A newsletter for the students, faculty and staff of the Collin County Community College District. Published monthly. For information or submissions, call 972.599.3142. Cougar News welcomes student and faculty submissions. Next deadline: Oct. 10 All submissions are due by 5 p.m. on the due date. Photos cannot be returned. Text should be emailed to mrobinson@ccccd.edu or sent on disk. Please submit copy that is proofed, edited and saved in Word format. Cougar News staff: Lisa Vasquez, director; Mark Robinson, editor; Marcy Cadena-Smith, contributor; Sydney Portilla-Diggs, campus correspondent; Stephanie Hall, student correspondent; Tatiana Shehadeh, special contributor; Nick Young, photography and layout
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Correspondent meets with ambassador
By Sydney Portilla-Diggs
Campus Correspondent
The highlight of my summer was meeting the former ambassador to South Africa James A. Joseph. On the night before I was to fly to Duke University to meet him, I found myself unable to sleep. I was more than a little intimidated when I read his curriculum vitae.
Ambassador Joseph has served four United States presidents. Under President Jimmy Carter, he was appointed to the number two position in the Department of the Interior and served as chairman of the Commission on the Northern Marianas. Under President Ronald Reagan, Joseph was a member of the advisory committee to the Agency for International Development. President George H.W. Bush appointed him an incorporating director of the Points of Light Foundation and a member of the board of advisors on Historically Black Colleges.
President William Clinton nominated Joseph as ambassador to South Africa and appointed him the first chairman of the board of directors of the Corporation for National Service.
I couldn’t imagine why he had agreed to grant me an hour of his valuable time but I knew why I wanted to interview him. Collin’s Director of The Center for Scholarly and Civic Engagement Regina Hughes had introduced me to the concept of Ubuntu and suggested I research the ideology on my own. Armed with a newfound respect for my African heritage, I began to formulate a hypothesis. I wondered why apartheid was not abolished in a blood bath.
Why didn’t the oppressed black South Africans revolt and slaughter the white South Africans? Many South Africans believe that their new country is built on the principles of Ubuntu. The charismatic Nelson Mandela convinced the South African President and the bloodthirsty rebels to listen to him. Archbishop Desmond Tutu resurrected the ancient South African philosophy in his sermons against apartheid. Tutu encouraged the blacks and whites to unify through reconciliation, mutual respect and reciprocity, and it was successful. I found it improbable that Ubuntu or some form of African philosophy did not follow the natives across the ocean into the British colonies.
With this rough hypothesis I was awarded the Mellon Grant, I proposed looking for a common thread in the teachings of Nelson Mandela, and perhaps Martin Luther King Jr., which indicates Tutu’s reconciliation philosophy found in the writings of the scholar W.E.B Du Bois’ "The Souls of Black Folk" and the novelist Alice Walker’s "The Color Purple."
The power of the relationship should be a fundamental and universal theme explored in the writings of these two African-American writers. Especially in the novel and the film "The Color Purple," the theme of powerful female relationships will be strong. After reading Ambassador Joseph’s essay “The Ministry of Reconciliation: Honoring the Life and Legacy of Martin Luther King” and with Director Hughes’ encouragement, I contacted Ambassador Joseph for help with my Mellon Research Grant.
James A. Joseph served as ambassador to South Africa from 1996 to 2000 — right after the official fall of apartheid. He was the first and only American ambassador to present his credentials to President Nelson Mandela. Furthermore, President Thabo Mbeki presented Ambassador Joseph the Order of Good Hope, the highest honor the Republic of South Africa grants to a citizen of another country.
What were my first impressions of meeting Ambassador Joseph? He was genuine. The former ambassador to South Africa James Joseph had one of the most pleasant speaking voices I have ever heard. Something about the way he spoke inspired me to listen attentively. His voice was melodious and evoked an emotional response in me. He had a profound sense of knowing—a deep recognition of his sense of purpose in the world as an African-American, as a leader, as a spiritual being and as a humanist.
And in all things, I sensed that he retained a sense of wonder as well as the authority of an educator. Ambassador Joseph openly shared his personal experiences about his civil right activism with me. His personal accounts brought me to tears.
In 1962, he was one of the leaders of the Tuscaloosa protest marches against the Ku Klux Klan. Because of his involvement, he received death threats against his infant son. His efforts led to the integration of lunch counters in Tuscaloosa. Previously, Tuscaloosa had been untouched by the civil rights movement. Joseph called his role in Tuscaloosa “accidental leadership.”
Currently, Ambassador Joseph is the professor of the Practice of Public Policy Studies and the executive director and founder of the United States—Southern Africa Center for Leadership and Public Values, Terry Sanford Institute of Public Policy at Duke University. He has held successful leadership positions in government, in the church, in academia, and in business.
He offers this piece of advice for aspiring student leaders, “Your personal commitment to a set of values will influence every realm…whether in government, in business, in anything you aspire you do.”
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