Emory University News Release

Release date: March 17, 2004
Contact: Deb Hammacher, Associate Director, University Media Relations,
at 404-727-0644 or dhammac@emory.edu

Wole Soyinka to Give Only U.S. Leg of BBC's Reith Lectures

Photo: Joey Ivansco/AJC

WHO: Wole Soyinka, Nobel laureate for literature and Emory Woodruff Professor Emeritus

WHAT: The Reith Lectures 2004 for BBC Radio 4: "Climate of Fear: I Am Right; You Are Dead"

WHEN: 7 p.m. Monday, March 29

WHERE: Harland Cinema, Dobbs Center, 605 Asbury Circle, on the Emory campus. Parking is available in the Peavine and Fishburne parking decks. For a map of campus, go to: http://map.emory.edu

COST: Free and open to the public. For more information, call 404-727-6847 or go to http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/reith2004/.

Wole Soyinka, 1986 Nobel laureate for literature and Emory Woodruff Professor of the Arts emeritus, will give the final lecture in his five-part BBC Radio 4 Reith Lectures at Emory University at 7 p.m. Monday, March 29. The Emory lecture will be the only installment given in the United States. The theme for the series is "Climate of Fear," and Soyinka will discuss in his Emory talk how religious fundamentalism is playing out worldwide in "I Am Right; You Are Dead."

According to Soyinka, we are living in a new climate of fear. "Its special quality is anonymity: a secret knowledge of power over the destiny of others," says Soyinka. "Fear is a weapon in the hands of the dictator, the state or the individual fanatic or fundamentalist." How does democracy counter those who see themselves as the Chosen Ones? He argues that we must be clear-thinking and not be blind to the true nature of terror.

"The eruption of terror anywhere does not remain localized for long. It is territorially rapacious and once unleashed develops and travels on a momentum all its own. We must be ruthless and not allow our own self-appointed Chosen Ones to grow and be nurtured in our midst."

The series will be broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in April and May and streamed on its Web site: http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/reith2004/, go to Schedule.

A native of Abeokuta, in western Nigeria, Soyinka has been a lifelong activist for democracy in his homeland. His writings always have been closely tied to his political activism; his most acclaimed works are the memoirs "Ake" and "The Man Died: Prison Notes of Wole Soyinka" --the latter based on 27 months in solitary confinement following his 1967 arrest by the Nigerian government--and the play "Death and the King's Horseman." Some of his more recent works include the forthcoming essay "Salutation to the Gut" (May 2004), the plays "King Baabu" and "The Beatification of Area Boy," and an essay, "Open Sore of a Continent," which chronicles Nigeria's plight. Additional publications include "The Burden of Memory," a book based on lectures delivered at Harvard in 1997, and "Arms and the Arts -- A Continent's Unequal Dialogue," based on the 1999 TD Davie Memorial Lecture at the University of Cape Town.

During his tenure at Emory, Soyinka worked with Theater Emory to stage readings and productions of his works, and hosted fellow Nobel laureates Elie Wiesel and Archbishop Desmond Tutu at Emory's Nobel Conversations lecture series. He has served as an advisor to UNESCO, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, for several years.

The Reith Lectures were inaugurated in 1948 by the BBC to mark the historic contribution made to public service broadcasting by Sir John (later Lord) Reith, the corporation's first director-general. The subject of this year's lecture series is the Climate of Fear.

The very first Reith lecturer was the philosopher Bertrand Russell, who spoke on "Authority and the Individual." Among his successors were Arnold Toynbee ("The World and the West," 1952), Robert Oppenheimer ("Science and the Common Understanding," 1953) and J.K. Galbraith ("The New Industrial State," 1966). More recently, the Reith lectures have been delivered by the Chief Rabbi Jonathan Sacks ("The Persistence of Faith," 1990), Patricia J. Williams ("Race and Race Relations," 1997), John Keegan ("War and Our World," 1998), Anthony Giddens ("Runaway World," 1999). Tom Kirkwood examined "The End Of Age" in 2001 and Onora O'Neill lectured on "A Question of Trust" in 2002. Last year, the neuroscientist V.S. Ramachandran dealt with "The Emerging Mind."

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