Peacekeeping and justice: StFX professor brings global insight back from Africa

StFX philosophy professor, Dr. William Sweet, has recently returned from a lecture tour and research visit in eastern and southern Africa, where he presented papers on the ethics of peace building and carried out research on the anti-apartheid movement and decolonization.

A major part of Dr. Sweet’s lecture tour was spent in Ethiopia, where he was invited to give the inaugural keynote address at an international conference on peace and sustainable development held at the University of Addis Ababa. There, colleagues and graduate students, primarily from universities in Ethiopia but also from east and southern Africa, met to discuss issues of environmental justice, technology and sustainable development, identity and decolonization, and the role of intercultural philosophy in promoting peace and intergenerational justice.

Professor Sweet noted the increase of interest in philosophy in Ethiopian universities, particularly relevant as Ethiopia ranks as the highest and fastest growing economy in Africa. Yet it is also a country where there continues to be regional and interstate tensions and conflict, and so the conference theme of peacebuilding was especially important, he says.