Lessons from South Africa
“Leadership and Reconciliation in a Divided World: Lessons from South Africa”is the subject of a lecture by James A. Joseph, the former U.S. ambassador to South Africa, at 7:30 p.m. Monday, May 3 in Snidow Chapel.
The talk is made possible by the Jennie Cutler Shumate Lecture on Christian Ministry sponsored by University of Lynchburg.
Joseph served as ambassador to South Africa from January 1996 to November 1999 and was the first and only U.S. ambassador to present his credentials to President Nelson Mandela. In recognition of Joseph’s many contributions, South African President Thabo Mbeki awarded him the Order of Good Hope, the highest honor the Republic of South Africa bestows on a citizen of another country.
Joseph works with emerging leaders in southern Africa through a joint appointment at Duke University and the University of Cape Town. He has launched the U.S-Southern Africa Center for Leadership and Public Values, based in Durham, N.C., and in Cape Town, South Africa.
Before serving in South Africa, Joseph was the first chairman of the board of directors of President Clinton’s Corporation for National Service. He also served three other U.S. presidents: as Department of Interior undersecretary and chairman of the Commission on the Northern Mariana under President Carter; as a member of the Advisory Committee to the Agency for International Development under President Reagan; and as an incorporating director of the Points of Light Foundation and a member of the Presidential Commission on Historically Black Colleges under President George H.W. Bush.
A Louisiana native, Joseph is the author of two books, The Charitable Impulse (1989) and Remaking America (1995), and is now at work on a book that focuses on ethics in public life. He has taught at Yale Divinity School and the Claremont Colleges, where he was university chaplain.
The Jennie Cutler Shumate Lecture on Christian Ministry provides for an annual lecture by a prominent minister or layperson. The lectures have been delivered since 1940.
