Makau W. Mutua

Makau W. Mutua (born 1958) is a Kenyan-American professor of law.  He holds the post of SUNY Distinguished Professor and Margaret W. Wong Professor at the SUNY Buffalo School of Law.  He is also a scholar of TWAIL (Third World Approaches to International Law) and teaches international human rights, international business transactions, and international law. [1]

He served as dean of the law school from January 2008 to December 2014, when news coverage of multiple lawsuits, perjury allegations, and an unsatisfactory review of his job performance by the university prompted his resignation in the middle of the academic year.[2] During his post-decanal sabbatical, he made an unsuccessful bid for Chief Justice of Kenya, coming in third to Judge David Maraga, who took office on 19 October 2016. [3]

Biography

Early life and education

Makau Mutua was born Robert Mutua in Kitui, Kenya in 1958, the second of seven children.  He was educated at Kitui School and Alliance High School, and in 1975 graduated from an American high school in Fisher, Illinois, to which he was taken by Catholic missionaries.  He recounted for a Nairobi newspaper that "the Catholic Church had murdered my spirit as an African.  I contemplated dropping the name Robert before going to Illinois, but didn’t know how – and lacked the courage to do so at that age.  It was only after I returned from America that I "killed" Robert and left the church."[4]

In May 1981, his education disrupted by his anti-government activism, he left the University of Nairobi, enrolled in the University of Dar es Salaam, and graduated in 1983 and 1984 with bachelor’s and master’s degrees in law.  He then returned to the United States and burnished his credentials at Harvard University, where he earned an LL.M in 1985 and an S.J.D. in 1987.

Legal, academic career, and honors

He was an associate for one year at a commercial law firm in New York, where he worked on equipment leasing, licensing, and distributorship contracts, and then moved to Human Rights First, at that time known as the Lawyers Committee for Human Rights, where he directed the Africa Project.  In 1991, he returned to Harvard as associate director of its human rights program.[5]

In 1996, he joined the SUNY Buffalo Law faculty.  In December 2007, following the resignation of his predecessor, R. Nils Olsen, Jr., Mutua was appointed interim dean of the law school.  He was reappointed by the university’s provost in May 2008, after the failure of a national job search.  He remained in office until December 2014 when his controversial deanship unexpectedly ended in midyear.[6]

In 2003, while on sabbatical, he was appointed to an official task force that recommended a "truth, justice, and reconciliation" commission for Kenya.  That year he was also a delegate to a constitutional conference, which attempted to draft a new constitution for Kenya.  In 2006, he was an advisor to John Githongo, the former anti-corruption czar who exposed the Anglo-Leasing scandal in the Kibaki government.  He is also chairman of the board of the Kenya Human Rights Commission, which is registered in Nairobi as a non-profit political advocacy group or "NGO."[7]

In addition, he has served as a visiting professor at the University of Iowa, the University of Deusto in Bilbao, Spain, the University of Addis Ababa in Ethiopia, the United Nations University for Peace in Costa Rica, the University of Coimbra, Portugal, the University of Pretoria in South Africa, and the University of Puerto Rico.

Mutua lists many invited lectures and professional activities on his ninety-nine-page resume.  

In 2007, he gave the Abiola Lecture, the keynote address at the annual meeting of the African Studies Association, and, in 2015, received the distinguished Africanist award from the New York African Studies Association.  He was elected vice president of the American Society of International Law from 2011-2013 after serving on its executive council from 2007–2010.  In 2017, he was appointed to a four-year-term as editor of the Routledge Series on Law in Africa.  Finally, he belongs to the Council on Foreign Relations, a 4,300-member organization of foreign policy professionals and academics that hosts interviews, panel discussions, lectures, book clubs, and film screenings to discuss and debate the international issues of our times.[8]

Faculty dissent at SUNY Buffalo

On 24 September 2014, Mutua announced that he was resigning from the deanship of SUNY Buffalo Law School amid allegations of perjury and multiple human rights violations against law school employees, including due process rights, union rights, women's rights, and faculty governance rights.[9]

