Liberia 's Politics Bode Well for IU Research Projects, Scholarship

IU faculty member may serve on African country's governance reform commission

By STEVE HINNEFELD
The ( Bloomington) Herald-Times
January 28, 2006

Ellen Johnson Sirleaf took office last week as president of Liberia, and faculty and staff at Indiana University said the change bodes well for several IU-Liberian projects. "I'm just excited with these opportunities for collaboration and a new day dawning in Liberia," said Amos Sawyer, co-director of the Workshop in Political Theory and Policy Analysis at IU.  Johnson Sirleaf, a Harvard-educated banker, became the first elected woman president in Africa when she defeated soccer star George Weah in Liberia's election last fall. She was inaugurated Jan. 16, starting a six-year term as president of the war-torn West African country.

Sawyer , Liberia 's interim president from 1990 to 1993, advised Johnson Sirleaf during the campaign. He confirmed that she has asked him to chair a governance reform commission and said he's deciding whether to take the position. He and his wife, Comfort, attended Johnson Sirleaf's inauguration. "It was a really extraordinary, extraordinary event," he said.

Sawyer is co-director of the IU-based Center on Constitutional Democracy in Plural Societies, which is working to develop constitutional government in several countries. He, IU Law School Dean Lauren Robel and law professors David and Susan Williams were in Liberia last month to meet with Johnson Sirleaf about the center's work.

IU also is home to the Liberian Archives Project, which attempts to locate and preserve endangered documents related to Liberia's history.

"With the support of the current administration, we're very optimistic," said Verlon Stone, coordinator of the archives project. "There's a huge future here, and we're attempting to find the resources to do this."

Last summer, Stone went to Liberia with Jake Nadal, the chief preservationist at IU Libraries, and Elwood Dunn, a member of the archives project advisory board. Dunn is a former Liberian government official and a professor at Sewanee the University of the South.  Funded by the British Library's Endangered Archives Programme, they brought back the papers of the late W.V.S. Tubman, Liberia's president from 1944 to 1971; and Bai T. Moore, a former cultural minister. The documents are being preserved and microfilmed at IU's E. Lingle Craig Preservation Laboratory and will be returned to Liberia. This month, Stone, Dunn and IU Archives director Philip Bantin were in Liberia to work on the project, which includes organizing and providing secure storage for Liberia's presidential and national archives.

"What Verlon is doing is very important to the intellectual heritage of the country," Sawyer said. He said Johnson Sirleaf is taking the right steps to win support, reaching out to Weah's supporters and setting an ambitious agenda for eliminating government corruption and rebuilding infrastructure. She's got a realistic, doable agenda to be accomplished in the first 150 days," he said.

She also has international support, symbolized by the presence at the inauguration of numerous African leaders, European officials and U.S. first lady Laura Bush and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.

"I had not seen Liberians so full of hope and optimistic in a long time," Sawyer said.

ON THE WEB:

The Liberian Collections Project at Indiana University: www.onliberia.org.

© 1997 - 2006 HeraldTimes.     Reprinted with Permission.

Back to In the Press