Our 2018 lecture series concludes with a talk by Ambassador Robert Gosende who will speak Dec. 17 at 7:30 about his Quaker friend Prof. H. W. van der Merwe.
Dr. van der Merwe was the intermediary who brought the all-white South African Afrikaner Nationalist Government and the almost all-black African National Congress into direct contact with one another, first in London and then in Lusaka, Zambia.
In the foreword to van der Merwe’s auto-biography, Peacemaking in South Africa – a Life in Conflict Resolution, Nelson Mandela wrote: “These memoirs tell the story of the gradual development of a Calvinist dissident to an anti-apartheid activist and a Quaker peacemaker whose religious commitment and academic insights enabled him to reach out to all sides of the conflict in South Africa.”
Ambassador Gosende served for 36 years in the Foreign Service, the U. S. Information Agency and the Department of State before joining the State University of New York in 1998. His overseas experience includes tours of duty as Cultural Affairs Officer in Libya, Somalia and Poland and as Minister- Counselor for Public Affairs in South Africa and in the Russian Federation. He received Presidential awards from George W. Bush and Bill Clinton for his service as USIA’s Director of African Affairs and as the president’s special envoy for Somalia.