According to the Buffalo News, a delegation of female professors met with the university's provost in the early months of 2014 to accuse Mutua of creating a hostile workplace for women and using a "divide and conquer" strategy to instill fear and mistrust in the faculty.[10]  The provost, however, "despite the multitudes of complaints generated by his questionable behavior," delayed any action until the completion of an external review later that year.[11]

The university's student-run newspaper, The Spectrum, issued the initial account of Mutua's resignation, reporting that "[it] comes amid allegations that he lied in federal court and in a state administrative proceeding."  The evidence came from a 114-page document filed in federal district court on 13 August 2014, which contained sworn testimony and documentary evidence from nine senior SUNY Buffalo law professors, including Dianne Avery, Rebecca French, Shubha Ghosh, Alfred Konefsky, Susan V. Mangold, Isabel Marcus, Lynn Mather, Robert J. Steinfeld, Charles P. Ewing.[12]

The Spectrum further reported that "the law school faculty in October of 2010 attempted to hold a vote of no confidence in Mutua, but the attempt was dismissed by then-President John B. Simpson and then Provost Satish Tripathi."[13]

These accounts were confirmed by a front-page story in the Buffalo News on 27 September 2014.[14]

"The dean’s critics," the story reported, "are numerous, and include some of the school’s most highly regarded faculty members."  In their interviews for the Buffalo News they alleged that "Mutua lacks an educational vision and is more concerned with power and control than with the school’s future."

The Spectrum, moreover, reported that "[f]aculty and students who were interviewed offered tepid to scathing critiques of Mutua’s tenure and many students insist they have never seen Mutua on campus nor interacted with him."[15]

He was also criticized for hiring eighteen new professors during a decade in which the law school’s enrollment was dropping by almost 40%.  That imbalance resulted in the resignations, buy-outs, or early retirements of more than half the faculty and a tuition that doubled in the aftermath of his deanship.[16]

Finally, Mutua presided over SUNY Buffalo's drop below the top one-hundred American law schools for the first time in its history, despite his pledge to devote his deanship to returning it to the top fifty.[17]  This decline in its U.S. News ranking coincided with an alarming decline in its bar passage rate, which dropped from the middle of the pack for first-time test takers in 2009 (eight out of fifteen) to second from the bottom on the 2019 test (thirteen out of fifteen).[18]

On 20 November 2017, after almost a decade of litigation by the New York State United Teachers and two individual faculty members over anti-union animus charges and due process violations in the law school, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit held that clinical educators in the SUNY system, under the Policies of the SUNY Trustees, have no legal rights in federal court.  That ruling was followed by a lawsuit against the American Bar Association in Chicago.  In a decision dated 11 December 2019, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit held that SUNY law professors had no legal standing to challenge Mutua’s repudiation of the ABA’s accreditation standards for due process and faculty governance.[19]  In response to what he called his "vindication," he told the Buffalo News that he had been the victim of "a bigoted personal vendetta" by a "cabal of racist law faculty who had trouble accepting that a competent, reform-minded and independent black man was running the Law School."[20]

Travels, journalism, and his hotel

The law school’s official history praises Mutua for "bringing a global focus to the School of Law, drawing on the numerous human rights, diplomatic and rule of law missions he had conducted in countries in Africa, Latin America and Europe."[21] In May 2009, the law school sponsored the visit of a Kenyan government delegation, where then-Prime Minister Raila Odinga gave newly graduated lawyers and their families a lecture about African politics and praised Makau Mutua as "a great Kenyan patriot."[22]

Mutua was also frequently praised by law school donors for his outreach to alumni and his successful fundraising efforts.[23]

He was criticized on-campus, however, for his disengagement from campus life and prolonged absences while he toured many international destinations, including China, Costa Rica, Ethiopia, France, Germany, India, Italy, Ivory Coast, Namibia, the Netherlands, Puerto Rico, Portugal, Serbia, South Africa, Spain,  Switzerland, Tanzania, Uganda, the United Kingdom, Zimbabwe, and (repeatedly) his native Kenya.[24]

Mutua accelerated his travel schedule in the fall of 2014, just prior to vacating the Dean's Office, when he spent roughly sixty days away from campus, visiting places as close as New York City and as far away as Denmark.

