Wallenberg Tribute Honors Afghanistan Women’s Rights and Education Advocate Rangina Hamidi
The former minister of education for Afghanistan will be speaking November 13 about the current state of education.Tuesday, November 8, 2022 09:24 AM
Rangina Hamidi is being honored as this year's guest lecturer for the annual Wallenberg Tribute.This year’s Wallenberg Tribute lecture guest is Rangina Hamidi, an Afghan American writer, educator, social activist and politician known for her tireless efforts to advocate for the rights of women, girls and education in Afghanistan
Hamidi will present her lecture, “Schools and Madrassas: The Battle for Education in Afghanistan” on Sunday, November 13 at 3:30 p.m. in the Seegers Union Event Space. The event is open to the public and will be followed by an invitation-only dinner.
Every year since 1984, Muhlenberg’s Institute for Religious and Cultural Understanding has honored the legacy of Raoul Wallenberg, a Swedish diplomat in Hungary who saved 100,000 Jews from deportation to death camps during World War II, with the Wallenberg Tribute. Muhlenberg commemorates Wallenberg’s legacy by inviting a guest speaker who has demonstrated courageous moral action on the behalf of others.
Hamidi, a professor of practice at Thunderbird School of Global Management at Arizona State University and the former minister of education for Afghanistan, was born in Kandahar, Afghanistan. She emigrated to Pakistan in 1981 and then to the United States with her family seven years later.
She returned to the country in 2003 and spent 20 years working to better the lives of Afghans, establishing a full value-chain model of an all-women’s social enterprise in Kandahar. She also successfully led the Mezan International School to create an internationally-accredited curriculum with a foundation of Islamic education, Afghan history and Afghan values.
