Until he was conferred professor emeritus status following his retirement in 2017, Ndiva Kofele Kale was the University Distinguished Professor and Professor of Law at Southern Methodist University (SMU) Dedman School of Law in Dallas, Texas, where for almost three decades, he taught courses on Corporate Law, International Law, International Human Rights, and International Litigation and Arbitration. Prior to coming to SMU, Professor Kofele Kale was for three years on the faculty of the University of Tennessee College of Law in Knoxville, Tennessee and before that, taught Political Science for ten years at Governors State University in Illinois.
A product of Kings College, Lagos, Professor Ndiva Kofele Kale attended Beloit College, Wisconsin, as an ASPAU (African Scholarship Program for American Universities) scholar, graduating in 1970 with a Bachelor of Arts with honors in International Relations. He earned a postgraduate certificate in African Studies, a Masters (1971) and Doctorate (1974) in Comparative/International Politics from Northwestern University Graduate School where he was a Woodrow Wilson Dissertation Fellow. He obtained a doctorate in Jurisprudence from Northwestern University Pritzker School of Law in 1984, graduating with the Lowden -Wigmore First Prize in International Law.
He is admitted to practice before the U.S. Supreme Court, the U.S. Court of Appeal for the 7th Circuit, the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, and is a member of the Illinois and Cameroon bars.
Ndiva Kofele Kale practiced Corporate and Securities Law in Chicago at Lord, Bissell and Brook (now Locke Lord LLP). He has litigated a number of human rights cases around the world and served for six years as the Associate Editor of The International Lawyer (the flagship journal of the International Law section of the American Bar Association). An expert on grand corruption (patrimonicide) as a crime under international law, Professor Kofele Kale has written extensively on this subject and is the author of eight books and over forty refereed articles in academic/professional journals, some of which address the socio-political and economic situation in Cameroon.
