Ian Urbina, Pulitzer-prize-winning journalist and author of Outlaw Ocean: Journeys Across the Last Untamed Frontier, will deliver the Abel Lecture on April 26, 2022, at 7:00 PM, on the topic of “Migrants and Mercenaries on the Outlaw Ocean: A Discussion of EU Efforts to Build a Virtual Wall Across the Mediterranean.” The talk will be followed by a panel discussion and ample time for audience questions.

This presentation is sponsored by the Dr. Harold Abel Endowed Lecture Series in the Study of Dictatorship, Democracy and Genocide and the College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences at Central Michigan University. A registration link and other details will be available soon.

This presentation examines causes of the crisis, real as well as imagined, in the Horn of Africa. The region, which includes Sudan, South Sudan, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Djibouti, and Somalia, had been sizzling and continues to do so due to multitudes of problems: boundary conflict, ethnonationalist aspirations, Nile water politics, piracy, cold war, and post-cold war developments.

The region's strategic location along the Red Sea littoral and the Indian Ocean compounds its problem. Consequently, any difficulty in one of the countries in the region, besides engulfing the neighboring countries, often attracts the big powers. The latter: USA, France, Russia, China, Japan had already established their military and naval bases in Djibouti. As if this is not enough, Middle Eastern countries such as Quatar, UAE, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey are clamoring to join the skirmish.

This public event will be streamed live via Webex. Registration is not required.

Award-winning children’s author Carole Lindstrom will discuss her career and her 2021 Caldecott Medal-winning book We Are Water Protectors. Lindstrom, a member of the Turtle Mountain Band of Ojibwe, wrote the book in response to the protests against the Dakota Access Pipeline. She will talk about the book’s intent to be “an urgent rallying cry to safeguarding the Earth’s water from harm and corruption.”

Clarke Historical Library Speaker Series

Register for this online event