Bereket Selassie, the William E. Leuchtenburg Professor of African Studies in UNC’s department of African and Afro-American studies, delivered a distinguished lecture at Tanzania’s oldest and largest public university.
Selassie was selected as the Julius Nyerere Distinguished Lecturer on Pan-Africanism by the University of Dar es Salaam. The university is situated on the western side of the city of Dar es Salaam.
Selassie delivered talks on “Postcolonial Pan-Africanism: A Historical and Biographical Testament” and “Pan-Africanism and Problems of African Nation States: Challenges in the Era of Globalization.”
Julius Nyerere was a Tanzanian politician who served as the first president of Tanzania and previously Tanganyika, from the country’s founding in 1961 until his retirement in 1985. In 2009, he was named “World Hero of Social Justice” by the president of the United Nations General Assembly.
At UNC, Selassie specializes in African law, politics and history, constitutional law, politics of development and international law of human rights.
Selassie previously served as attorney general and associate justice of Ethiopia’s Supreme Court, narrowly escaped capture by a military junta and joined the guerillas fighting for Eritrea’s freedom.
Selassie was not only constitutional commission chair and principal author of Eritrea’s constitution, but also serves as a senior consultant in creating constitutions for other countries, including Nigeria and Iraq. He is a prolific writer who penned the memoir, The Crown and The Pen: The Memoirs of a Lawyer Turned Rebel.
The first Julius Nyerere Lecturer, named in 2009, was Nigerian writer, poet and playwright Wole Soyinka, a Nobel Prize winner.
Read more on Selassie: http://www.unc.edu/meet-a-tar-heel/Selassie.