Following his departure from the Dean's Office in December 2014, the president of the university granted Mutua an extraordinary three-semester sabbatical at his full pay, stretching from January 2015 to September 2016.

His Twitter account indicated that from January to September 2015 he served as a full-time consultant at the Rome, Italy-based International Development Law Organization (IDLO).  He then relocated to the Washington, D.C. area, from September 2015 to September 2016, for another full-time consultancy at the World Bank.  His double-dipping was criticized by the campus newspaper, which reported that "the university is still paying the former law school dean his full salary – a salary that nears $300,000 - despite being away from the school and taking on outside work."[25]

Over the decade that included his deanship and his post-decanal sabbatical, Mutua and his wife, Athena, collected over four and a half million dollars in state salary from SUNY Buffalo. In addition, Mutua conferred upon his wife a "Floyd H. and Hilda L. Hurst Faculty Scholarship," the other of which he held himself, which paid them each an additional annual stipend from the university’s endowment.[26]

For the better part of a decade, Mutua – an outspoken critic of corruption in Kenyan politics – was a columnist for the Sunday Nation, one of the two the main newspapers in East and Central Africa.  In September 2013, he departed the Sunday Nation and joined the Standard on Sunday, the Sunday Nation's chief competitor.  He returned to the Sunday Nation in January 2020 with a controversial critique of African women who straighten or dye their hair, calling it "disgusting hair pornography," and denouncing it as "an intellectual and cultural surrender among blacks to white supremacist notions of beauty."[27]

On 10 July 2018, Mutua opened a boutique hotel for affluent Kenyans in his home village, which he named Kitui Villa.  He had originally planned for it to be a gated family compound for his wife and three sons, but decided to rent deluxe rooms so that the cream of Kenyan society and their international guests could enjoy its luxurious amenities, including a swimming pool, a full-service restaurant, an opaque glass bar overlooking the landscaped grounds, a library stocked with Mutua’s works and other revolutionary classics, and specially-commissioned portraits of his heroes in the fight against American imperialism, Che Guevara and Fidel Castro.[28]

Rejection for Kenya's Chief Justice office

Following the early retirement of Dr. Willy Mutunga from the Office of Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Kenya in June 2016, Mutua was among the ten people who applied for the job in response to the vacancy announcement by the Judicial Service Commission.  When the Commission drew the short list of applicants who were to be interviewed for the job, Mutua's name was missing from the list.  

A civil society organization filed a case at the Constitutional Court questioning the criteria used in the shortlisting, and demanding that applicants who met the constitutional requirements be interviewed.  It emerged in the litigation that Mutua had not been shortlisted since he had not obtained a tax clearance from the Kenya Revenue Authority.

The Constitutional Court held that persons who meet the constitutional threshold for the office must be given the chance to explain why they did not get clearances.  Following this case, Mutua and four other applicants who had been left out of the shortlist were invited to interview for the job.

During the interview, Attorney General Githu Muigai "forced" Mutua "to eat humble pie" over tweets he had made following the contested election of Uhuru Kenyatta as President of Kenya in March 2013.  In a tweet published shortly after the 2013 general election, Mutua indicated that "his conscience would not allow him to recognize Uhuru Kenyatta as president" because he disagreed with the management of the election tally.[29] Mutua stuck to his position and referred to President Kenyatta as Mr. Kenyatta throughout the interview, maintaining that "the Head of State has many titles and [I] can choose from any one of them."

In addition, the Attorney General questioned his qualifications for chief justice on the grounds that he has not resided in Kenya or paid Kenyan taxes for over thirty years, and has never tried a case or served in any judicial office.  Mutua responded with his readiness to renounce his American citizenship.[30] He also averred that he is not a "legal mechanic," but a "public intellectual" and "citizen of the world."  "Most of my legal work isn't in the courtroom.  I am an intellectual who teaches and writes on legal and political matters.  I teach and produce lawyers, the legal brains that litigate in courts."[31]

When the interviews ended, the commission announced that it had settled on Kenyan Court of Appeal Judge David Maraga as the nominee for the Office of Chief Justice.  Mutua was ranked third in the interviews.  On 3 December 2017, after the Supreme Court confirmed President Kenyatta's reelection, Mutua reiterated his refusal to recognize his presidency.

