Political Asylum, Anthropology and the Role of the Expert Witness

Abstract

When I took my first course in anthropology in 1961, I was a student of biology (major) at Bucknell University, Lewisburg, PA, USA. When I went to Africa for the first time in 1964 to build a school and teach biology, or when I was studying Yoruba social organization at Temple University from 1966 to 1968, or when I did my PhD research on Nubian ethnography at Northwestern, I had never imagined that this trail through Africa would conceivably lead me to become an Expert Witness in political asylum cases.