Gilbert Doho, associate professor of French and founding director of the Ethnic Studies Program, was invited to be a keynote speaker at the seventh international colloquium of Le Biennale de la Langue Francaise, co-sponsored by the Organisation Internationale de la Francophonie in Paris, France.
Doho’s presentation, titled “Ni Anglophone ni Francophone en Ambaland: le conflit francophone-anglophone au Cameroun,” addressed the ongoing conflict and oppression of English-speaking regions in Cameroon led by the Francophone majority.
Doho was specifically invited for his expertise on the subject, which was enhanced by his summer fieldwork in the region.
The Organisation Internationale de la Francophonie, which has 84 member states with more than 900 million citizens combined, realized the gravity of the situation in Cameroon, sparking Doho’s invitation to the colloquium in Paris.
Doho also is planning a major working conference on the subject at Case Western Reserve University in March that will unite nearly a dozen African scholars on campus. The conference, titled “The Fragmented Nation or the Anglophone-Francophone Problem in Cameroon,” will be sponsored in part by the Baker-Nord Center for the Humanities and the Department of Modern Languages and Literatures.