Rev. Nontombi Naomi Tutu, race and gender justice activist as well as the daughter of Archbishop Desmond Tutu, will speak virtually at Colorado State University on March 24 at 3 p.m. Mountain Time.
The talk is presented as part of the Global Engagement Distinguished Speaker Lecture series by CSU’s Office of International Programs and sponsored by First National Bank of Omaha. The Zoom event will be free and open to the public, but registration is required.
Rev. Tutu uses the challenges she faced growing up Black and female in apartheid South Africa to inspire her activism for human rights. Her experiences taught her that, as she explains, “our whole human family loses when we accept situations of oppression, and how the teaching and preaching hate and division injure us all.”
Activist from a young age
Tutu was born in South Africa and has lived in many communities around the world. She was educated in Swaziland, the United States, and England.
Although she turned to ministry later in life, Tutu’s activism was clear throughout her work as a development consultant, a coordinator for programs on race and gender and gender-based violence in education, and a university professor at the University of Hartford, University of Connecticut, and Brevard College in North Carolina.
Rev. Tutu received four honorary doctorates from universities and colleges in the U.S. and Nigeria. She is an ordained clergy member in the Episcopal Church and currently serves as Canon Missioner for Racial and Economic Equity at the Cathedral of All Souls in Asheville, North Carolina.
