Alemayehu Fentaw Explained

Alemayehu Fentaw Weldemariam (born 8 June 1980) is an Ethiopian constitutional law scholar, political theorist, conflict analyst, and a public intellectual.

Early life and education

Alemayehu Fentaw was born in Alamata, Tigray (formerly Wollo), Ethiopia on 8 June 1980.Alemayehu Weldemariam teaches Constitutional Law at Mekelle University School of Law where he is also Editor-in-Chief of the Law Review. Heholds a Master of Science in Conflict Analysis & Resolution (2016) from George Mason University in Arlington, Virginia and a Master of Arts (summa cum laude) in Peace & Conflict Studies (2009) from the European University Center for Peace Studies at Stadtschlaining, Austria, where he was also a fellow of the Salzburg Global Seminar.[1] Besides, he was a fellow of the Academy for International Business Officials, in Beijing, China. Moreover, he received an LL.B degree from Addis Ababa University School of Law in July 2005.[2]

Alemayehu has also a year-long graduate training in philosophy at George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia and spent another year reading the Great Books at the Graduate Institute at St. John's College in Annapolis, Maryland.

He moved to the United States in November 2011 as a guest scholar at the University of Chicago to collaborate with Professor Donald N. Levine on a book project on Ethiopia, published by Tsehay Publishers as Interpreting Ethiopia as well as an International Conference on George Simmel. He had delivered lectures at several universities in Ethiopia, the US and Japan, including, Villanova University, outside of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, the University of California at Santa Barbara,[3] and Doshisha University in Kyoto, Japan. He served as a scholar-in-residence at the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs, University of Texas at Austin and Austin Community College.[4] He was also a visiting professor of government in the College of Arts and Sciences at Suffolk University.

Career

Weldemariam is a Lecturer-in-Law in the Constitutional and Public Law Program at Mekelle University where he teaches constitutional law, federalism, and human rights courses. He taught various courses at Jimma University Law School, including constitutional law, criminal law, jurisprudence, and law of traders and business organizations. He also served as the founding editor of the Jimma University Journal of Law and was head of the Research and Publications Office.[5] Besides, he has served as project officer with the Organization for Social Justice in Ethiopia, legal advisor to the Ethiopian Chamber of Commerce, and regional director of the Ethiopian Global Initiative, political commentator at Ethiopia Insight, contributor to the Horn of Africa Bulletin, a monthly publication of the Life and Peace Institute, based in Uppsala, Sweden, editor-in-chief of Addis Fortune, and a consultant on regional and national peace and security.[6] Weldemariam has researched and published extensively on Ethiopian law, politics, national security and foreign policy, as well as regional peace and security.[7] Moreover, he sits on the international board of the US-based Ethiopian Global Initiative[8] and the Kigali-based Great Lakes Peace Network Foundation[9] and is also a member of the Paris-based Global Editors Network,[10] as well as A New Science of Virtues, which is a project of the University of Chicago,[11] and also is an associate of the Jethro Institute for Good Governance, a London-based consulting organization[12] He currently serves as a peer reviewer for such prestigious journals as the Melbourne Journal of International Law and The Journal of Borderlands Studies.

Scholarship

In his book, Legal Pluralism in Contemporary Ethiopia[13] (2010), Weldemariam, following the tack taken by Professor Andreas Eshete (PhD, Yale), defends multinational federalism not under the eternal perspective of John Rawls’ political theory but under the unfavorable conditions aspect of his nonideal political theory.[13] He contends that legal pluralism is an important federalist policy in a pluralist society such as Ethiopia. He does so by telling the story of the suppression of the diverse customary and religious laws in the country's recent past as part of the larger history of ethnic homogenization and state centralization. Since 1957, customary and religious laws had been alienated from the state legal system by virtue of the great influx of Western transplants providing the setting for competition between legal universalism and legal pluralism. In 1995, legal pluralism triumphs over legal universalism, as the 1995 FDRE Constitution recognizes the validity of customary and religious laws in personal and family matters. He analyzes the salient elements of legal pluralism in Ethiopia, argues for redrawing the frontiers of formal legal pluralism in such a manner as to include criminal matters, and points out the challenges. Professor Andreas Eshete described the work as one that "examined Ethiopia's new experiment in federalism with care and fresh insight"[14] Professor Donald N. Levine of the University of Chicago gives his testimonial in the following words: "Alemayehu's work has prodded me to think afresh and offers facts, sources, and analyses from which I have learned a good deal. Indeed, regarding Ethiopia's regime of ethnic federalism, he has prodded me to change my mind somewhat. That is not a bad litmus test of any scholar." Professor Levine refers to him as "more of a social scientist-philosopher at heart than a lawyer, albeit an astute legal analyst."

