January 04, 2008
Clark graduate killed in Sudan; 'Helping people, promoting peace. That was his ideal.'
Slain U.S. official was Clark alumnus
John Granville, who earned a master's degree in international development from Clark University in 2004, was the official with the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) who was shot and killed early in the morning of January 1 in Khartoum, Sudan.
Top photo: John Granville M.A. '04 on a Fulbright Fellowship in Bamendjou, Cameroon in August 2003.
Bottom photo: Granville (far right) at a Clark IDCE reunion in Nairobi, Kenya in 2007.
Mr. Granville grew up in Buffalo, N.Y., and graduated from Canisius High School in 1993. He earned a bachelor's degree at Fordham University and then served in the Peace Corps in Cameroon, where he taught English and helped wherever he could. Upon his return to the United States, Mr. Granville and his friend and fellow Peace Corps volunteer, Michael C. Herrold, started Bamileke Import in Buffalo. The company sold furniture and crafts made in Cameroon. As part of their business practices, Granville and Herrold began a program to replace the wood they were taking out of Cameroon as furniture and crafts, and they established a scholarship program to send girls to school.
In 2001, Mr. Granville entered Clark's International Development, Community, and Environment (IDCE) graduate program to study international development. He finished his coursework in 2003, and was awarded a Fulbright Fellowship to Bamendjou, Cameroon in 2004. Mr. Granville graduated from Clark in 2004 and became a Democracy Fellow with World Learning and USAID. Based in Nairobi, Kenya, he monitored and evaluated USAID's Office of Democracy and Good Governance's Strategic Plan for Sudan. Mr. Granville was later hired by USAID as part of the team of officials working to implement the 2005 peace agreement that ended the civil war between north and south Sudan.
Clark professor and IDCE director William Fisher remembers Mr. Granville well as a student and corresponded with him often since his graduation. Fisher told the Worcester Telegram & Gazette that Mr. Granville "had a willingness to put himself in harm's way in order to make a positive difference in the world and do it in a sustained and constructive manner."
Planning is underway at Clark to honor Mr. Granville's memory and his work to create positive change in the world.
Read the Worcester Telegram & Gazette article about Mr. Granville.