Steven Robins is an anthropologist from Stellenbosch University in South Africa whose research covers issues of governance, citizenship, and social mobilization in post-conflict societies. Robins will give lectures and seminars based on his forthcoming book, From Revolution to Rights in South Africa: Social Movement, NGOs and Popular Politics.

Co-sponsored with African Studies

Mvemba Phezo Dizolele is the Peter J. Duignan Distinguished Visiting Fellow at the Hoover Institution in Palo Alto, CA and an African Studies visiting scholar at Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies in Washington, DC.

His analyses have been published in the New York Times, International Herald Tribune, St Louis Post-Dispatch and other outlets. A frequent commentator on African affairs, he  has been a guest analyst on PBS' NewsHour with Jim Lehrer and Foreign Exchange with Fareed Zakaria, NPR's On Point and the Diane Rehm Show, the BBC World News, Al Jazeera and the Voice of America.

Dizolele was a fellow at the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting and covered the 2006 historic elections in the Democratic Republic of Congo. He served as an election monitor with the Carter Center in the run-off between Joseph Kabila and Jean-Pierre Bemba. He was also embedded with United Nations peacekeepers in Congo's war-torn Ituri and South Kivu provinces as a reporter.

He has spoken extensively on the DRC at various institutions, including the US Institute of Peace, US Holocaust Memorial Museum, Georgetown University School of Foreign Service, Yale University Law School and Stanford University Graduate School of Business.

He is currently working on his book, Mobutu: the Rise and Fall of the Leopard King, a biography of the late Congolese president to be published by Random House UK.

Interactive Radio for Justice (IRFJ) uses media to help improve awareness of the International Criminal Court and hold human rights violators to account. IRFJ is currently developing programs focused on the Democratic Republic of Congo and the Central African Republic. The International Law Society co-hosts a presentation by Wanda Hall, IRFJ Director, with the Program on Human Rights to explore how to improve the efficacy of the International Criminal Court around the world.

**Lunch Served**

Albie Sach’s career in human rights activism started at the age of seventeen, when as a second year law student at the University of Cape Town, he took part in the Defiance of Unjust Laws Campaign. Three years later, he attended the Congress of the People at Kliptown where the Freedom Charter was adopted. He started practice as an advocate at the Cape Bar at the age of 21. The bulk of his work involved defending people charged under racist statutes and repressive security laws.

In 1966, he was forced into exile. After spending eleven years studying and teaching law in England, he worked for a further eleven years in Mozambique as law professor and legal researcher. In 1988, he was blown up by a bomb placed in his car in Maputo by South African security agents, losing an arm and the sight in one eye. 

After recovering from the attack, Justice Sachs devoted himself full-time to preparations for a new democratic Constitution for South Africa. In 1990, he returned home and, as a member of the Constitutional Committee and the National Executive of the ANC, took an active part in the negotiations which led to South Africa becoming a constitutional democracy. After the first democratic election in 1994, he was appointed by President Nelson Mandela to serve on the newly established Constitutional Court. 

In addition to his work on the Court, Justice Sachs has travelled to many countries sharing South African experience in healing divided societies. He is a prolific author in law and philosophy and is engaged in art and architecture.

Anthony Heard was the Editor of the Cape Times during the apartheid struggle and was arrested and charged under security laws for defying the white Nationalist government and publishing a full-page interview with Oliver Tambo, the banned and "silenced" President in exile of the African National Congress. For this, Heard was awarded the Golden Pen of Freedom by the World Association of Newspapers in 1986. Fired by his paper in 1987, he went on to become an internationally-syndicated freelance columnist, including for the Los Angeles Times and the San Francisco Chronicle. He joined the government of Nelson Mandela on the advent of democracy in 1994, first as a ministerial special adviser and then joining the Presidency in 2000 as a communications specialist and special adviser, at deputy director-general level. Having recently left the Presidency, Heard is visiting the USA to take up a public policy scholarship at the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington DC from 1 March through 30 June, 2010. He is preparing a personal memoir of his 16 years' advising government in South Africa. His previous book, The Cape of Storms (Univ. of Arkansas Press 1990), dealt with his experiences as an embattled editor in the apartheid era.

Co-sponsored by the Center for African Studies

Stanford STAND: A Student Anti-Genocide Coalition seeks to use advocacy, awareness-raising and fundraising to address the conflicts in Sudan, The Democratic Republic of Congo and Burma. Our mission is to empower individuals and communities with the tools to prevent and stop genocide.

This paper challenges the conventional wisdom that oil causes international contention by explaining how the high costs of petroleum conquest deter territorial aggression. In oil-rich territories, interstate violence is inspired by other factors. The claim is tested through an examination of Nigeria and Cameroon's dispute over the Bakassi Peninsula, drawing on the author's fieldwork in both countries.

Emily Meierding is a PhD Candidate in the Department of Political Science at the University of Chicago and a predoctoral fellow at CISAC. Her dissertation examines how the presence of petroleum resources affects the initiation and escalation of international territorial disputes. She has conducted dissertation research and language study in Syria, Morocco, Nigeria and Cameroon. Meierding holds a BA in History from the University of California at Santa Cruz and a MA in Political Science from the University of Chicago.

Jessica Gottlieb is a PhD Candidate in the Political Science Department at Stanford University.  Her research is on the relationship between democracy and development, particularly in her region of interest, francophone West Africa.  She studies the impact of decentralization and local democracy on political accountability and public goods outcomes.   She received her BA in Political Science from Yale University and has also spent time in Washington, DC working at the Center for Global Development.