In an interview with the Reporter[15] (2008), the Amharic private bi-weekly, Weldemariam made an incisive analysis of Ethiopian politics and the role of political parties in the country as well as ethnic animosity in Ethiopian institutions of higher learning. Weldemariam's incisive analysis bears on the future of democratization in general and free and fair elections in particular in Ethiopia. Invoking Weldemariam's observation, Wondwosen Teshome (2009, 822)of the University of Vienna writes, “In fact, frustrated by the fragmentation of opposition parties and the refusal of many African incumbents to hand over power peacefully some political observers felt that unless the army stages a coup it is not possible to remove electoral autocrats democratically.”

His work as human rights activist figures in prominently in his advocacy for freedom of the press, worship, conscience, and association. He also advocated for release of Judge Birtukan Mideksa, leader of Unity for Democracy and Justice, the major opposition party in Ethiopia, against the rise of authoritarianism, and his critique of the Ethiopian national security and foreign policy in many of his writings. He was nominated for the Lorenzo Natali Prize for Excellence in Reporting on Human Rights for the year 2009 for his Ethiopia: On forgiveness, reconciliation, and pardon, an article published in Sudan Tribune.

Following the re-release of Judge Birtukan Mideksa from prison on 6 October 2010, he wrote a critical piece exposing the motive behind the decision and particular procedure selected for her release. He criticized the regime for harbouring an ill will to crush the morale of the judge not only by incarceration, but also by selecting procedures ill fitted for securing her freedom from prison like forcing her to confess and request for pardon as well as for being hell-bent on destroying her political career. In his The Unbearable Lightness of Pardon: Reflections on Birtukan's Second Sailing, he contends that both of her sailings out of prison proved to all the unbearable lightness of pardons in Ethiopia. In spite of the inhumane treatment Birtukan received in the hands of her jailors, one thing that is certain is that she will remain to be a source of inspiration for all who work the betterment of the human condition in Ethiopia.[16]

In a series of articles, Weldemariam engaged in a constructive criticism of Ethiopia's national security and foreign policy in which he unmasked the incumbent's obsession with territorial security to the detriment of human security. More particularly, he criticizes Ethiopia for its military misadventures in Somalia in December 2006. He also prognosticated a possible cooling in the Ethiopian American relations as result of foreseeable diplomatic wrangles over the grim domestic human rights situation. His criticism never went without provoking an official response from the foreign policy establishment. A case in point is the publication of 'A Bogus Call for a Paradigm Shift-Ethiopia's Foreign Affairs and National Security Policy and Strategy', in A Week in the Horn, the e-weekly of The Ethiopian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. In the official response, the Foreign Ministry wrote "Alemayehu Fentaw does not just miss these central elements of the Policy and Strategy instrument. He concocts facts and makes unsubstantiated allegations. One is the suggestion that US-Ethiopia relations would cool under the new US administration. In fact, as is obvious, the relationship between the two countries is thriving."[17]

Publications

Books

Articles

References

1. www.aspr.ac.at/epu/research/Weldemariam.pdf2. www.salzburgglobal.org/go/eView3. http://www.ju-et.academia.edu/AlemayehuFentawWeldemariam4. ssrn.com/abstract=14677225. www.life-peace.org/default2.asp?xid=3166. https://www.amazon.com/Legal-Pluralism-Contemporary-Ethiopia-Introduction/dp/38383561797. 8. www.ethiomedia.com/accent/8270.html9. www.sudantribune.com/Ethiopia-On-forgiveness,3082610. https://web.archive.org/web/20110928101720/http://www.mfa.gov.et/Press_Section/Week_Horn_Africa_December_04_2009.htm#55

