A lectureship in memory of Claude Ake, who was serving as a visiting professor in the department of political science when he was killed in an airplane crash in Nigeria on Nov. 7, has been announced by the department of political science and the Council on African Studies.
The first Claude Ake Memorial Lecture will be delivered on Saturday, Dec. 7, by Dunstan M. Wai, director of the Capacity-Building Project of the World Bank's Africa Division. His talk, titled "Professor Claude Ake: Critic of Authoritarian Rule and Kleptocracy," will take place at 11 a.m. in Rm. 211 of the Hall of Graduate Studies, 320 York St. An informal reception will follow the lecture, which is free and open to the public.
Professor Ake was director of the Centre for Advanced Social Science in Port Harcourt, Nigeria, at the time of his death. He authored many books and articles about political development and African politics, the most recent of which is the forthcoming "Democracy and Development in Africa," which is being published by the Brookings Institution. He was active in efforts to reveal human rights and environmental abuses by the Nigerian government and served as a consultant to numerous international organizations, including the World Bank.