Public Lecture

Nancy Clark

Nancy Clark is the Jane DeGrummond Professor of History at Louisiana State University. She earned her undergraduate degree in history at UCLA and her Ph.D. in history at Yale University. Dr. Clark is the author of several books on African and South African history including South Africa: The Rise and Fall of Apartheid, Manufacturing Apartheid, and the two volume Africa and the West.  She has earned numerous academic honors including awards from the National Endowment for Humanities, Social Science Research Council, and the Fulbright-Hays Research Program.

Professor Clark taught at California Polytechnic State University in San Luis Obispo from 1989 to 2003, and served as the founding Director of the Honors Program and the President’s Scholars.  She also served as Dean of the Honors College at LSU from 2003-2014. She has led study abroad trips to China and South Africa including a service learning trip to South Africa.

She will speak on the topic, “The Continuing Meaning of Reconciliation in Post-Apartheid South Africa”

After spending 27 years in prison for his beliefs, Nelson Mandela led South Africa to a peaceful transition from the notorious Apartheid system to a fully democratic society in 1994. While he was “prepared to die” to bring about change in South Africa, he succeeded not only in overturning racial discrimination through peaceful means, but also in promoting reconciliation in the new South Africa. How did he turn the bitterness of apartheid into true reconciliation?  

Linda Biehl

Linda Biehl is the co-founder and director of the Amy Biehl Foundation in the U.S. and the Amy Biehl Foundation Trust in South Africa.  Linda’s relationship to South Africa and the genesis of these Foundations is grounded in the life and death of her daughter Amy.

Amy Biehl was a dynamic, 26 year-old Stanford graduate who in 1993 was awarded a Fulbright Scholarship to study the role of women and gender rights during South Africa’s transition from the apartheid regime to a free multiracial democracy.  Just days before she was due home, Amy was killed in an act of political violence.  

The four men, convicted of killing Amy, applied in 1997 for amnesty to South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC).  Linda and her late husband Peter were strongly motivated by Amy’s belief in the TRC and its mission to achieve restorative justice. Under the watchful eye of the world, the Biehls testified at the amnesty hearing of their daughter's killers.  Instead of opposing amnesty they offered their support and challenged the killers to link arms with them and continue Amy’s work.

At a personal level, Linda Biehl build a relationship with two of the killers of her daughter.  As a result these young men became social activists in their community working for the Amy Biehl Foundation Trust. 

In 2008 Linda Biehl was awarded the highest honor given to a non-South African, the Companions of O. R. Tambo. Linda was the first Greeley Scholar for Peace and UMASS Lowell in the spring of 2008.

Mrs. Biehl will share the work of the Amy Biehl Foundation aimed at the fulfilment of the three important rights in the South African Constitution:  the right to education, the right to equal employment, and the right to health. However, for her justice is more than rights written into an official document; justice is converting those rights into reality.