Bennington College Builds on International Scope of the Democracy Project--New Faculty and Chairman of Advisory Council Announced

December 6, 2005

A key figure in the negotiations that helped guide South Africa from apartheid rule to a new democratic order has arrived on the Bennington College campus to teach in the College's new curricular initiative, the Democracy Project. Mac Maharaj, a member of Nelson Mandela's inner circle during the days of resistance and transition in South Africa, has been appointed to a chair in the Democracy Project. He is teaching two courses this fall that enable Bennington students to explore one of the most prominent issues of our time through his unique perspective.

"Mac Maharaj goes way beyond an intellectual grasp of democracy," says Elizabeth Coleman, president of Bennington College. "He has lived democracy in its most intense and heroic moments, and hence, brings a very special dimension to this project. We are delighted and honored to have him as a member of the Bennington community."

Maharaj, whose fall classes include South Africa's Road to Democracy and South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission, served as the South African transition government's first minister of transport. He was imprisoned on Robben Island for his early work underground for the African National Congress (ANC) in the struggle against apartheid. When Nelson Mandela was released from prison in 1990, Maharaj became a lead negotiator for the ANC in talks with the National Party government and joint secretary of the Transitional Executive Council, overseeing South Africa's transition to democracy. He first engaged in Bennington's Democracy Project when he participated in the College's Living Democracy conference last spring, which focused on the transition from apartheid to democracy in South Africa.

"Exploring democracy is one of the most dynamic ways of understanding the human condition. I was drawn to working with Bennington because it offers its students this challenging way of understanding our world and because the Democracy Project seeks to engage a range of perspectives that I find both exciting and stimulating. I look forward to getting as much out of teaching my Democracy Project classes as I hope my students get from attending them," says Mac Maharaj.

Adds Elissa Tenny, provost and dean of Bennington College, "Mac Maharaj brings a depth, breadth, and scope to the Democracy Project faculty¯ indeed to the very subject of democracy itself¯ that enriches the education of all students involved in this initiative."

The Democracy Project further deepens its international focus with the appointment of Richard Holme, Lord of Cheltenham, a leader in the Liberal Democratic Party of the United Kingdom and member of the House of Lords, as chair of the newly established Advisory Council to the Democracy Project. Lord Holme has also been elected to the College's Board of Trustees. He serves as chairman of Lead International, an independent, nonprofit organization committed to sustainable development, and has long been involved in education, business, and politics. In addition to his new roles at Bennington, Lord Holme is chancellor of the University of Greenwich in London, a visiting professor at the Thunderbird Business School in Glendale, Arizona, and chairman and co-founder of the English College in Prague. Holme began his business career at the international consumer goods company Unilever and ended as Executive Director of Rio Tinto, a world leader in mining and processing the earth's mineral resources. His corporate experience also includes a directorship of Penguin Books.

In the fall of 2004, Bennington launched the Democracy Project, a curricular initiative that makes democracy the central subject of an education for students seeking to extend and intensify their understanding of the world. Students and faculty bring to the project a range of perspectives-the social sciences, as well as the arts, sciences, literature, languages-and together explore democracy as a diverse, contested, historical, and ongoing approach to human conflict and cooperation. In the language of the academy: The Democracy Project is a concentration, a major if Bennington used that word, in democracy. As a course of study equivalent to that in a traditional academic discipline, the Democracy Project is the only undergraduate program of its kind.