Bennet Omalu, whose research advances shed new light on the damage football can inflict on the brain, will be featured speaker at the Africa Peace Awards dinner on April 27. (Photo special to Sacramento State)Noted physician Bennet Omalu, who’ll deliver the keynote address at Sacramento State’s 28th annual Africa Peace Awards dinner on Saturday, April 27, was the young Pennsylvania neuropathologist who first identified chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) in the brain of former professional football player Mike Webster.
“I’ll be talking about how we can all learn to be ourselves,” says Omalu. “The best and greatest contribution each of us can make to humanity is to be who we are while ignoring conformational intelligence. I will use my personal story as an illustration.”
Webster fashioned a Hall of Fame career playing center for the Pittsburgh Steelers and Kansas City Chiefs from 1974 through 1990, winning four Super Bowl championships with the Steelers. Following his retirement, however, he suffered for years from amnesia, depression, and severe dementia. He was 50 and homeless in 2002 when he died and ended up on Omalu’s table at the Allegheny County coroner’s office.
Omalu’s groundbreaking diagnosis of brain damage caused by repeated concussions would put him at odds with the NFL for years. It also would lead to changes in concussion protocols across all contact sports.
His experiences were the basis of the 2015 movie Concussion, starring Will Smith as Omalu.
Today, the Nigerian-born Omalu is a clinical professor of medical pathology and laboratory medicine at UC Davis and president and medical director of Bennet Omalu Pathology in Stockton.
He will receive an Africa Peace Award from Sac State’s Center for African Peace and Conflict Resolution (CAPCR) at the dinner.
Three others receiving Africa Peace Awards are: Dr. Daniel Shibru, a surgeon at Kaiser Permanente-South Sacramento; RoLanda Wilkins, founding director of the Sacramento-based wellness program Earth Mama Healing; and Zannah Mustapha, founder of the Future Prowess Islamic Foundation School for orphans and vulnerable children in Nigeria.
The awards dinner, at 6 p.m. April 27 in the University Union Ballroom, is the culminating event of CAPCR’s 28th annual Africa & Diaspora Conference, which runs April 25-27 in the University Union. This year’s theme is “Peace Commerce: The Role of Peace in Economic and Business Development.”
Scholars and policymakers from throughout the world will speak during the conference. Almaz Negash, founder and executive director of the African Diaspora Network in Santa Clara and executive-in-residence at San Jose State’s School of Global Innovations and Leadership, will deliver the keynote lecture at 1:30 p.m. Thursday, April 25.
The conference is free and open to the public. Tickets for the awards dinner are $55. More information can be found on the CAPCR page on the University website or by calling (916) 278-6282.
Sacramento State’s first Africa-focused conference was held in 1992. CAPCR was established three years later. In addition to hosting the annual conference and peace awards dinner, CAPCR has developed initiatives on conflict resolution, alternative dispute resolution, and peace education in partnership with the U.S. State Department, Department of Education, the Nigerian Human Rights Commission, Addis Abba University, and more. – Dixie Reid