Teaching 101: 1 x 1

One of the best parts of being a teacher is working with students individually. Classroom teaching is fun, of course.  I’ve enjoyed this year’s classes in human rights, comparative health law, and climate change.  Putting the syllabi and readings together, conducting class discussion (as I do my best to reorient the students from the system […]

This American Life (in Dakar)

This week began with a wee hours Super Bowl party and is ending with a Presidents Weekend softball tournament at Ebbets Field, with a class trip to the U.S. Embassy’s American Information Center (AIC) and a Fulbrighters’ Game Night chez nous sandwiched in between.  Life in Dakar never felt so American. Our softball team, the […]

A new international masters program in sustainable development at UCAD

Last week, the MacArthur Foundation,  Earth Institute at Columbia University, and the Université Cheikh Anta Diop (UCAD)’s  Faculte des Sciences Economiques et de la Gestion (FASEG), announced their partnership to offer a new Global Masters in Development Practice (MDP). In a launching ceremony in the grand amphitheater of the modern UCAD II building, UCAD’s Rector […]

And There Was Light

“Just wait till the new students arrive,” said one of my human rights students, whose day job is in UCAD’s student services department.  “There will be electricity or there will be strikes.” Last week I finished my first course at UCAD, taught at the Institute for Human Rights and Peace.  As my earlier post indicated, […]

A Thousand Words

A picture, they say, is worth a thousand words.  Given my penchant for text, I’m hoping that you’ll agree that I made the right call last week to spend time uploading pix rather than words.  At right you’ll see some new stills posted in the image gallery (which is based in Flickr) of life at […]

Lux et Lex

For a week I’ve been teaching a course on genocide (, the law against) at the Faculté des Sciences Juridiques et Politiques at the Université Cheikh Anta Diop.  And while we have plenty of lex, we’re still lacking the lux. At least the kind of light that requires electricity.  The law faculty has lacked juice […]