Ochieng to Examine the Complexity of MLK

Omedi Ochieng, Westmont associate professor of communication studies, discusses “The Articulation of Prophetic Wisdom: Martin Luther King Jr. in the African-American Intellectual Tradition” as part of Westmont’s annual Martin Luther King Jr. Lecture on Thursday, Jan. 19, at 7 p.m. in Westmont’s Darling Foundation Lecture Hall, room 210 in Winter Hall. The lecture is free and open to the public.

Ochieng says King was embedded in two vibrant and potent African-American intellectual traditions: wisdom and prophecy. “King drew on these in crafting representations of himself and of African-Americans in the struggle for freedom,” he says. “The portrait that emerges is that King is a far more complex figure than the one that’s now celebrated by American officialdom.

“I hope my lecture will offer a sense of King the person, a moral exemplar with flaws, and of his extraordinary radicalism in the cause of social justice.”

Ochieng joined Westmont’s communication studies faculty in 2005 after earning a master’s degree and a doctorate at Bowling Green State University. A native of Kenya, he graduated from Daystar University in Nairobi.

His research focuses on African rhetoric and understanding African moral and political philosophies. He also pursues interests in critical rhetoric, history of rhetoric and communication theory and philosophy. He has published “A Ruthless Critique of Everything Existing: Frederick Douglass and the Architectonic of African American Radicalism” in Western Journal of Communication and “The Ideology of African Philosophy: The Silences and Possibilities of African Rhetorical Knowledge” in Silence and Listening as Rhetorical Arts.