Wallenberg Medal recipient Nnimmo Bassey will deliver the 29th Wallenberg Lecture on Sept. 10 at the Stephen M. Ross School of Business’ Robertson Auditorium.
Bassey, executive director of the Health of Mother Earth Foundation and a global environmental activist, will speak at 4:30 p.m. His lecture, titled “We Are Relatives,” centers on love, humility, dignity and respect in his vision of a livable future for all beings.
Also at the event, Urban Ahlin, Ambassador of Sweden to the United States, will discuss the life of Raoul Wallenberg, the U-M alumnus and Swedish diplomat whose legacy the Wallenberg Medal commemorates by honoring humanitarians across generations.
The Wallenberg Medal and Lecture ceremony is free and open to the public. Tickets are not required. Parking will be available in the Hill Street Parking Structure, and valet service will be provided.
Bassey is an architect, director of the Nigeria-based ecological think tank HOMEF, and a member of the steering committee of Oilwatch International, a network resisting the expansion of fossil fuel extraction in the Global South. He chaired Friends of the Earth International from 2008-12, was a co-recipient of the 2010 Right Livelihood Award, and received the Rafto Human Rights Prize in 2012.
He received honorary doctoral degrees from the University of York (United Kingdom) in 2019 and from York University (Canada) in 2023. Bassey’s books include “To Cook a Continent: Destructive Extraction” and “The Climate Crisis in Africa and Oil Politics: Echoes of Ecological War.” His poetry collections include “We Thought It Was Oil But It Was Blood,” “I Will Not Dance to Your Beat” and “I See the Invisible.”
MORE INFORMATION
- Wallenberg Medal and Lecture
- For inquiries or accessibility accommodations, email [email protected] or call 734-936-3973
The Wallenberg Medal and Lecture honors the legacy of Raoul Wallenberg, who graduated from the U-M College of Architecture in 1935 and saved the lives of tens of thousands of Hungarian Jews near the end of World War II. In 1944, at the request of Jewish organizations and the American War Refugee Board, the Swedish Foreign Ministry sent Wallenberg on a rescue mission to Budapest.
Over six months, Wallenberg issued thousands of protective passports and placed many thousands of Jews in safe houses throughout the besieged city. He confronted Hungarian and German forces to secure the release of Jews, whom he claimed were under Swedish protection and saved more than 80,000 lives.
