Reform School: US Policy at Boston University

Reform School  (Foreign Policy Magazine)

In the early days of Ivory Coast's election crisis, U.S. policymakers tried to offer Laurent Gbagbo a post at Boston University. Could academia really entice the world's most entrenched strongmen to step down?

BY ELIZABETH DICKINSON | APRIL 12, 2011

On April 11, in the early afternoon as the sun was peaking over Abidjan, Ivory Coast, troops loyal to the country's president-elect, Alassane Ouattara, burst into the presidential palace where Laurent Gbagbo was hiding, after four months of refusing to step down after losing the election. For the last week, as a de facto civil war raged, the international community had engaged in furious negotiations to try to lure him out of the bunker where he and his wife remained guarded by about 1,000 troops. Rumors circulated that he might accept exile, perhaps in South Africa or Togo. But Gbagbo wasn't having it; he'd received many such offers so far and had accepted none of them.

Perhaps the most intriguing offer of a "dignified exit" came from the White House. In early January, after a month of failed negotiations to get the outgoing Ivorian president to quit the stage, Barack Obama's administration offered him another option -- a post at a Boston University program created precisely for this purpose: to help answer the increasingly difficult question of where a former strongman finds a soft landing these days.
The man behind the program is Charles Stith, a former pastor turned diplomat, and now academic. While serving as the U.S. ambassador to Tanzania in the late 1990s, Stith noticed an interesting problem. African leaders across the continent, even those who appeared democratically inclined, seemed loath to step down. As he put it in a statement upon Gbagbo's arrest, "Power is a seductive mistress, who once kissed is hard to walk away from."
Stitch believed that part of the problem for African leaders was that the options for an honorable exit were slim. There were few places where they could be honored and pampered, or at least left alone to live out their days. After a series of public scandals over dictators' property and assets in once popular destinations such as Paris or London, few strongmen now retire there. Amid the current unrest in the Middle East, Saudi Arabia has seemed the only place willing to take fleeing leaders who would surely be prosecuted elsewhere.
When Stith came back to the United States from his service abroad, he set about to create one such place: a visiting professorship for a former African head of state who steps down by choice. His creation, Boston University's African President-in-Residence Program at the African Presidential Archives and Research Center has hosted six outgoing leaders, with one more -- former Zanzibar President Amani Abeid Karume -- having just arrived. "It gives them a kind of credibility at home because it gives them an international platform," Stith explained in an interview. Even more importantly to policymakers, "entities like mine enable a broader conversation to take place when you're trying to get these guys to understand [a democratic transition]."
The African President-in-Residence Program works like this: At a moment when a transition seems imminent or possible, offers of the position at Boston University (BU) are extended through diplomatic channels. If the outgoing president says yes, he is welcomed to the Boston campus for six months to study, lecture, and write. "They usually live pretty close to campus," explained Kisha Wilson, attaché for the President-in-Residence Program. "They are really a part of BU." With funding from the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), and a close relationship with the U.S. State Department, the post offers a public pulpit for the ex-presidents, in the hopes that these outgoing leaders can become advocates for democracy in Africa. The first such resident, former Zambian President Kenneth David Kaunda, for example, left behind nearly three decades of consecutive rule, during which he created a one-party state. At BU, he recast himself as an evangelist for the treatment of HIV/AIDS, speaking and writing op-eds and papers about how Africa could overcome the crisis. He also started a foundation intended to promote conflict resolution.
"The program reinforces that there is a life after the presidency," said Jendayi Frazer, who served as assistant secretary of state for African affairs under George W. Bush and liaised with the BU program. "They've created a community of former presidents, and it creates the opportunity for an exit. There needs to be more programs like it."