Map of Africa

In 1994, Mutua suggested a reorganization of the continent of Africa into 15 sustainable states, from the 55 states he considered not viable. He said "the consequences of the failed postcolonial state are so destructive that radical solutions must now be contemplated to avert the wholesale destruction of groups of the African people." These new states would be created based on ethnic similarities, cultural homogeneity, and economic viability. The new states included the Republic of Kusini, a new Egypt, Nubia, a new Mali, a new Somalia, a new Congo, a new Ghana, a new Benin, a new Libya, a Sahara state, Kisiwani, a new state made up of a collection of islands, and the current states of Angola and Algeria would remain the same.

Selected works
  • Human Rights Standards: Hegemony, Law, and Politics. SUNY Press. March 2016 ISBN 978-1-4384-5939-4
  • Kenya's Quest For Democracy: Taming Leviathan (Challenge and Change in African Politics). L. Rienner Publishers. 30 April 2008 ISBN 1-58826-590-0
  • Human Rights NGOs in East Africa: Political and Normative Tensions. University of Pennsylvania Press. 12 September 2008 ISBN 978-0-8122-4112-9
  • Human Rights: A Political and Cultural Critique. University of Pennsylvania Press. 10 November 2008 ISBN 0-8122-2049-8
  • Zaire: Repression As Policy (with Peter Rosenblum), New York: Lawyers Committee for Human Rights, 1990.

