Steve Sharra's blog

With Ghana as the only remaining African team at the ongoing 2010 World Cup, as I write, the question for many people inside and outside Africa has been about the miserable performance of the five other African representatives. The 2010 World Cup was billed as the African World Cup, and hopes were high that a good number of African teams, amongst the six, would do better than in previous World Cup tournaments. These hopes thrived notwithstanding the facts of the official FIFA rankings, in which no single African team featured in the world's top eighteen.  read more »

The theme for this year's Peace and Justice Studies Association (PJSA) annual conference, held from October 8 to 10 at Marquette University in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, could not have been more apropos. Phrased as "The Power of Nonviolence," it compelled me to think about the ways in which Nonviolence theory and praxis could be brought to bear in the search for solutions to one of Africa's most intractable puzzles, the case of Zimbabwe.  read more »

Dear Malawian Voters: On the surface, Malawian women appear poised to transform the political landscape on Tuesday, May 19^th, when Malawians go to the polls to vote in presidential and parliamentary elections. For the first time in our country's 45-year history, a woman is running for president, and two women are running mates on presidential tickets, one of them on the incumbent's ticket.  read more »

Public Lecture presented as part of the Associated Students of Michigan State University (ASMSU) "Last Lecture Series." Following the "Last Lecture" given by the late Carnegie Mellon University professor Randy Pausch, the ASMSU, the university's student government, has invited Michigan State University professors to come up with their own versions of a hypothetical "last lecture." Steve Sharra's lecture is the third and last in the series for the 2008-2009 academic year.

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I was still digesting the news of Obama's Auntie Zeituni, living in the US illegally since 2004, when the doorbell rang. It was after 5pm on Saturday afternoon, and I wasn't expecting anybody on a cold November day at the onset of the Michigan winter. I went to see who it was, and was greeted by a tall elderly man, in a baseball cap. "I support Obama," he announced, "and I am here to ask you to vote for him on Tuesday. Are you registered to vote?" We talked a little bit, before I thanked him and wished him good luck in his efforts.  read more »