Part II
Amsal Woreta
Part II (Part I available here)
Toward an Ethic of Resistance: What Could and Should AAU Have Done?
A critical, forward-looking question is what a university like AAU could have done differently while still operating under significant political constraints. Rather than passive acceptance of a state-managed performance, the university could have redesigned the event to assert its independence and ethical obligations to affected communities. Below are concrete steps that AAU—and other universities in violent contexts—could adopt to resist co-optation while preserving space for intellectual engagement.
Refusing a Purely Celebratory Format
Ethical engagement would first have required AAU to refuse the purely celebratory format in which the Prime Minister’s lecture functioned as the symbolic climax of the 75th-anniversary program. Instead of an unambiguous birthday tribute, the university could have located the event within a series explicitly devoted to “Universities, Violence, and Responsibility in Ethiopia.” In such a frame, Abiy Ahmed’s remarks would appear as one contribution among many to an ongoing reckoning, not as the authoritative definition of intellectual duty.
This decision about format is not cosmetic. When a leader whose government oversees unresolved disappearances is cast as the moral tutor of scholars at a jubilee, the institution sends a message about whose suffering is narratively central and whose peripheral. Ethical engagement would have inverted this hierarchy, foregrounding victim voices and critical scholarship rather than state celebration.
Attaching Ethical Conditions to the Platform
Second, AAU should have attached minimal ethical conditions to the granting of such a high-profile platform. These conditions would not have censored the Prime Minister but would have required him to address the university community as a leader accountable to those harmed.
At minimum, the university could have stipulated that:
The lecture explicitly acknowledges the Dembi Dolo disappearances and the Gerbe/Garba Guracha kidnappings, including commitments to transparent investigation and to support for affected families.
A substantial portion of time is reserved for unscripted questions on student safety, conflict-related abuses, academic freedom, and civic space, with no pre-screening of topics.
The university publicly assures all participants that critical questioning will not result in disciplinary or security consequences.
If the Prime Minister’s office had declined these basic conditions, ethical engagement would have required AAU to reconsider whether an unconditioned keynote was compatible with its role as a refuge for truth and intellectual freedom.
Co-Centering Victims and Affected Communities
Third, an institution serious about its obligations in a violent context would have structurally co-centered victims and affected communities within the anniversary program. This is not tokenism but a fundamental reorientation of institutional priorities.
That might have involved:
Organizing a panel where families of Dembi Dolo students and families or survivors of the Gerbe/Garba Guracha abductions spoke about their experiences and demands, with the event recognized as part of the official anniversary.
Creating a commemorative exhibit with names, photos, and testimonies – including the Dembi Dolo disappearances and the Gerbe/Garba Guracha kidnappings – highlighting the broader kidnapping and displacement crisis affecting students in Oromia and other regions and linking this to discussions about the state’s duty to protect education.
Publishing a university-sponsored report on the human-rights implications of ongoing conflicts for higher education, authored by independent scholars and survivor advocates.
By placing these voices at the heart of the celebrations, AAU would have made clear that any talk of prosperity must begin with those whose education and lives have been shattered.
Protecting Genuine Critical Questioning
Fourth, AAU should have taken active steps to protect the possibility of genuine critical questioning at the lecture itself. This is especially important where critics face surveillance or retaliation.
Ethically, such steps would include:
Publicly inviting students and faculty to ask questions on security, displacement, media repression, and the government’s human-rights record, signaling that these are legitimate topics in a discussion of intellectual responsibility.
Issuing clear, written assurances that no participant would face disciplinary or security consequences for critical questions and establishing a mechanism to report and respond to any harassment linked to the event.
Allowing independent media and observers to document the proceedings, ensuring that the exchange contributes to a public record rather than a curated narrative.
Without these protections, a lecture in an authoritarian or violent context risks becoming a choreographed monologue where dissent is structurally impossible.
Building Long-Term Structures of Ethical Engagement
Finally, the lesson of the AAU episode extends beyond a single anniversary. Ethical engagement with power in a violent state requires durable institutional structures.
AAU and similar universities should therefore:
Establish an independent ethics and public-engagement committee, with student and external representation, tasked with reviewing high-profile invitations and recommending appropriate formats under conditions of conflict and repression.
Develop a permanent program on “Universities and Violence in Ethiopia,” funding research on atrocities, archiving testimonies, and providing support to scholars and students working on sensitive topics.
Deepen membership in international protection networks such as Scholars at Risk to ensure that threats, abductions, or harassment of academic’s trigger coordinated responses rather than isolated fear.
Adopt explicit policies requiring that invitations to high-profile political speakers include formats allowing genuine critical questioning, independent moderation, and visibility of affected communities.
These reforms would shift the default from ad hoc, politically driven decisions to principled, transparent standards.
Conclusion
Abiy Ahmed’s guest lecture on “The Role of Intellectuals in National Prosperity” at Addis Ababa University’s 75th anniversary illustrates how universities in violent, authoritarian contexts can be drawn into performances that seek to rebrand abusive leaders as moral and intellectual authorities. Set against extensive documentation of war crimes, crimes against humanity, and mass displacement during his rule, the event exemplifies a crisis of moral authority in which the institution’s symbolic capital is used to launder, rather than interrogate, state violence.
The paper has argued that the ethical problem is not simply that a controversial leader spoke on campus, but that he did so in a celebratory, uncritical format that rendered victims’ suffering invisible and foreclosed genuine accountability. For universities like AAU, the challenge is to reclaim their role as sites of critical, emancipatory inquiry by designing engagements with power that foreground evidence, protect vulnerable communities, and refuse the transformation of academia into a mere backdrop for state propaganda.
The concrete recommendations offered above—refusing celebratory formats, attaching ethical conditions, co-centering victims, protecting critical questioning, and building lasting institutional safeguards—are not naive calls for perfect ethical purity in impossible circumstances. Rather, they represent a principled middle ground: universities can engage with power while insisting on conditions that preserve their integrity, honor affected communities, and signal to students and scholars that institutional survival will not be purchased at the cost of truth. The question is no longer whether someone like Abiy Ahmed can lecture at Addis Ababa University. It is under what ethical conditions, with which counter-voices, and with what institutional safeguards such an appearance could ever be reconciled with the university’s obligations to truth, to its students and scholars, and to those who have been left disappeared, displaced, or silenced.
Editor’s Note : Views in the article do not necessarily reflect the views of borkena.com
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