Program of NEWS AND EVENTS Fall 2018 African Studies Volume 29, Number 1 Rachel Beatty Riedl appointed PAS director by Meagan Keefe Rachel Beatty Riedl, associate professor of political science at She is a member of Northwestern, has been appointed director of the Program of the Council on Foreign African Studies. A member of the political science and core Relations and has African studies faculty since 2010, she is a faculty fellow affiliated conducted policy with Northwestern’s Global Politics and Religion Research Group, analysis for USAID, Comparative Historical Social Sciences Program, and Program the World Bank, the on Equality, Development, and Globalization Studies. In addition, State Department, the she is the current director of the French Interdisciplinary Group. Carter Center, and other She has been an active member of the PAS community, serving organizations on issues on the program’s executive committee and as coordinator of the concerning governance Africa Seminar (Afrisem). reforms, elections, Riedl received her PhD from Princeton University in 2008. democratic representa- Her research focuses on institutional development in new tion, and identity poli- African democracies, local governance, and decentralization; tics. Most recently she authoritarian regime legacies; and the interface of religion and served with the Carter politics. She analyzes why more than 20 African nations still Center Election Monitoring Mission in Liberia. maintain democratic constitutions despite conditions that chal- In her new capacity as PAS director, Riedl looks forward to lenge democracy, such as low levels of economic development, continuing her work with the PAS community in Evanston and ethnic heterogeneity, and weak state institutions. She is author the greater Chicago area as well as with PAS alumni and longtime of the award-winning book Authoritarian Origins of Democratic collaborators around the world. Party Systems in Africa (Cambridge University Press, 2014) and many articles in academic journals, including the Journal of Politics, Comparative Political Studies, African Affairs, and Studies in Comparative International Development. “It’s an exciting time to serve as director Prior to coming of PAS, in large part because of the to Northwestern, Riedl held fellowships at the strength and dynamism of our faculty Inside University of Notre engaged in research pertaining to Dame’s Kellogg Institute Africa, the University’s global vision, PAStories 4 for International Studies and the Yale Program on and the program’s notable historic and ISITA news 9 Democracy, and she was a Library news 12 Faculty Fulbright Scholar contemporary foundations.” Viewpoint 16 at the research center Les —Rachel Beatty Riedl Afriques dans le Monde Community news 18 at Sciences Po Bordeaux. Reflections on my six years as PAS director by Will Reno As the summer ended, I handed off the directorship of faculty, Chris Udry (economics) and Dean Karlan (eco- the Program of African Studies to Rachel Beatty Riedl, my nomics and finance), have established research labs that esteemed colleague in the political science department. mentor undergraduate and graduate students engaged in I am pleased that Rachel is inheriting the gains from important research at Northwestern and in Africa. Noelle many triumphs during my six-year tenure as director: con- Sullivan (anthropology and global health studies), Jeff Rice siderable growth in faculty; increases in external funding (political science), and the incoming PAS director herself through the Title VI, Young African Leaders Initiative, and are among the many faculty who have helped create student Fulbright programs, among others; a revitalized Swahili research and experiential-learning opportunities in count- program; and a growing culture of outside donations. Since less ways. PAS funds both graduate and undergraduate stu- 2012 PAS has enjoyed a healthy flow of graduate students dents through Panofsky, Goodman, and African Leadership from the African continent (despite funding decreases) Awards, but our faculty are pivotal in encouraging and advis- and regular extended visits by African Fulbright scholars. ing our students. This past spring we were honored to host the emir of Kano, Last year, Zekeria Ahmed Salem joined us from a world-renowned traditional and economic leader, with Mauritania as the new director of ISITA. During his first year, historic family links to PAS. he arranged a series of new book Meanwhile, our Africanist presentations by global scholars graduate students, including “It has been an honor and a privilege on the topic of Islam and Africa many from the continent, to serve as director. But after six and also arranged the visit of have continued to carry out Muhammad Sanusi II, the