UConn gets $1M for new partnerships

The Chronicle

STORRS - The University of Connecticut's role as an institution with increasing global participation has been recognized with the award of two grants totaling more than $1 million to support joint projects with South Africa, UConn officials announced today.

The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation awarded a $665,000 grant to the partnership between UConn and South Africa's African National Congress. The partnership promotes international understanding and cooperation between South Africa and the United States.

In addition, UConn received a $460,000 grant from the United Negro College Fund for linkage activities with the University of Fort Hare, South Africa's premier university for black students. The linkage will involve UConn faculty, staff and administrators in a mutually beneficial partnership with colleagues at Fort Hare.

Founded in March 1999, the UConn-ANC Partnership has three components: archives, oral history and comparative human rights, which will be an interdisciplinary academic program. Under the terms of the partnership, UConn has been designated as the ANC's North American partner in preserving the ANC archival materials. Other partnership activities include recording and transcribing the oral histories of ANC party members and leaders, and training South African historians. The Mellon Foundation grant will support both these projects.

"The UConn-ANC Partnership promises to link us more closely to one of the great social movements of our time," said UConn President Philip E. Austin.

The partnership camp about because of initiatives taken by Amii Omara-Otunnu, associate professor of history at UConn, and Narissa Ramdhani, his former student, who is now the director of the Historical Archives Project. The partnership is a key element in the university's goal to foster education and research in the area of human rights.

"The ANC represents something extraordinarily special in the history of human rights," said Omara-Otuxim, executive director of the UConn-ANC Partnership, director of the comparative human rights program andprogram director of the UConn-University of Fort Hare linkage. "The ANC had a clear vision for a society that would practice social justice. This partnership is a strategic decision because, of commonalities in the history of race relations in the U.S. and in South Africa. We can learn a lot from them, and they can learn a lot from us."

The goal of the work funded by The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation is to contribute to the reconstruction and preservation of balanced, inclusive approaches to South African history, recognizing the role of black South Africans and other previously disadvantaged groups. Until now, the history has been largely written from the perspective of the apartheid regime.