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88th Commencement speaker named

On April 26, 2002, Wangari Maathai spoke at CC on Transforming Lives, Transforming Culture, The Green Belt Movement.

September 30, 2005

The first African woman to receive the Nobel Peace Prize, Wangari Maathai, will be the college´s commencement speaker at its 88th Commencement ceremony on May 21.

Maathai, a Kenyan veterinary science professor and environmentalist, is internationally recognized for her persistent struggle for democracy, human rights and environmental conservation. She is the founder of the grassroots Green Belt Movement, which was created in 1977 to curtail the effects of deforestation and desertification in Kenya. Today, more than 30 million trees have been planted across Kenya, and similar initiatives have been successfully launched in Tanzania, Uganda, Malawi, Lesotho, Ethiopia and Zimbabwe. The movement has gone on to campaign for education, nutrition and other issues important to women.

She won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2004, and was praised by the committee for taking "a holistic approach to sustainable development that embraces democracy, human rights and women´s rights in particular." In addition to being the first African woman to win the prize, Maathai is also the first woman in East and Central Africa to earn a doctorate degree, the first woman in Kenya to hold an associate professorship and the first woman in Kenya to chair an academic department.

The Fuller-Maathai Professorship in Gender and Women´s Studies (GWS) at Connecticut College was established in 1997 by alumna Cynthia Fuller Davis. A committee of faculty, students and alumni voted to name the new professorship in honor of both Maathai and Margaret Fuller, a prominent 19th century social and political thinker.

In 2002, GWS and the Goodwin-Niering Center for Conservation Biology and Environmental Studies sponsored Maathai to lecture at Connecticut College about the Green Belt Movement and women´s rights.

Later that year Maathai was elected to Kenya´s parliament with 98 percent of the vote, and was subsequently appointed as assistant minister for environment, natural resources and wildlife in Kenya´s parliament.

Maathai, known as "The Tree Woman" in Kenya, currently lives in Nairobi.

View the Gender & Women´s Studies department site.

For more information contact: Amy Sullivan (860) 439-2526; amy.sullivan@conncoll.edu