world

Thousands of miles from home, the troubling words of James Baldwin found me: It turned out that the question of who I was was not solved because I had removed myself from the social forces which menaced me—anyway, these forces had become interior, and I had dragged them across the ocean with me. Three weeks…

It was out of a “sense of deprivation” that Chinua Achebe wrote Things Fall Apart. That’s what the renowned Nigerian novelist and “inventor of African literature,” told a captivated crowd in Princeton, N.J. who gathered recently to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the seminal novel. Five decades after its release, it is a fitting time…

“I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places shall be made plain, and the crooked places shall be made straight and the glory of the Lord will be revealed and all flesh shall see it together. This is our hope.…

Historic change is in the air with tension and uncertainty mounting as Robert Mugabe’s government suffers its first major defeat since he came to power almost three decades ago. The opposition Movement for Democratic Change has won the lower house of Parliament and is set to force a runoff for the presidency. This is the…

It’s D-Day in Zimbabwe, and so far there’s been huge turnout from among the 5.6 million registered voters who have been lining up since the still-dark early morning hours. The D could stand either for Democracy or Disaster. Democracy would mean that for the first time in a long time—more than a decade—Zimbabwe would have…

On Saturday, the citizens of the African nation of Zimbabwe will go to the polls and cast their votes for president and other offices. Zimbabwe has been embroiled in such economic and political strife that much of the country is without life’s basic necessities. The standing president, Robert Mugabe, has been a controversial figure in…

Suppose that after suspiciously losing the much-needed 25 electoral votes from Florida in the highly disputed 2000 US presidential election, Al Gore had led his supporters in demonstrations. Imagine that Americans had then gone on a rampage demanding that George W. Bush resign, refusing to appeal the election results to the Supreme Court because it…

Russia had what may be generously described as an “election” recently, where the voters selected Dmitri Medvedev to succeed Vladmir Putin as president. Most observers and commentators agree, however, that the election was far from democratic and did little more than rubber stamp Putin’s chosen successor. Many have also argued that Putin’s aggressive style of…

Sergio Vieira de Mello is not a person that most of us would have known about had he not died in a vicious terrorist attack against the United Nations office in Iraq in August of 2003. In fact, the engaging Brazilian who became first United Nations Special Envoy to Iraq, would likely have been forgotten…

Picture this: the soon-to-be former President Bush’s motorcade is driving down the pothole-ridden streets of Africa, passing by dozens of tar-skinned locals standing along the road-sides with huge, welcoming smiles, holding signs which read “OBAMA 08.” It’s the exact scene that was captured in a photograph my friend emailed me about two weeks ago. By…