Dr. Ts’gye Rachel T. Leslie is an African American, Pan-African scholar born in Paris, France she was educated in the United States at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois and also studied at Ludwig Maximillian University in Munich, Germany as a DAAD scholar. Dr. Leslie later taught at a leading African university in the Philosophy Department during which time she was among those who spearheaded its first UNESCO Philosophy Day and the reform of the College of Arts and Sciences. She researched her findings at Howard University where she was awarded the Doctor of Ministry for her studies on the history, culture and theology of the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church (EOTC). Dr. Leslie studied in Ethiopian monasteries with the permission of patriarchs of EOTC. She was the first woman of African descent awarded a graduate degree from the Department of Semitic and Egyptian Languages and Literatures at Catholic University of America. Her studies at Catholic University and continued research in Europe led her to discovery of vast international troves of primary source materials on African history.
Her position as Director of the African Historical Society is a fulfillment of a lifelong commitment to understanding and highlighting Africa’s contribution to global history and culture in general and to teaching this legacy to African children and youth and the international academic community at large.
Already as a young Pan-Africanist, Dr. Leslie worked as a consultant for the UNDP Capacity-building project at the African Union Conflict Management Center where she was the keynote speaker for the landmark 1999 All Africa Conference on African Principles of Conflict Resolution Reconciliation which she spearheaded to show that the development of endogenous African institutions like African endogenous restorative justice systems to address modern challenges, is intrinsic to sustainable African peace and development. Moreover, she held that African knowledge systems contain solutions for modern challenges internationally. Her keynote address is quoted on the United Nations University for Peace website and in several peace and development journals. During that time, she opted to use both her maternal and paternal family names “Titilayo Ogundipe Leslie: “Indigenous Dispute Resolution and Reconciliation: Past, Present and Future”
and the journal article “The Multi-Cultural Context and Multi-Dimensional Scope of Peace” by Jannie Malan, 2009
More recently, the book:
Teaching the Children of Tewahedo: Africa and the Ethio-Judeo Christian Legacy
(Dr. Leslie’s dissertation currently under revision, but available on Amazon)
Her most recent and popular journal article:
The Baptism of the Ethiopian Eunuch: “Look, Here is Water What Hinders Me from Being Baptized”, (Acts 8:36 OSB)
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