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Mutua named to prestigious think tank
Makau W. Mutua, SUNY Distinguished Professor and dean of the UB Law School, has been elected to the prestigious Council on Foreign Relations, a New York City-based think tank and membership organization that studies major international issues and publishes the influential journal Foreign Policy.
With more than 4,300 members, the council's ranks include top government officials, renowned scholars, business leaders, acclaimed journalists, prominent attorneys and distinguished nonprofit professionals. Members participate in meetings, panel discussions, interviews, lectures, book clubs and film screenings to discuss and debate major foreign policy issues. In addition, they enjoy broad access to world leaders, senior government officials, members of Congress and prominent thinkers.
The membership rolls include former Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin, who chairs the organization, and such statesmen as Bill Clinton, Henry Kissinger, Condoleezza Rice and Colin Powell; senior journalists such as Fareed Zakaria, Tom Brokaw and Katie Couric; senior academics such as Columbia University President Lee Bollinger and Harvard Professor Henry Louis Gates Jr.; and Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, along with other senior lawyers and judges.
On the recommendation of the membership committee, the council’s board of directors elected Mutua as a life member, effective immediately. New members are nominated in writing and seconded by at least three other members of the council.
Floyd H. & Hilda L. Hurst Faculty Scholar at UB Law and a former director of the school’s Human Rights Center, Mutua teaches in the areas of international human rights, international business transactions and international law. He has been a visiting professor at Harvard Law School, the University of Iowa College of Law, the University of Puerto Rico School of Law and the United Nations University for Peace in Costa Rica.
While on sabbatical in Kenya in 2002-03, Mutua was appointed chairman of the Task Force on the Establishment of a Truth, Justice and Reconciliation Commission. He also served as a delegate to the National Constitutional Conference, which produced a contested draft constitution for Kenya.
He recently returned from a weeklong trip to Kenya and Uganda, sponsored by the Ford Foundation, in which he spoke out forcefully in defense of homosexuals, who face an increasingly hostile political and social environment in Africa.
His many publications include the textbook “Human Rights: A Political and Cultural Critique.” In addition to human rights reports for the United Nations and leading nongovernmental organizations, Mutua has authored dozens of articles for such popular publications as The New York Times, Boston Globe, Christian Science Monitor, Daily Nation, East African Standard and The Washington Post. He also has conducted numerous human rights, diplomatic and rule of law missions to countries in Africa, Latin America and Europe.
He was educated at the University of Nairobi in Kenya, the University of Dar-Es-Salaam in Tanzania and at Harvard Law School.
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