Notes and References

  1. Web site: Austrian Study Centre for Peace and Conflict Resolution (ASPR) Peace Castle Austria. www.aspr.ac.at. 2017-12-15.
  2. Web site: Salzburg Global Seminar - Home. https://wayback.archive-it.org/all/20101213115516/http://www.salzburgglobal.org/images/eview/sep10/eview.html. dead. 2010-12-13. www.salzburgglobal.org. en. 2017-12-15.
  3. Web site: News – Orfalea Center for Global & International Studies at UCSB. www.global.ucsb.edu. 2017-12-15. 2016-03-04. https://web.archive.org/web/20160304045626/http://www.global.ucsb.edu/orfaleacenter/news/. live.
  4. Web site: ACC Launches Visiting Scholar Program- ACC Newsroom . 2013-02-03 . https://web.archive.org/web/20130205072649/http://www.austincc.edu/newsroom/index.php/2013/01/31/acc-launches-visiting-scholar-program/ . 2013-02-05 . dead .
  5. Web site: Alemayehu Fentaw Weldemariam Suffolk University Boston MA. www.ju-et.academia.edu. en. 2017-12-15. 2021-07-02. https://web.archive.org/web/20210702151219/https://suffolk.academia.edu/AlemayehuFentawWeldemariam. live.
  6. Web site: Salzburg Global Seminar - Home. www.salzburgglobal.org. en. 2017-12-15. https://web.archive.org/web/20110819100415/http://www.salzburgglobal.org/images/eview/may11/eview.html. 2011-08-19. dead.
  7. Web site: Life & Peace Institute :: Horn of Africa Bulletin . 2012-02-06 . https://web.archive.org/web/20120129124701/http://www.life-peace.org/resources/publications/horn-of-africa-bulletin/ . 2012-01-29 . dead .
  8. Web site: Board of Directors . 2012-01-28 . https://web.archive.org/web/20120314211008/http://www.ethgi.org/who/our-people/ibod.html . 2012-03-14 . dead .
  9. Web site: glpn.org - This website is for sale! - glpn Resources and Information.. www.glpn.org. en. 2017-12-15.
  10. Web site: Mobile. Video. Data. Challenge the Status Quo. GEN. 2017-12-15. 2013-11-28. https://web.archive.org/web/20131128231356/http://www.globaleditorsnetwork.org/gen-members/. live.
  11. Web site: Science of Virtues A Project of the University of Chicago. scienceofvirtues.org. en. 2017-12-15. https://web.archive.org/web/20160305030051/http://scienceofvirtues.org/members/alef.aspx. 2016-03-05. dead.
  12. Web site: Jethro Institute for Good Governance - News . 2018-10-09 . https://web.archive.org/web/20110310124728/http://www.jethroinstitute.org.uk/ . 2011-03-10 . dead .
  13. Book: Weldemariam, Alemayehu Fentaw. Legal Pluralism in Contemporary Ethiopia: A Critical Introduction. 2010-05-19. Lao Lambert Academic Publishing. 9783838356174. Saarbrücken. English.
  14. Web site: Capital reviews Alemayehu Fentaw's work on Legal Pluralism. Weldemariam. Alemayehu F.. 2007-11-16. Rasselas Review. 2017-12-15. 2017-12-15. https://web.archive.org/web/20171215163752/http://alemayehufentaw.blogspot.com/2008/06/capital-reviews-alemayehu-fentaws-work.html. live.
  15. Web site: Archived copy . 2012-01-14 . https://web.archive.org/web/20160325095138/http://www.ethiomedia.com/accent/alemayehu_fentaw_interview.pdf . 2016-03-25 . dead .
  16. Web site: Rasselas Review: The Unbearable Lightness of Pardon: Reflections on Birtukan's Second Sailing. Weldemariam. Alemayehu F.. 2010-10-10. Rasselas Review. 2017-12-15. 2012-04-26. https://web.archive.org/web/20120426021716/http://alemayehufentaw.blogspot.com/2010/10/unbearable-lightness-of-pardon.html. live.
  17. Web site: A Week in the Horn December 04, 2009 . 2011-07-29 . https://web.archive.org/web/20110928101720/http://www.mfa.gov.et/Press_Section/Week_Horn_Africa_December_04_2009.htm#55 . 2011-09-28 . dead .
  18. Web site: Is the specter of the Arab Spring haunting Ethiopia?. openDemocracy. en. 2017-12-15. 2017-12-15. https://web.archive.org/web/20171215222001/https://www.opendemocracy.net/alemayehu-fentaw/is-specter-of-arab-spring-haunting-ethiopia. live.
