Introduction
This book is meant as a small contribution to the history of the democratization process in Ethiopia.
It is a continuation of the book, Haile Sellassie’s Students: The Intellectual and Social Background to Revolution, published in the USA in 1985 and republished by Addis Ababa University Press in 2005.
This research effort has come about, and has been supported financially, through a program of co-operation between the Institute of Gender Studies of Addis Ababa University, Ethiopia and the Faculty of Social Sciences at the University of Tromsø, Norway.
Theme
The book concentrates on Addis Ababa University in the capital of one of Africa’s oldest and most prestigious, most populous, yet poorest, countries. It examines the conditions for informal learning by means of the expression of (freely-held) opinions and the practice of dialogue under three regimes:
- the imperial Haile Selassie from 1960 to 1974;
- Mengistu Haile Mariam’s military dictatorship from 1974 to 1991;
- Meles Zenawi from 1991.
The book also shows the ideals and attitudes of the Ethiopian student movement that developed under imperial rule.
he Quest for Expression:
the State and the University in Ethiopia Under Three Regimes, 1952-2005
