Birkutan Mideksa
Birtukan Mideksa will be the Eleanor Roosevelt Fellow with a joint appointment with W.E.B. Du Bois Institute. A former judge and the leader of Ethiopia’s Unity and Democracy for Justice Party, Birtukan was among opposition activists who were jailed for life after the disputed 2005 election. They were pardoned, but Birtukan was sent back to prison after the government accused her of violating the terms of the pardon. She was released in October 2010. At Harvard, she will work on the independence of the judiciary in closed societies.