Engaging Africa: Discovering Its Past, Impacting Its Future
An evening with Prof. Henry Louis Gates Jr.
Please join us at the Nesholm Family Lecture Hall in Seattle Center's McCaw Hall

Ashesi University Foundation, in partnership with the World Affairs Council, is proud to present an evening with Professor Henry Louis Gates Jr., Chair of African and African American Studies and Director of the W.E.B. Du Bois Institute for Afro-American Studies at Harvard University. Professor Gates will speak on June 23rd about the genesis and significance of the Encyclopedia Africana project, and comment on the nature and impact of links between Africa and the African-American community. Professor Gates will be joined by Patrick Awuah Jr., Founder and President of Ashesi University - the first private, secular university in Ghana, West Africa. Mr. Awuah will share his thoughts about the specific role higher education can play in Africa's future development.
Event Information

Date: June 23rd, 2004 (Wednesday)
Registration: 6:30 - 7:00 PM
Program: 7:00 - 8:30 PM
Location:
Nesholm Family Lecture Hall (McCaw Hall)
321 Mercer Street
Seattle, WA 98109
Entrance on Mercer St, between 3rd Ave N & 4th Ave N, Seattle
Cost: $15 general admission; $10 World Affairs Council members
About Professor Henry Louis Gates Jr.
Listed among Time magazine's 25 most influential Americans in 1998 and Newsweek's 100 Americans to watch for in the next century, Professor Gates has been described as one of the most notable scholars of African-American and multi-cultural studies in the country. Professor Gates earned his M.A. and Ph.D. in English Literature from Clare College at the University of Cambridge, as the first African American to earn a doctorate degree from Cambridge. He received a B.A. summa cum laude from Yale University in 1973 in English Language and Literature. Before joining the faculty of Harvard in 1991, he taught at Yale, Cornell, and Duke universities.

Professor Gates is a prolific writer, having authored numerous books, essays and reviews on a broad range of African and African-American issues including slavery, race, feminism, dialect, and identity. He is the author of Wonders of the African World (1999), the book companion to the six-hour BBC/PBS television series of the same name, and co-author with Cornel West of The African American Century: How Black Americans Have Shaped Our Century (2000). An influential cultural critic, Professor Gates' publications include a 1994 cover story for Time magazine on the new black renaissance in art, as well as numerous articles for the New Yorker.

Together with his fellow Harvard professor Dr. Kwame Anthony Appiah, Professor Gates co-edited the groundbreaking Encarta Africana, a multimedia encyclopedia. Using audio, video and written text, Encarta Africana traces the African Diaspora and documents the history and culture of Africa and the people who descend from this continent from 4 million BCE to the present. The print edition, Encyclopedia Africana, was published in 1999.
About Patrick Awuah Jr.
Mr. Awuah, a native of Ghana, began the work to establish Ashesi University in 1998. Prior to that, he was a Program Manager in the Business Systems Division of Microsoft Corporation for eight years. Patrick earned an MBA from UC Berkeley's Haas School of Business in 1999, and undergraduate degrees in Engineering and Economics from Swarthmore College in 1989. Patrick is a fellow in the Africa Leadership Initiative (a project of The Aspen Institute, Databank, and Technoserve) and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, the Pacific Council on International Policy, and the Tau Beta Pi national honor society for excellence in engineering.
Event Sponsors
Questions or comments about this event? Send them to foundation@ashesi.org.