African Studies with Dr. Paul Robinson

Neva Hassanein is a Professor of Environmental Studies at
the University of Montana. For this episode, she interviews
her mentor, friend and professor whom she studied with in East
Africa. 


Paul’s formative years were spent in the Belgian Congo—ay a time
when most of Africa was the possession of one or another of
Europe’s nations.  For more than four decades, his life
experiences were largely centered in Africa where he lived,
worked, and together with his wife, Margie, raised three
children. Then for 15 years, he directed a global service
learning program at Wheaton College, where his Africa experience
was been enlarged to include much of what is being called “The
Majority World.”  


His journey in scholarship really began at Northwestern
University, where he studied history and was awarded a Fulbright
to examine the vulnerability of African communities to protracted
drought in the 1970s. His PhD research brought together archival
investigation in the U.K. and Kenya, and living oral history from
the deserts of the Kenya-Ethiopian frontier, where he spent
considerable time walking desert paths and sitting under trees in
conversation with Gabra sages, learning how they survived and
flourished in one of Africa's harshest
environments.  This experience anchored his engagement
with issues of cultural change and ‘development,’ as well as his
commitment to learning from other cultures.  For four
decades, he shared that learning with college students through
cross-cultural learning and service educational programs.


Paul’s scholarship and teaching have always been directly linked
to praxis.  He continues to work closely with
international organizations, assisting with assessment of
development initiatives.  High points of this include
working for two years with Kenyan communities, helping to
facilitate integrative responses to the HIV/AIDS pandemic and the
past 20 years involved in peace-building, reconciliation, and
reconstruction in the Democratic Republic of the Congo through
the Congo Initiative. He is passionate about emerging relational
and partnership paradigms between North and South to effect
changes that improve lives and care for the environment. He gives
leadership on several international boards that address global
challenges of hunger, poverty, and transformation.


Summing up Dr. Robinson’s teaching, he would say, “Until we
begin to recognize how we look through others’ eyes, we will not
‘get it.’" We begin to see with new lenses first through
encounter and then into engagement. Then from engagement to
relationship.  It is in relationship that we begin to
find wholeness and well-being. As we find others, we begin to
find our true selves.” Perhaps seeing ourselves ultimately as
truly human.  Paul is committed to understanding
through exposure to, involvement with, and learning from other
perspectives. 


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