Clive Mentzel, director of Vanderbilt’s Office of Active Citizenship and Service, will present the next World on Wednesdays lecture, “Dealing with the Deleterious Effects of a Racist Society: A South African Service-Learning Case Study,” on Wednesday, Oct. 12, from noon to 1 p.m. in Sarratt Student Center 325/327. Lunch will be provided.
Mentzel will identify the impact of a society that was racist by design and remains racist in practice. He will reflect on some of the methods used to deal with deep-rooted racism, and will look at the experiences of Vanderbilt students experiencing a post-apartheid society through the lens of service. Suggested solutions to racism also will be explored.
Raised in South Africa, Mentzel has a Ph.D. in political science from Johannesburg University and is a specialist on the transition to democracy in that country. He has a special interest in emerging democratic governments and political processes aimed at securing increased political participation and accountability, especially at the local level. He worked as an adviser to some of the participants in the South African negotiation process in the 1990s that led to a peaceful transition to democracy in that country, and he subsequently served as national director of voter education for the Independent Electoral Commission of South Africa. After then working in London for a decade, he joined the Vanderbilt Office of Active Citizenship and Service as director in 2012.
World on Wednesdays is a recurring lunch lecture series sponsored by Vanderbilt’s International Student and Scholar Services (ISSS), a service of the Office of the Dean of Students. The series gives students, faculty and community members a chance to reach out across campus with topics addressing and opening discussion about a breadth of global issues and experiences.
Contact: Derrick Stevens, (615) 322-2753