Ethiopian Student Research Articles

Institutionally crafted Amhara-domination narrative: an existential threat to Amhara people

ABSTRACT Political narrative is an instrument for political actors to construct a shared meaning, and it can be harnessed to harm political opponents. The Italian invaders, the Ethiopian Student Movement, the Tigray People’s Liberation Front, the Oromo Liberation Front, and the incumbent regime contributed in varying degrees to the Amhara domination narrative. TPLF, in its political manifesto and later in the 1995 FDRE constitution, institutionally crafted an anti-Amhara narrative, reaching a crescendo after Abiy Ahmed assumed office in 2018. Thus, this research article tried to scrutinise and weigh the discourse of institutionally crafted Amhara existential threats. The study employed a qualitative research tradition and an exploratory research design approach that involved a political-economic analysis. The study finds that the century-old Amhara domination narrative, coupled with institutionally supported recurrent mass killings and expulsion, especially in Oromia, Benishangul-Gumuz, and Amhara regional states, posed a real and perceived existential threat that gave birth to the Amhara Fano armed struggle.

Campus Movements and Student Revolutionaries: Imagining Haile Selassie I University in Hiwot Teffera’s Memoir Tower in the Sky

ABSTRACT The 1974 revolution in Ethiopia has been the topic of many histories and novels set during this period which have portrayed these events for readers beyond Ethiopia. Hiwot Teffera’s autobiographical text, Tower in the Sky, tells the story of student revolutionaries in the Ethiopian Student Movement (ESM) and the 1974 revolution that deposed Emperor Haile Selassie. The revolutionaries’ untold stories of love, intense political optimism and suffering permeate the narrative and demonstrate the significance of memoirs in documenting individual experiences which are otherwise overlooked by other narrative forms despite their impact on political developments and outcomes. This article examines the ESM’s modes of mobilisation and engagement through an analysis of Teffera’s journey as a political activist and a revolutionary. In so doing, it shows how Teffera identifies her class relationship, her gender and her romantic relationship as the dominant factors behind her political coming to awareness and her lifelong commitment to the student movement and to the Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Party (EPRP). The article also argues that Haile Selassie I University has served the movement as a vital mental and physical space in shaping the students’ political consciousness.

Mapping the notion of the transnational: A close reading of the ‘Women’s Question’ from the Ethiopian Student Movement’s publications in the 1960s and 1970s

abstract This focus piece explores how the notion of the transnational was mapped and mobilised in the publications of the Ethiopian Student Movement (ESM) that were printed and published in the 1960s and 1970s, particularly in their quest to articulate the ‘Women’s Question’ in Ethiopia. Reading from the large corpus of ESM publications, I more specifically engage those publications which covered discussions, opinion pieces, and debates on the Women’s Question from my interest in demonstrating how ESM activist publications were already engaged in discussions of the transnational in the 1960s and 1970s. Pertinent to formulating the Ethiopian Women’s Question, I map how the notion of transnational was mobilised as part and parcel of activist praxis within ESM. A genealogical reading of the evolution of the Women’s Question in the writings of the ESM showed that discussions on the subject were sporadic, especially between the late 1960s and early 1970s, when this question was more explicitly configured as journals committed to address women’s issues, such as Tanash Ityopyawit [Rise up Ethiopian Women!], and Tagia Ityopyawit [Struggle Ethiopian Woman], emerged.

Demystifying the Image

Abstract While opposition to the Ethiopian monarchy was an immediate imperative of the Ethiopian revolutionary movement, self-professed “anti-feudalism” was but one part of the political-economic object of revolutionary critique. Originating from a country famous for its legacy of African independence, and against a monarch who was a global pan-African icon, Ethiopian revolutionary opposition to Haile Selassie would require not only a politics of dissent, but also an anti-colonial framing. This article centers anti-imperialism—specifically challenges to US neo-imperialism in Ethiopia—among Ethiopian student revolutionaries in the United States during the late 1960s and early 1970s. Examining organizational writing and direct action, as well as editorials in Muhammad Speaks and The Black Panther, this article argues that US-based Ethiopian students employed demystification as a signature revolutionary tactic. They attempted to reframe Ethiopian exceptionalist narratives as currency of US neo-imperialism, drawing on arguments strengthened by engaging Black Power concepts and thinkers. Demystification, while rooted in narrative modes and historical tropes specific to Ethiopian students' location in the United States, offers a concept to think through other oppositional movements as generative of global theoretical critique. Ethiopian students not only demanded the overthrow of the monarchy, but also joined anti-colonial appeals for the structural transformation of the world.

