Former ambassador addresses United States policy in Horn of Africa Sept. 30

Dr. David Shinn

Dr. David Shinn

KALAMAZOO, Mich.—An expert on the Horn of Africa and China-Africa relations will give a talk at Western Michigan University Friday, Sept. 30, 2011.

Dr. David Shinn, an adjunct professor in the Elliott School of International Affairs at George Washington University and 37-year veteran of the United States Department of State, will speak on “U.S. Policy Towards the Horn of Africa,” at 3 p.m. in Room 2028 of Brown Hall. The lecture is open to the public free of charge.

About Dr. David Shinn

Before he began teaching at GWU in 2001, Dr. David Shinn served as a U.S. foreign service officer, with assignments at embassies in Lebanon, Kenya and Tanzania; deputy chief of mission in Mauritania, Cameroon and Sudan; and ambassador to Burkina Faso and Ethiopia. His State Department assignments included assistant desk officer for Ethiopia, desk officer for Somalia, Djibouti, Uganda and Tanzania; coordinator for Somalia during the international intervention in the early 1990s; and director of East African, Horn of Africa and Indian Ocean Island affairs.

Shinn has published extensively in academic and policy journals on the Horn of Africa and China-Africa relations and speaks around the world on these topics. A book Shinn co-authored on China-Africa relations is due out in early 2012 from the University of Pennsylvania Press.

Shinn’s lecture is hosted by WMU’s Center for African Development Policy Research and co-sponsored by WMU’s Light Center for Chinese Studies; Office of Diversity and Inclusion; departments of Economics, Geography and Political Science; and Haenicke Institute for Global Education.

For more information, contact Dr. Sisay Asefa, director of WMU's Center for African Development Policy Research, at sisay.asefa@wmich.edu or (269) 387-5556.

Event flier

Full text of Shinn's talk