The Trail Less Traveled

Neva Hassanein is a Professor of Environmental Studies at the University of Montana. For this episode, she interviews her mentor, friend and professor whom she studied with in East Africa. 

Paul’s formative years were spent in the Belgian Congo—ay a time when most of Africa was the possession of one or another of Europe’s nations.  For more than four decades, his life experiences were largely centered in Africa where he lived, worked, and together with his wife, Margie, raised three children. Then for 15 years, he directed a global service learning program at Wheaton College, where his Africa experience was been enlarged to include much of what is being called “The Majority World.”  

His journey in scholarship really began at Northwestern University, where he studied history and was awarded a Fulbright to examine the vulnerability of African communities to protracted drought in the 1970s. His PhD research brought together archival investigation in the U.K. and Kenya, and living oral history from the deserts of the Kenya-Ethiopian frontier, where he spent considerable time walking desert paths and sitting under trees in conversation with Gabra sages, learning how they survived and flourished in one of Africa's harshest environments.  This experience anchored his engagement with issues of cultural change and ‘development,’ as well as his commitment to learning from other cultures.  For four decades, he shared that learning with college students through cross-cultural learning and service educational programs.

Paul’s scholarship and teaching have always been directly linked to praxis.  He continues to work closely with international organizations, assisting with assessment of development initiatives.  High points of this include working for two years with Kenyan communities, helping to facilitate integrative responses to the HIV/AIDS pandemic and the past 20 years involved in peace-building, reconciliation, and reconstruction in the Democratic Republic of the Congo through the Congo Initiative. He is passionate about emerging relational and partnership paradigms between North and South to effect changes that improve lives and care for the environment. He gives leadership on several international boards that address global challenges of hunger, poverty, and transformation.

Summing up Dr. Robinson’s teaching, he would say, “Until we begin to recognize how we look through others’ eyes, we will not ‘get it.’" We begin to see with new lenses first through encounter and then into engagement. Then from engagement to relationship.  It is in relationship that we begin to find wholeness and well-being. As we find others, we begin to find our true selves.” Perhaps seeing ourselves ultimately as truly human.  Paul is committed to understanding through exposure to, involvement with, and learning from other perspectives. 

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