J. Jobe and Marguerite Jacqmin Soffa Lecture

The J. Jobe and Marguerite Jacqmin Soffa Lecture supports regular lectures on contemporary issues of global significance. For more than two decades, this fund has brought renowned women from across the globe to lecture and meet with classes. Holders of the lectureship have included well-known “grassroots” leaders in the struggle for human rights and international understanding.

2025 Lecture

The Resistible Threat of Semiauthoritarianism

Keynote speaker: Marina Ottaway, former senior fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars and long-time analyst of political transformations

4:30 p.m., Monday, October 13, 2025

Alumni Lounge, Pyle Center

About the speaker

Marina Ottaway is a long-time analyst of political transformations in Africa, The Middle East and the Balkans. She was a senior fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, DC until the center was eliminated by DOGE in May 2025. Earlier, she spent 14 years at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, during which she played a central role in launching the Middle East Program. Prior to that, she carried out research in Africa and in the Middle East for many years and taught at Georgetown University, the Johns Hopkins School for Advanced International Studies, the American University in Cairo, the University of the Witwatersrand in South Africa, the University of Zambia, and Addis Ababa University. Her extensive research experience is reflected in her publications, which include ten authored books and six edited ones. Among her publications are A Tale of Four Worlds: The Middle Eatst after the Uprisings; Democracy Challenged: The Rise of Semiauthoritarianism; and most recently an autobiography co-authored with her husband and sons Living Interesting Lives. Ottaway received her Ph.D. from Columbia University.

About the lecture

Marguerite Jacqmin Soffa ’46 established this fund to support an annual public lecture on a contemporary issue of global significance by a distinguished woman in international public life.

Past speakers

2024: Karima Bennoune, former UN Special Rapporteur on Cultural Rights; Lewis M. Simes Professor of Law, University of Michigan
2023: Antonia Urrejola, lawyer and former Foreign Minister of Chile, “Accountability for Crimes against Humanity: From Pinochet to the Present”
2022: Ma Thida, human rights activist, surgeon, and writer
2021: Sakena Yacoobi, president of the Afghan Institute of Learning, “As Women Rise, so Does the Nation”
2020-2021: Wanjiku Kabira,”Shifting The Center Of Gravity: Women’s Movement And Constitution-Making In Kenya”
2019: Charlotte Bunch, “The Dance of Feminism with Human Rights: Reflections on Three Decades of Global Women’s Human Rights Organizing”
2019: Brigitte Baptiste, “Queering Ecology”
2018: May Sabe Phyu, “Gender Inclusion for Lasting Peace”
2017: Vandana Shiva, “Women Lead the Way: From Violence to Non-Violence, from Greed to Sharing, From Hate to Love”
2015: Renana Jhavala, “Structural Inequalities and Poverty: Organizing for Economic Rights in India”
2014: Jean Geran, “Right to Identity: Child Abandonment, Trafficking, Migration and Protection”
2013: Sahar Elmougy, “Resurgence of the Feminine: Transformation of Egyptian Psyche”
2012: Fatima Sadiqi, professor of linguistics and gender studies at the University of Fes, “North African Women’s Rights in the Aftermath of the Arab Spring”
2012: Thulisile Madonsela, the Public Protector of South Africa, “Righting State Wrongs: Enforcing the South African Constitution through the office of the Public Protector”
2010: Luz María de la Mora Sánchez, an expert in foreign trade relations and internal public policy, on Latin American investment strategies, economic growth, political stability, “Latin America’s New Stature in the Global Economy”
2010: Yakin Ertürk, former UN special rapporteur on violence against women, “Universalizing Women’s Human Rights: The Quest for Gender-Just Peace”
2009: Radhika Coomaraswamy, Undersecretary-General of the United Nations
2008: Virginia Vargas, Peruvian activist, author, professor, and sociologist, “Women’s Long March for Equality and Democracy in Latin America”
2004: Veena Das, Krieger Eisenhower Professor of Anthropology at Johns Hopkins University, “Political Violence and Daily Life in India”
2002: Mary Burton, commissioner of the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission, former president of the anti-apartheid organization Blask Sash, “Aspects of Reconciliation: Acknowledgement, Atonement and Redress”
2001: Estela Barnes de Carlotto, president of Abuelas de Plaza de Mayo, Buenos Aires, Argentina, “Disappeared Children in Argentina: the Work of the Grandmothers of Plazo de Mayo”