I'll be at Duke University this Friday (4/19), speaking on conflict minerals in DRC at the Nicholas School of the Environment at 10am. Details are here. I'll also be speaking at a public event at Blacknall Memorial Presbyterian Church at 7pm that evening. Would love to meet anyone who'll be around!

Next Thursday (4/25), I'm speaking at my alma mater, the African Studies program at Yale University. Details for that are here.

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(It's April Fool's Day, but this is not a joke.)

In the personal/professional life news category, I have some that's big: I'll be leaving Morehouse College at the end of this academic year to take a position as Assistant Professor of Government at Colby College in Waterville, Maine. The choice to leave Morehouse was not an easy one; I will miss our bright and curious students more than I can say.

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It's SWEDOW bracket time! For those first-timers, this is an NCAA men's college basketball tournament bracket competition with prizes for the winner that are considered SWEDOW ("stuff we don't want,") a phrase coined by the inimitable Tales from the Hood. All you have to do to compete is fill out a bracket and join the SWEDOW 2013 group via the ESPN Tournament Challenge.

What can you win? Well, this year's prize pack includes (but is not limited to) a lilac bridesmaid's dress, Hanukkah socks, some BibleMan action hero DVDs, and a used Chipotle bag. If you have SWEDOW to add, email me ASAP so I can tell you where to send it. Get excited and enter now!

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Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair and businessman and philanthropist Howard Buffett have a column in Foreign Policy this week titled, "Stand with Rwanda." In the piece, they argue that aid cuts to Rwanda in the wake of the UN Group of Experts' revelations that Rwanda is actively supporting the human rights-abusing M23 rebel movement in the DRC should be restored. They ignore the "generally democratic governments don't like to give money to war-mongering states" aspect of this issue, instead focusing on the negative effects of the cuts for Rwanda's population and how indisputably effective aid has been in Rwanda.

Blair and Buffett also argue that the DRC's problems are more-or-less entirely rooted in the DRC's poor-to-barely-existant governance, fragile security, and weak state. They ...

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A few upcoming speaking engagements:

2/28: Tufts University, Fletcher School, World Peace Foundation: "Western Advocacy in Conflict: Do international public advocacy campaigns make an impact?" Panelists: Rony Brauman, David Rieff, Laura Seay, Amanda Taub - 12:30pm, Cabot C703

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The Simon Fraser University Human Security Report for 2011/12 is out. This year's edition focuses on sexual violence in war, and the findings are astonishing. Essentially, SFU found that the data shows much of the conventional wisdom on such issues as rape as a weapon of war, who is committing rape in wartime, and negative effects on education is completely wrong. Among the report's findings:

Conflicts in which extreme sexual violence is committed (think DRC) are exceptional outliers, not the norm.

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It's October, which means it's time for the annual brouhaha over President Obama giving a partial waiver to the DRC for the sanctions that are required by US law to be imposed against countries that have child soldiers serving in their military forces. And, like clockwork, human rights advocates raised objections to this decision, arguing that the US should cut all assistance to DRC and to the other countries that received waivers, Libya, South Sudan, and Yemen. The partial waiver for DRC allows the US government to continue selling some arms to the DRC and to continue some military training programs in the country despite the fact that the FARDC clearly still has child soldiers within its ranks. Many have expressed outrage over the decision, which marks the third year in a row of waivers ...

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I have several speaking engagements coming up this academic year:

New York: October 12, 7pm - Congo in Harlem Week - Kony 2012: Lessons for Congo. Panelists include Amanda Taub & Kate Cronin-Furman of Wronging Rights, Milton Allimadi of Black Star News, Richard Mark Ochaka of Invisible Children, Michael Poffenberger of RESOLVE, Bukeni Waruzi of WITNESS, and yours truly. Moderator is Elliot Ross of Africa is a Country. In other words, it's gonna be a doozy of a debate. Venue: The New York Society for Ethical Culture (2 West 64th Street)

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Oh, hey, blog friends, it's been awhile. Sorry about that - the new semester + finishing a book manuscript + visiting Taiwan (more on that later) = little time for blogging. But life is getting slightly less hectic now, so I should be back to a more regular schedule around here now.

Among the many things I've been doing lately is working on a new project for my African politics course. We're joining forces with the fantastic folks at Project Diaspora to help students connect with and learn from leaders in Africa and the African Diaspora through a variety of social media platforms. You can read all about what we're up to here.

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Conrad Black has a new piece up over at the National Review. I'd encourage you not to give it anymore hits; the central argument of the piece is that colonization was the West's great gift to the world. Here is the money quote:

No one could seriously dispute that almost all of sub-Saharan Africa, all of North Africa except Morocco, all of the Middle East except Israel and Jordan and most of the oil-rich states, and the entire former British Indian Empire were better governed by Europeans. The Philippines and Cuba and, during the piping days of the U.S. Marines' occupations (even if they were deployed at times by the United Fruit Company), Nicaragua, Haiti, and the Dominican Republic were all better off under the Americans.Now, I could certainly dispute this claim, but this is Mr. Black's ...

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