current Melville Herskovits’s original years, it is time for the fresh per- emir of Kano and previously the dream of developing research spective and different interests a governor of the Central Bank of collaborations and building Nigeria, who spoke to large audi- linkages between African and new leader brings.” ences at the Kellogg Global Hub US scholars and institutions. and Harris Hall. PAS hopes to The key to these and continue to work with the emir other accomplishments has been PAS’s excellent staff: asso- on future projects. ciate director Meagan Keefe and her predecessor, Kate Klein; From my vantage point as outgoing director, I see future Rebecca Shereikis, associate director of the Institute for the energy and opportunities for African studies in health and Study of Islamic Thought in Africa; business coordinator law. The growing interaction between PAS and two schools Kelly Coffey; program assistant Tiffany Williams-Cobleigh on Northwestern’s Chicago campus—the Feinberg School and her predecessor, Matt Pietrus; publications editor LaRay of Medicine and Pritzker School of Law—complements the Denzer; and outreach coordinator Amy Settergren. All have University’s strategic plan as well as the interests of student kept PAS activities running smoothly. and faculty scholars. In my own field of political science, I am proud to state that in the last six years North- there is a new dynamism in the study of urbanization and western has hired at least a dozen new faculty members— the social impact of rapid economic change, divergences across several schools and the Block Museum—who offer in consolidated democracies, and, in some instances, the courses or pursue research on Africa. Two of these new challenges of state collapse. Projects focusing on Islam in Continued on page 17 2 On reading alumnus Fola Soremekun’s story by LaRay Denzer Fola Soremekun was one of three students in South Africa, the Congo crisis, and to obtain PhDs in African history from the US civil rights movement. Beyond Northwestern University in 1965. The other PAS, Soremekun was attracted to the two were Samuel Nwankwo Nwabara, speeches of Malcolm X, the writings who became director of the Institute of James Baldwin, and jazz (he wrote of African Studies at the University of program notes for a record company). Nigeria in Nsukka, and Joseph E. Harris, A staunch Methodist, he decided to who pioneered the study of the African conduct his dissertation research on diaspora. Only two Northwestern alumni the missionary movement in Angola had worked on African topics before them: after the Portuguese colonial govern- Hannah Abeodu Bowen Jones (1962) and ment expelled Protestant missionaries, John Eric Peterson (1963). many of them Methodist, from Angola. Born in Abeokuta in western Nigeria His PhD in hand by 1965, he taught in 1934, Soremekun developed an admira- for two years in American universi- tion for the United States as a secondary ties before joining John Omer-Cooper, school student who loved jazz, cowboy historian of South Africa, in the history movies, and the nationalist ideas of Nnamdi Azikiwe, department at the newly established University of Zambia. founder of the West African Pilot, a Nigerian newspaper. On the way to central Africa, he and his African American Wishing to follow Azikiwe’s example of studying in the US, wife, Elizabeth, visited England for the first time. He wasn’t Soremekun built a network of friends and relatives—many impressed: “London was dark and grimy, and it was always of whom were Methodists (his uncle was the bishop of the raining. The streets were narrow and congested. Everything Nigerian Methodist Church)—who helped him secure admis- was so tight. So, this was once the center of the empire sion to Tabor College, an obscure Mennonite Brethren college on which the sun never set?” From there they proceeded to in Hillsboro, Kansas. In 1956 he embarked for the US on a Nigeria for a family reunion and then to Lusaka, where he cargo boat. taught for seven years. He returned to Nigeria in 1974 to pur- After a year in Kansas, Soremekun transferred to Illinois sue better opportunities at the University of Ife (now Obafemi Wesleyan University, then matriculated as a graduate stu- Awolowo University). dent in Northwestern’s history department in 1960. He For the next decade Soremekun flourished as Nigerian remarked that at Northwestern “there existed no overarch- and other scholars developed an assertive African orienta- ing context with regard to the approach to African history. tion in their disciplines. He published Angola: The Road to There was not even an acceptable history book regarding Independence (University of Ife Press, 1983) and furthered Africa.” At that time Africa was taught from the perspec- Ife’s