References
  1. "Mutua, Makau W." www.law.buffalo.edu. Retrieved 2 August 2020.
  2. Fairbanks, Phil. "Deep rift exposed as UB Law's dean resigns". The Buffalo News. Retrieved 2 August 2020.
  3. "Uhuru Swears in New Chief Justice David Maraga", The East African, 19 October 2016, (retrieved 1 February 2020).
  4. Makau Mutua, "Let’s Fully Reclaim Our African Identity, Overcome Imperialism", The Standard, 25 Feb. 2018, (retrieved 1 February 2020).
  5. All facts regarding "legal, academic career, and honors," are derived from Mutua’s cv, which he posts and updates on-line at (retrieved 1 February 2020).
  6. See news coverage of Mutua’s resignation from the UB Spectrum, dated 24 September 2014, and the Buffalo News, dated 27 September 2014, both cited in footnotes immediately below.
  7. "The Kenya Human Rights Commission (KHRC) was founded in 1991 and registered in Kenya in 1994 as a national non-governmental organisation (NGO).  Throughout its existence, the core agenda of the Commission has been campaigning for the entrenchment of a human rights and democratic culture in Kenya."  See "KHRC – About Us" (retrieved 1 February 2020).
  8. See Mutua’s curriculum vitae, at (retrieved 1 February 2020).
  9. "Law School Dean Makau Mutua Resigns", UB Spectrum, 24 Sept. 2014, (retrieved 1 February 2020).
  10. Phil Fairbanks, "Deep Rift Exposed as UB Law's Dean Resigns", Buffalo News, 27 Sept. 2014, (retrieved 1 February 2020).
  11. See Editorial, "Mutua’s Unsettling Tenure", UB Spectrum, 26 Sept. 2014, (retrieved 1 February 2020).
  12. Motion to Separate Trials, case 12-cv-236, filed 13 August 2014 (W.D.N.Y)
  13. "Law School Dean Makau Mutua Resigns", UB Spectrum, 24 Sept. 2014 (retrieved 1 February 2020).
  14. Phil Fairbanks, "Deep Rift Exposed as UB Law's Dean Resigns", Buffalo News, 27 Sept. 2014,, .
  15. "Law School Dean Makau Mutua Resigns", UB Spectrum, 24 Sept. 2014, (retrieved 1 February 2020).
  16. "UB’s law school went from having 54 full-time faculty members teaching in the fall of 2010 to just 27 last fall, according to the American Bar Association’s annual 509 information reports.  That includes a drop off from 48 full-time faculty members who taught in the fall of 2014.  UB’s decrease is among the top 10 largest net decreases in the country."  "Less Full-Time Faculty Teaching at UB Law School", UB Spectrum, 27 January 2016, (retrieved 1 February 2020);  Current and historical enrollment and tuition data is available on-line at ;  See also Faculty Directory – Emeritus (listing professors who acceded to early retirement during his deanship); Stacy Zaretsky, "The future is so bright at this law school that it has to offer faculty buyouts", Above the Law, 18 March 2014 (retrieved 1 February 2020).
  17. "For many years, U.S. News & World Report considered UB one of its First-Tier law schools. Then, in recent years, UB slipped to the Second Tier.  Now, UB ranks outside the Top 100, in the third of four tiers."  Dan Herbeck, "UB Law School Drops Out of Top 100 in Law School Rankings", Buffalo News, 15 July 2010, (retrieved 1 February 2020).  See also Makau Mutua, "Building the Law School of the Future", UB Law Forum, Fall 2009, ("As I have said before, my ambition is not to build a good local law school – it is to create a great national law school.  I believe that a top 50 ranking, which I have set as the goal for my deanship, will be one measure of that greatness.")
  18. "A Breakdown of New York Bar Exam Results by School", Above the Law, 4 Dec. 2019, (retrieved 1 February 2020).
  19. Malkan, et. al v. American Bar Assoc. (11 December 2019).
  20. Tokasz, Jay (10 November 2017). "Federal Case that roiled UB Law now over". Buffalo News. Retrieved 1 February 2020.
  21. "History, Our Past Deans";  See also "Travel and Honors Fill Dean Mutua's Calendar", UB Law Forum, spring 2010, at 16, (retrieved 1 February 2020);  These facts verified by tweets and photos from Mutua’s Twitter feed  See .
  22. "Kenyan Prime Minister Urges Solidarity with Africa", UB Law Forum, Fall 2009, (retrieved 1 February 2020).
  23. "Letter: Mutua's Energy and Vision Moved Law School Forward", Buffalo News, 8 Oct. 2014, (retrieved 1 February 2020).
  24. "UB still paying former Law School Dean Makau Mutua full salary despite his new job", UB Spectrum, 9 March 2016 (retrieved 1 February 2020).  Facts in the following paragraphs of this section are derived from this news report and confirmed by contemporaneous postings and photographs on Mutua’s Twitter feed.
  25. This quote is from the UB Spectrum article cited in the preceding footnote.
  26. Makau and Athena Mutua’s salary information is sourced from public records posted on a New York State website, "See Thru New York", .  According to these records, Makau Mutua’s state salary from 2009-2019, exclusive of benefits, totaled $3,032,514, and Athena Mutua’s totaled $1,543,716. Athena Mutua’s "Floyd H. and Hilda L. Hurst Faculty Scholarship" is listed with her job title on her faculty biography.
  27. Makau Mutua, "Let's Do Away Once and For All with Disgusting Hair Pornography", Daily Nation, 18 March 2020 (retrieved 1 February 2020).
  28. Kitui Villa, "About Us", (retrieved 1 February 2020);  See also documentation on Mutua’s Twitter feed, July 2018,
  29. Peter Leftie and Brian Mureithi, "Makau Mutua on the spot over remark on Uhuru’s election", Daily Nation, 14 September 2016, ("humble pie" and "Head of State" quotations from this news article) (retrieved 1 February 2020).
  30. "Prof. Makau offers to give up U.S. citizenship if appointed C.J.", KUTV, Kenya, 14 September 2016, (retrieved 1 February 2020).
  31. Peter Odour, "Prof. Makau Mutua: Why I won’t refer to Uhuru Kenyatta as President", EveWoman (news magazine) (retrieved 1 February 2020).
This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.