Yoder Public Affairs Lecture: Dr. Robert Fatton Jr. – ‘Haiti’s Unending Crises and Struggles: The Hellish 21st Century’

Robert Fatton Jr. is the Ambassador Henry J. Taylor and Mrs. Marion R. Taylor Emeritus Professor of Politics at the University of Virginia. After 43 years of teaching at UVA he retired in May 2024. He served as chair of the Department from 1997 to 2004, and as the Associate Dean of the Graduate School of the University of Virginia, from 2009 to 2011.

Fatton is the author of a large number of articles and books on the political economies of Sub-Saharan Africa and Haiti. His publications include “Black Consciousness in South Africa;” “The Making of a Liberal Democracy: Senegal’s Passive Revolution, 1975-1985;” “Predatory Rule: State and Civil Society in Africa;” “Haiti’s Predatory Republic: The Unending Transition to Democracy;” “The Roots of Haitian Despotism;” “Haiti: Trapped in the Outer Periphery;” and “The Guise of Exceptionalism: Unmasking the National Narratives of Haiti and the United States.”  

Fatton received the Award for Excellence of the Haitian Studies Association in 2012 for his “commitment and contribution to the emerging field of Haitian Studies for close to a quarter of a century.” And in 2023 the Association honored him with its Lifetime Achievement Award.