Name John Prendergast Role Human rights activists | Spouse Sia Sanneh (m. 2011) | |
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Occupation Author, Human Rights Activist Notable awards Huffington Post 2011 Game Changer AwardUnited Nations Correspondents Association Citizen of the World AwardLyndon Baines Johnson Moral Courage AwardPrinceton University Crystal Tiger AwardU.S. State Department Distinguished Service AwardThe Center for African Peace and Conflict Resolution Peace Award Awards NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Literary Work, Nonfiction Books Not on Our Watch, The Enough Moment, Unlikely Brothers, Crisis Response: Humanita, Frontline Diplomacy Similar People Don Cheadle, George Clooney, Mark Tully, Joseph Kony, Gayle Smith | ||
a changing africa by john prendergast tanner humanities center world leaders lecture forum 2013
John Prendergast (born March 21, 1963) is an American human rights activist, author, and former Director for African Affairs at the National Security Council. He is the Founding Director of the Enough Project, a nonprofit human rights organization affiliated with the Center for American Progress. Prendergast is a board member and serves as Strategic Advisor to Not On Our Watch Project. He is a member of the faculty and Advisory Board of the International Peace and Security Institute (IPSI).
Contents
- a changing africa by john prendergast tanner humanities center world leaders lecture forum 2013
- A message from john prendergast kean university human rights senior fellow
- Career
- Criticism
- Books
- References
A message from john prendergast kean university human rights senior fellow
Career
In the latter half of the 1980s and the first half of the 1990s, Prendergast worked for a variety of organizations in the U.S. and Africa, focusing primarily on peace and human rights. At the end of 1996, he joined the National Security Council as Director for African Affairs and thereafter served as a special adviser to Susan Rice at the United States Department of State. As a special adviser, Prendergast was part of the facilitation team behind the successful two-and-a-half-year U.S. effort to broker an end to the Eritrean–Ethiopian War. Prendergast left government in 2001 to become Special Adviser to the President of the International Crisis Group on Africa issues, and in 2007, with Gayle Smith, he co-founded the Enough Project, housed at the Center for American Progress.
Under the Enough Project umbrella, Prendergast has helped create a number of initiatives and campaigns. With George Clooney, he helped launch the Satellite Sentinel Project, which aims to prevent conflict and human rights abuses through satellite imagery. With Tracy McGrady and other NBA players, Prendergast co-founded the Darfur Dream Team: Sister Schools Initiative to fund schools in Darfurian refugee camps and create partnerships with schools in the United States. He helped launch two campaigns under Enough: the Raise Hope for Congo Campaign, highlighting the issue of conflict minerals, and Sudan Now, focused on bringing peace to that embattled country.
Prendergast has written extensively on Africa and is the author or co-author of ten books. His previous two books were co-authored with Don Cheadle: Not On Our Watch, a New York Times bestseller and NAACP non-fiction book of the year, and The Enough Moment: Fighting to End Africa's Worst Human Rights Crimes. His most recent book, Unlikely Brothers, is a dual memoir co-authored with his first little brother in the Big Brothers program. He is currently working on a project concerning the Democratic Republic of the Congo with actor Ryan Gosling and New Yorker writer Kelefa Sanneh.
Prendergast has appeared in four episodes of 60 Minutes, and helped create African characters and stories for two episodes of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, one focusing on the recruitment of child soldiers and the other on rape as a war strategy. He has also traveled to Africa with Dateline NBC, ABC’s Nightline, The PBS NewsHour with Jim Lehrer and CNN’s Inside Africa.
Prendergast has appeared in several documentaries including: Sand and Sorrow, Darfur Now, 3 Points, and War Child. He co-produced Journey Into Sunset, and is Executive Producer of Staging Hope: Acts of Peace in Northern Uganda, both about Northern Uganda, and partnered with Downtown Records and Mercer Street Records to create the compilation album Raise Hope for Congo, combating sexual violence against women and girls in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
Jane Bussman was inspired by his work and meetings with him to write The Worst Date Ever, a comic/tragic story of her attempt as a novice foreign correspondent to expose the truth about the war in Uganda.
Prendergast has been a visiting professor at many universities and colleges, including Yale Law School, Stanford University, and Columbia University. He has been awarded six honorary doctorates, and serves as the Anne Evans Estabrook Human Rights Senior Fellow at Kean University.
Criticism
Prendergast's activism has been criticized, by Mahmood Mamdani, as simplistic, counter-productive, and detrimental to the reality on the ground, especially regarding Darfur and Northern Uganda.