  19. Web site: Archived copy . 2012-01-28 . 2012-01-20 . https://web.archive.org/web/20120120192316/http://analisesocial.ics.ul.pt/documentos/1317831305W4dWF6sh7Yi66YG3.pdf . live .
  20. Web site: Ethiopia: On forgiveness, reconciliation, and pardon. Sudan Tribune. www.sudantribune.com. en. 2017-12-15. 2017-12-15. https://web.archive.org/web/20171215221239/http://www.sudantribune.com/Ethiopia-On-forgiveness,30826. live.
  21. Web site: Americanchronicle.com. www.americanchronicle.com. 2017-12-15. 2017-12-15. https://web.archive.org/web/20171215221142/http://www.americanchronicle.com/articles/view/78960. live.
  22. Web site: Americanchronicle.com. www.americanchronicle.com. 2017-12-15. 2017-12-15. https://web.archive.org/web/20171215221204/http://www.americanchronicle.com/articles/view/204745. live.
  23. Web site: Americanchronicle.com. www.americanchronicle.com. 2017-12-15. 2017-12-15. https://web.archive.org/web/20171215221202/http://www.americanchronicle.com/articles/view/204842. live.
  24. Web site: Rasselas Review: Ethiopia's Somalia Policy: A Very Brief Critique. Weldemariam. Alemayehu F.. 2011-01-17. Rasselas Review. 2017-12-15. 2012-03-16. https://web.archive.org/web/20120316122010/http://alemayehufentaw.blogspot.com/2011/01/ethiopias-somalia-policy-very-brief.html. live.
  25. Weldemariam. Alemayehu. 2007-10-01. Legal Pluralism: Its Promises and Pitfalls for Ethiopia. Rochester, NY. 1418985.
  26. http://denning.law.ox.ac.uk/lawvle/users/ezrachia/CCLP_L_.21.pdf{{Dead link|date=October 2018 |bot=InternetArchiveBot |fix-attempted=yes }}
  27. Web site: Archived copy . 2011-08-25 . https://web.archive.org/web/20110928203106/http://www.life-peace.org/sajt/filer/pdf/Horn_Of_Africa_Bulletin/HAB1003.pdf . 2011-09-28 . dead .
  28. News: The Emerging Peace and Security Architecture in the Horn of Africa: Prospects and Challenges. Transcend Media Service. 2017-12-15. en. 2012-03-19. https://web.archive.org/web/20120319190006/http://www.transcend.org/tms/2011/01/the-emerging-peace-and-security-architecture-in-the-horn-of-africa-prospects-and-challenges/. live.
  29. Web site: Archived copy . 2011-08-25 . https://web.archive.org/web/20110928203447/http://www.life-peace.org/sajt/filer/pdf/Horn_Of_Africa_Bulletin/HAB%20November%202009.pdf . 2011-09-28 . dead .
  30. Web site: Archived copy . 2011-08-25 . https://web.archive.org/web/20110928203553/http://www.life-peace.org/sajt/filer/pdf/Horn_Of_Africa_Bulletin/HAB%20June-July.2010.pdf . 2011-09-28 . dead .
  31. Web site: Archived copy . 2011-08-25 . dead . https://web.archive.org/web/20110928203716/http://www.life-peace.org/sajt/filer/pdf/Horn_Of_Africa_Bulletin/HAB1012.pdf . 2011-09-28 .
  32. Weldemariam. Alemayehu. 2012-04-21. Reflections on the Crisis in the Sudan's Nuba Mountains of South Kordofan. Rochester, NY. 2043573.
  33. Web site: Addis Fortune- Editor's Note . 2011-08-25 . 2011-09-30 . https://web.archive.org/web/20110930100019/http://www.addisfortune.com/Vol%2010%20No%20481%20Archive/fortune_editors_note.htm . live .
  34. Web site: Addis Fortune- Editor's Note . 2011-08-25 . 2011-09-30 . https://web.archive.org/web/20110930100036/http://www.addisfortune.com/Vol%2010%20No%20482%20Archive/fortune_editors_note.htm . live .
  35. Weldemariam. Alemayehu. 2011-03-01. The Ambiguous Legacy of Adwa as a National Symbol. Rochester, NY. 1788786.
  36. Weldemariam. Alemayehu. 2011-08-15. Greater Ethiopia: Evolution of a Pluralist Politico-Legal System in a Pluralist Polity. Rochester, NY. 1909803.
  37. Weldemariam. Alemayehu. 2012-05-27. Ethiopia: Are the Islamists Coming?. Rochester, NY. 2070405.

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