Evolving state building conversations and political settlement in Ethiopia

ABSTRACT This paper examines the evolving state-building conversations in Ethiopia and the role of political settlement thereof in charting a pathway for durable peace and strong state. The paper argues that costly mistakes in state and nation building, the radicalisation of the Ethiopian Student Movement coupled with Marxism–Leninism and ethno-nationalism polarised and fragmented the state-building conversations of the country leading to civil war in the 1970s and 80s. This led to an exclusionary victor settlement in 1991 when the TPLF/EPRDF militarily defeated other political groupings and the Derg. Consequently, the post-settlement in the Ethiopian state has been exclusively forged by the winning coalition sidelining competing narratives about the Ethiopia state including its history and the place of various groups therein. This historically veracious, violent, and exclusionary state and peacebuilding conversation undermined the post-1991 political settlement and the transition towards a durable peace and state. The outbreak of war in Ethiopia in November 2020 (which is not the core focus of this paper) is deeply connected to this violent and exclusionary conversation on the nature and future direction of the Ethiopian state.

Bahru Zewde, The Quest for Socialist Utopia: The Ethiopian Student Movement c.1960–1974

Review

When Social Science Concepts Become Neutral Arbiters of Social Conflict: Reading the Ethiopian Federal Elections of 2005 through the Ethiopian Student Movement of the 1960s and 1970s

Abstract This article traces the story of how the intellectual culture and discourses that animated the Ethiopian student movement in the 1960s and 1970s have continued to impact political processes in the country in the generations since. More specifically, it looks at how the legacy of the Ethiopian student movement influenced events during the country’s momentous 2005 elections. The essay further poses the question of how one can characterize and understand the influence of the social sciences on actual social forces in a particular historical context.

Bahru Zewde. The Quest for Socialist Utopia: The Ethiopian Student Movement, c. 1960–1974.

The late Ali A. Mazrui went to Haile Selassie I University in 1973 to give a talk to the university community. Witnessing firsthand the students' blunt criticism of Haile Selassie's regime, he said that these were the most radical students on the African continent. Five years later he wrote: “[I]n the late 1960s it was already clear that Ethiopian students were becoming the most radicalized in the whole [African] continent” (Higher Education, 7, no. 1 [1978], p. 126). Bahru Zewde's book, The Quest for Socialist Utopia: The Ethiopian Student Movement, c. 1960–1974, provides a rich, nuanced history, analysis, and interpretation of this most radical student movement in Africa in the twentieth century. It is a remarkably well-crafted book; elegant, readable, engrossing, and comprehensive. Other than Randi Rønning Balsvik's book, Haile Selassie's Students: The Intellectual and Social Background to Revolution, 1952–1977 (1977), which Bahru cites extensively, no other book has dealt with the topic with such depth and candor as Bahru's recent monograph.

Zewde Bahru. The Quest for Socialist Utopia. The Ethiopian Student Movement c.1960–1974. [Eastern African Series.] James Curry, Woodbridge [etc.] 2014. xvi, 299 pp. Ill. £50.00.

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A new generation of Ethiopianists: the Universal Ethiopian Students Association and The African: Journal of African Affairs, 1937–1948

This paper explores the obscure Universal Ethiopian Student Association (UESA) and the journal that began as their organ, The African: Journal of African Affairs (1937–1948), as an example of modern Ethiopianism. It analyzes The African for clues about what the UESA was, who was involved, who it purported to speak for and to, and the kinds of cross-metropole (and metropole-colony) networks and associations it fostered. The author asserts that unlike many similar political and student organizations of the time, the UESA represents a new generation of Ethiopianists: African nationalists in the traditional sense, committed to the nascent decolonization and pan-african political movements of the era. They also supported Ethiopia and Haile Selassie I at almost all costs, championing both the nationalist and imperialist nature of the modern Ethiopian state in the name of preserving its political sovereignty and role as a leader in Africa and the black world.

