U-M to award Wallenberg Medal to Nnimmo Bassey

Architect, poet and African environmental leader to deliver the 29th Wallenberg Lecture

Nnimmo Bassey, executive director of the Health of Mother Earth Foundation and a global environmental activist, will receive the 2024 Wallenberg Medal from the University of Michigan at 4:30 p.m. Tuesday, Sept. 10, at the Ross School of Business Robertson Auditorium.

Bassey will deliver the 29th Wallenberg Lecture, "We Are Relatives," centering on love, humility, dignity and respect in his vision of a livable future for all beings. Urban Ahlin, ambassador of Sweden to the United States, will discuss the life of Raoul Wallenberg, the U-M alumnus and Swedish diplomat whose legacy the Wallenberg Medal commemorates by honoring humanitarians across generations.

The Wallenberg Medal and Lecture ceremony is free and open to the public. Tickets are not required. Parking will be available in the Hill Street Parking Structure and valet service will be provided.

Bassey is an architect, director of the Nigeria-based ecological think-tank HOMEF, and member of the steering committee of Oilwatch International, a network resisting the expansion of fossil fuel extraction in the Global South. He chaired Friends of the Earth International (2008-2012), was a co-recipient of the 2010 Right Livelihood Award, also known as the "Alternative Nobel Prize," and received the Rafto Human Rights Prize in 2012.

Bassey received honorary doctorate degrees from the University of York (U.K.) in 2019 and from York University (Canada) in 2023. Bassey's books include "To Cook a Continent: Destructive Extraction" and "The Climate Crisis in Africa and Oil Politics: Echoes of Ecological War." His poetry collections include "We Thought It Was Oil But It Was Blood," "I Will Not Dance to Your Beat" and "I See the Invisible."

The Wallenberg Medal and Lecture honors the legacy of Raoul Wallenberg who graduated from the U-M College of Architecture in 1935 and saved the lives of tens of thousands of Hungarian Jews near the end of World War II. In 1944, at the request of Jewish organizations and the American War Refugee Board, the Swedish Foreign Ministry sent Wallenberg on a rescue mission to Budapest.

Over six months, Wallenberg issued thousands of protective passports and placed many thousands of Jews in safe houses throughout the besieged city. He confronted Hungarian and German forces to secure the release of Jews, whom he claimed were under Swedish protection and saved more than 80,000 lives.

For inquiries and requests for event accessibility accommodations, contact [email protected]or 734-936-3973.