbright-Clinton Public Policy Fellow in a Ministry of Justice, the presentation offers a practitioner's perspective in working with government and traditional actors at the intersection of child protection and justice sector reform. 

Bio: Joshua Dankoff is Project Director for the Massachusetts Child Welfare and Juvenile Justice Leadership Forum, and also an independent consultant. His career has focused on justice for children, child protection systems building, and rule of law both domestically and internationally. He has worked extensively with UNICEF, most recently as Child Protection Specialist (responsible for Child Justice and Birth Registration) in Sierra Leone where he helped facilitate the launch of the Child Justice Strategy 2014-2018. He has previous experience with the Ministry of Justice in Côte d’Ivoire while on a Fulbright-Clinton Public Policy Fellowship; the Firelight Foundation in California; and as a consultant with UNICEF, Child Frontiers, Civil Registration Centre for Development, and others. Joshua holds a Bachelor’s degree from Wesleyan University in Connecticut, and a Juris Doctor from Loyola University Chicago School of Law, where he earned certificates in Child Law and Public Interest Law. He also has a Masters in Development Practice from the University of Queensland, Australia. In 2014, he taught a masters-level course entitled "Child Rights, Protection, and Development" at the University of Duisburg-Essen in Germany.

Description:

Come join PAS for our weekly lunch and lecture. Lunch provided by PAS.

Speaker: Maudlyne Ihejirika, Chicago Sun-Times Urban Affairs Reporter and Assistant City Editor

Maudlyne will discuss her new book, Escape From Nigeria: A Memoir of Faith, Love and War.

Book overview: Told by Angelina Nwachukwu Ihejirika to her daughter Maudlyne Ihejirika, a veteran, award-winning Chicago journalist, this is the story of the extraordinary circumstances requiring Angelina, a mother of six young children, to travel alone and on foot for three days to a warfront to secure exit visas allowing her family to leave Nigeria. That was 1969, amidst a civil war that would end in the massacre and starvation of at least 2 million Biafrans. But it was not the first time Angelina risked her life to arrive at the miracle of she and her children being smuggled out of the country on the last flight out of Biafra during that horrific war. Thanks to the efforts and generosity of five white and Jewish American couples who worked to locate the family; involved their churches and synagogues to raise money; leveraged their Congressional contacts; and negotiated with the Biafran government for the family’s freedom, Angelina and her children landed in the United States on June 9, 1969, reuniting with husband and father Christopher Ihejirika, then a graduate student at Northwestern University.

Angelina’s experience unfolds against the backdrop of the last 33 years of Nigeria’s British rule, and the Nigerian Biafran War. At the end of that three-year war, the genocide of millions of Igbos would rank fifth amongst worst crimes against humanity of the 20th century, behind the Jewish holocaust in Germany; the Ukrainian famine in the Soviet Union; the slaughter of Armenians by the Ottoman Empire; and the Khmer Rouge massacre of the Cambodians. The conflict remains historically significant as the first time in history that starvation was used as a weapon of war; and for birthing the humanitarian group known as Doctors Without Borders.

Bio: Maudlyne Ihejirika is a Chicago Sun-Times Urban Affairs Reporter with nearly 30years’ experience in newspaper journalism, public relations and government. In 23years with the Sun-Times, she has served as an assistant city editor, covering beats from crime and inner-city issues to housing and education, politics and philanthropy. Joining the Sun-Times in 1987, she was Weekend City Editor when she left in 1997 to work as Gov. Jim Edgar’s press secretary for the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services. In 1999, she left state government to launch the Ihejirika Media & Communications Group, managing media operations for members of the U.S. Congress, Illinois Legislature and Chicago City Council. Returning to the Sun-Times in 2003, she has earned numerous citations, including the 2016 Chicago Defender Women of Excellence Award; and in 2015, the Studs Terkel, and the National Association of Black Journalists first-place Salute to Excellence awards. She also earned first-place NABJ awards in 2014 and 2011; the Vernon C. Jarrett Par Excellence in Journalism Award in 2013; and two Society of Professional Journalists Peter Lisagor Awards in 2008. A frequent guest contributor on WTTW-TV's "Chicago Tonight: Week In Review," FOX-32’s “Good Day Chicago,” and Vocalo Radio's "The Barber Shop Show," she has appeared as a political analyst on CNN, TV One, ABC, and CBS TV; as well as WBEZ, WVON and V103 radio. She is vice president/print of the NABJ-Chicago Chapter and on the board of directors of the Chicago Journalists Association. Other board memberships include the University of Iowa School of Journalism & Mass Communication Professional Advisory Board, and Northwestern University’s Council of 100.