The pull of public health studies

health has burgeoned over the past 100 years from the study of tropical diseases in the 19th century to national public health systems after World War One and more recently to include international public health. Education has kept up with these trends and today there are hundreds of schools around the world many flourishing in developing countries. health has become an attractive area for many students. Some come from the medical profession to join the growing ranks of those enrolling in courses while others are from such diverse areas as computer engineering nursing and journalism. Public health is an excellent mix of health and social says Abebual Zerihun Demilew an Ethiopian student who just graduated from the James P Grant School of Health in Dhaka Bangladesh which is run by the worlds largest development nongovernmental organization BRAC (formerly the Bangladesh Rural Advancement Committee). The James P Grant School is one of a new breed of public health institutions based in a developing country. It offers courses relevant to Bangladesh as well as international public health issues and attracts students from both developing and developed countries. (excerpt)

Hussein Ahmed (1954-2009)

Hussein Ahmed (1954-2009) Eloi Ficquet (bio) Hussein Ahmed died on the 6th of June 2009, 29th of Genbot 2001 of the Ethiopian calendar, or 12th of Jumâdâ al-thânî 1430 of the Hegirian year. He was in his 55th year. The academic community of Ethiopian studies lost one of the most active and prominent scholars involved in the study of Islam in Ethiopia and in the Horn of Africa. Hussein had been a member of the history department of Addis Ababa University since 1977, and he became a full professor in 2003. He devoted most of his work and teaching to the history of Ethiopian Islam and Ethiopian Muslims, mainly since the nineteenth century. His PhD dissertation was defended at Birmingham University, UK, in 1985. It was exceptional at that time, at the height of the Derg regime, for an Ethiopian student to be allowed to go to study abroad in a Western country. He preferred Birmingham to the School of Oriental and African Studies (a place where several Ethiopian academics were trained) because he wanted to work under the direction of P. F. Moraes de Farias at the Centre of West African Studies. His dissertation dealt with the history of Islam in Wallo, his region of origin in the central highlands of Ethiopia. He studied the processes of conversion to this religion that have taken place since the eighteenth century, as part of a movement of revival of sufi brotherhoods in the Horn of Africa. He focused on the respective [End Page 145] roles of "Clerics, Traders and Chiefs," three main categories of actors who contributed to the transformation of the area into an interconnection between Muslim and Christian powers. Following on from his PhD work, he brought out a more synthetic book entitled Islam in Nineteenth Century Wallo, Ethiopia: Revival, Reform and Reaction, which was published by Brill in 2001. Click for larger view View full resolution Hussein Ahmed, 2002 (Eloi Ficquet). His many articles dealt with different aspects of Ethiopian Islam: life histories of leading religious figures in Wallo;1 the components of Islamic religious education;2 works by Muslim Ethiopian scholars and the evolution of Muslim discourse and Muslim literature in the political evolution of Ethiopia;3 and the risk of confusion that may lie behind the apparently generous idea of peaceful coexistence between Christians.4 Recently he started research on the history of slavery5 and on Yemeni [End Page 146] communities in Ethiopia that were composed of very active traders and were expelled by the military regime after the revolution of 1974. He contributed significantly to the gathering of sources and critical notes for a volume on Arabic literature in Africa.6 He also published an article on the history of Addis Ababa University, expressing his attachment to the institution and his concerns about the reforms that have been carried out recently and the decline of historical studies.7 Through his academic life, Hussein Ahmed contributed to the recognition of the role played by Ethiopian Muslims in the history of the territories that were to become a nation. Despite the fact that they had been treated as second-class citizens, or enemies within, under the old regime, the processes of economic, political, and spiritual construction of the contemporary Ethiopian nation-state could not have been achieved without their will to participate. Nevertheless, Hussein did not sing the praises of an ideal state of tolerance between religious communities, a generous idea that he considered, however, to be an intellectual trick that could hinder the understanding of persisting sterotypes and conflicts. One of his favorite topics, in articles and in private discussions, was the state of the art of his field of study.8 For long, he deplored its underdevelopment. Derogatory biases conveyed by the dominant historiographical schemes of the Christian kingdom and the lack of integration—not to say the segregation—of Muslims in public affairs, including the academy, were some of the causes of this situation. For some time, at the time of the transition between the Derg and the federal regime, Hussein was almost alone in drawing the attention of the international community of Ethiopianists to Islam. He welcomed with...

