The Ifeanyi A. Menkiti Legacy Fund
Through the legacy fund, we honor the life of our beloved father, Ifeanyi Anthony Menkiti, a poet, professor, entrepreneur, and community leader who passed away suddenly on June 17, 2019. We thank you for helping to sustain his vision and his spirit by supporting the two main areas of his continued work.
Dr. Menkiti was a longtime professor of philosophy at Wellesley College who published four collections of poetry and presented his work to audiences around the world. He came to the United States from Nigeria in the 1960s after earning a scholarship to attend Pomona College in California. After receiving his bachelor’s degree from Pomona, he went on to earn graduate degrees at Columbia University and New York University, and a PH.D from Harvard University. Dr. Menkiti joined the Wellesley faculty in 1973 and taught there for 41 years. In 2006, he saved the Grolier Poetry Book Shop in Cambridge, an esteemed institution in the poetry world, when he purchased it to prevent it from shuttering.
In his life and his work, Dr. Menkiti emphasized the importance of fostering community. He taught the ideals of engagement through spoken and written word and sought a deeper understanding of how we are all connected through our common humanity. For the last several years, and with increasing urgency, Dr. Menkiti was working to realize a new vision: the Emengini Institute for Comparative Global Studies, a center that would promote global community and social justice solutions through academic dialogue and research, entrepreneurship, and the arts.
Poet-Turned Developer, Realizing a Dream article from the Boston Telegram, May 2018.
Much of his work was driven by a closely held belief that connection to others and a sense of belonging can ease division and allow people to “be of one accord before a common soil”. We honor his commitment to the vision of a global community through the creation of the Ifeanyi A. Menkiti Legacy Fund. All donations will go towards ensuring the sustainability of the Grolier Poetry Bookstore and launching and supporting the Emengini Institute.
Please click the button below for donation options through The Menkiti Group’s CPMG Foundation.
We
thank you for your interest in supporting the Ifeanyi A. Menkiti Legacy Fund.
We are immensely grateful for your contributions.
– The Menkiti Family
“For the vision still has its time, it presses on to fulfillment and will not disappoint. If it delays, wait for it; it will surely come. It will not be late.”
-Habakkuk 2:2-4
