Leading
Voice on Human Rights in Africa to Speak
Penda Mbow leads a class at Université Cheikh Anta Diop. |
Penda Mbow, a longtime
educator in Senegal and advocate for human rights and education
in Africa, will visit Smith on Thursday, April 9, to speak
on “Women, Democracy,
and Civil Society in Africa: The Case of Senegal.”
Mbow’s lecture,
the third and final event in the Five Colleges, Inc. series
Africans on Africa: Gender, Generation and Globalization,
will take place at 7:30 p.m. in Seelye 106.
Mbow, an associate professor
of history at Université Cheikh
Anta Diop in Dakar, is one of the world’s leading voices
on the rights of women in Islamic societies. She has written
extensively about the evolution of Islam’s relationship
with democracy in Senegal and the interplay between gender,
human rights and religion in the Islamic world. Mbow has
served as Senegal’s minister of culture and as cultural
advisor to the Senegalese department of ethnography and historical
heritage.
Mbow was named Chevalier
de la Légion d’Honneur
Francaise (Knight of the French Legion of Honor) in 2003
in recognition of her achievements as a scholar, thinker
and political activist.
The lecture is free and open to
the public.
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