Hayla-Sellase: From Progressive to Reactionary

Perhaps all major historical figures are controversial, capable of arousing blind admiration or unremitting hatred. If that be the case, Ethiopia does have its fair share of such historical personalities. Tewodros was depicted by some foreign writers as a mad dog let loose.1 Even in Ethiopia, the Gondar clergy are not overly fond of him.2 And yet, few Ethiopian rulers have captivated posterity as had Tewodros. He has been practically canonized. He inspired playwrights (Germachaw Takla-Hawaryat and Tsagaye Gabra-Madhen) and novelists (Abbe Gubagna). His horse-name Tataq was adopted by the Ethiopian Student Union in Europe (for its journal) and by the Darg (for its military training camp). And the EPRDF baptized its most decisive campaign Zamacha Tewodros. Iyyasu is another controversial figure of the modern age. Unfortunately for him, he was succeeded by a ruler of extraordinary political longevity who found it in his interest to have him portrayed in the darkest of colors. As a result, he has retained the charges of apostasy and frivolous conduct that cost him his throne in 1916. Yet, popular culture was prepared to view the teenage ruler with indulgence. And he was adored by peripheral nationalities like the Somali and Arsi Oromo, to whom he embodied a more humane relationship with the center. It is also this residual attraction of Iyyasu that explains the dramatic surfacing of his progeny onto the national stage in times of crisis: his sons in 1936-41 and his grandsons in 1974 and in 1991.

On Marxism and Ethiopian Student Radicalism in North America

The ideals and aims which motivate radical third world student movements generally reflect broader popular aspirations for political and socioeconomic change. Such movements are political in the sense that, going beyond narrow educational goals and sectional concerns, they champion the interests and struggles of oppressed classes and nations. Indeed, in underdeveloped societies where classes tend to be weakly grounded in forces and relations of production, and as such lack adequate material and ideological capacities to act as autonomous agents of socioeconomic change in the sense originally theorized by Marx, progressive student movements and other "unconventional" carriers of revolutionary consciousness and practice acquire special political importance.This article can also be found at the Monthly Review website, where most recent articles are published in full.Click here to purchase a PDF version of this article at the Monthly Review website.

Occupational prestige and the Ethiopian student

Approximately 200 university sociology students in Ethiopia, in rating 90 selected occupations, placed governmental positions at or near the top with unskilled positions near the bottom. Authority and power were leading reasons for high placement. Comparative ratings of the same or similar Ethiopian and American occupations provided a high correlation coefficient.

The Constitutional History of Ethiopia

Between 1959 and 1961 I worked with an Ethiopian research student, Gētāčaw Takla Māryām, on the constitutional history of Ethiopia from the Aksumite period (first to fourth centuries A.D.) to the end of the seventeenth century. So far as could be discovered, no serious attempt has yet been made to deal with this subject by means of strict documentation. The first step therefore has been to collect from printed Ethiopic material (mainly written in Ge‘ez) and from Ge‘ez manuscripts a body of documents and charters which will ultimately form the basis of a constitutional history. The aim has been to produce something like Stubbs's Select Charters, for some such basis is an essential preliminary in a field in which be one of the resultes of our study. For place-names the position is a little better, since Conti Rossini produced many years ago an index to names in material published up to 1894; and not long ago I compiled one for the historical texts published in the Corpus Scriptorum Christianorum Orientalium (CSCO).The work on constitutional history, which is still in progress, has involved the study and translation of four categories of document written in Ge'ez; these are:(1) The early Ge'ez (and Greek) inscriptions of the Aksumite period.(2) The Lives of the Ethiopian saints (gadla qedusān) of the sixth, thirteenth, fourteenth, fifteenth, and sixteenth centuries, including the Synaxarium (senkesār) or general collection of lives of saints.(3) The land charters and other documents in the Book of Aksum, from the tenth to seventeenth centuries, with a few attributed to kings from the fourth to ninth centuries.(4) The Chronicles, now mostly available in printed form, either in the CSCO, or published individually; some are to be found in periodicals.