March 26, 2004

Graeme Simpson, the co-founder and executive director of the Centre for the Study of Violence and Reconciliation, and a prominent South African human rights activist, will deliver the Godfrey M. Hochbaum Distinguished Lecture this Monday at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s School of Public Health. The Cecil G. Sheps Visiting Scholar in Social Justice at Carolina, Simpson will give a talk titled “Revealing is Healing: The Psycho-social and Political Context of South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission.”Simpson’s lecture is scheduled to begin at noon in Rosenau Auditorium, 133 Rosenau Hall.A trained historian and lawyer with degrees from the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, South Africa, Simpson has worked extensively with the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission from the earliest efforts to establish it, through its lengthy functioning, to the more recent efforts to evaluate its achievements. His current work focuses on the area of reparation for past human rights violations.

Published widely on human rights in South Africa, Simpson’s activist background began with extensive anti-apartheid work in South Africa in the late 1970s and 1980s. In 1989, he co-founded the Centre for the Study of Violence and Reconciliation, where he helped establish and pioneer one of the first specialized trauma counseling services for victims of violence in South Africa.

He also led in the development of school-based violence prevention and reconciliation programs in South Africa and initiated one of that country’s first police reform projects during its transition to democracy. As special advisor to South Africa’s first democratically-elected Minister of Safety and Security, Simpson helped draft legislation for South Africa’s National Crime Prevention Strategy.

The Godfrey M. Hochbaum Distinguished Lecture was established in 1988 to pay tribute to the innovation, creativity and enduring social science contributions of Dr. Godfrey Hochbaum, a professor in the School of Public Health’s department of health behavior and health education from 1972 through 1988, and professor emeritus in that department from 1988 through 2000. Hochbaum is noted among public health scientists worldwide for the development of the “Health Belief Model” as a means of understanding why people do or don’t do what is healthy for them.

The Cecil G. Sheps Visiting Scholar in Social Justice Fund was established to bring distinguished scholars to campus who illuminate the need for social justice and ways in which social justice can be achieved.


News Services contact: Deb Saine, (919) 962-8415 or deborah_saine@unc.edu

For further information please contact Lisa Katz either by phone at 919-966-7467 or by email at lisa_katz@unc.edu

 

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