Olufemi Taiwo

This edition of the Newsletter on Philosophy and International Cooperation presents three pieces that address issues that are of significance to different constituencies within the professional community constituted by the American Philosophical Association. The nineties witnessed the collapse of motley dictatorial regimes in different parts of the world. Simultaneously, the nineties ushered in an era where multiparty democracy became a standard requirement for participation in the concert of humanity. Although some version of liberal democracy or another is now proclaimed by everyone as a worthy goal of efforts at building political institutions, one is somewhat perturbed at the limited awareness, on the part of philosophers, of these developments in the real world. It is with a view to augmenting the awareness of philosophers, especially political philosophers, that we present the first two contributions in this edition.

Julius Nyerere was the long-term ruler of the Republic of Tanzania from independence in 1961 to his voluntary retirement in 1990. He was one of Africa’s preeminent statesmen and one of the world’s most admired and respected leaders. Of greater relevance to the objective of this Newsletter is the fact that Nyerere was also one of the most original political thinkers of the twentieth century. It is for this reason that his thoughts on the evolution and direction of political change in Africa as well as on the continent’s overall future merit attention. The piece printed here was a speech given by Mwalimu Nyerere before an audience at the University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, Scotland, in 1997.

The second piece on Senegal is by a contemporary Senegalese philosopher, Souleymane Bachir Diagne, who recently was a Visiting Professor in the Program of African Studies and the Department of Philosophy at Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois. I had asked him to reflect on the recent election in his country, an election which saw the termination of the Socialist Party of Senegal’s hold on power since independence from France in 1960. As Professor Diagne points out, the outcome of the election in Senegal parallels in importance, relative to the history of the country, the similar epoch-making change signalled by the defeat of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) in Mexico after seventy years in power. The piece represents another element of the Newsletter’s objective of presenting to the membership of the APA the views of philosophers from elsewhere.

Finally, although the din has diminished, there is little doubt that the acrimony over the so-called ‘culture wars’ in these United States have not abated. And the culture wars, it will be recalled, are fought over issues of diversity, multiculturalism, inclusion, and so on. Those issues continue to engage the attention of opponents and proponents alike on college campuses and at sundry other cultural institutions across the United States. The third contribution in this issue informs us that similar issues enjoy currency in Canada, our northern neighbor. Esmeralda Thornhill is Professor of Law and the first holder of the James Robinson Johnston Chair in Black Canadian Studies at Dalhousie Law School, Dalhousie University, Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada. Her intervention is important because the questions that she raises attract greater urgency because they arise in a context where, unlike what obtains in this country, multiculturalism and its twin derivatives, multicultural and intercultural education, are official policy. Furthermore, for those who are tempted to think that the issues raised by multiculturalism, however conceived, are either limited to the United States or that Canada is without her own version of the twin evils of racism and racial discrimination because she embraces multiculturalism, Professor Thornhill’s contribution could not be more timely.