Du Bois Professor of the Humanities Henry Louis Gates Jr., who attended the lecture, called Soyinka "the unanimous first choice" for the lecture series.

"He was my professor at Cambridge in England in 1973," Gates said.

Gates harshly criticized the Nigerian dictatorship. "It's terrible that the government has illegally accused him of treason," Gates said. "We all look forward to the day when the Nigerian government has toppled."

Soyinka chairs the editorial board of Transition, an African intellectual journal edited at the Du Bois Institute.

Yesterday's speech was part of the first annual Genevieve McMillian-Reba Stewart Series, endowed by McMillan.

This year's series is titled "The Burden of Memory and the Muse of Remission." It is co-sponsored by the Department of Afro-American Studies, the Du Bois Institute on Afro-American Research, and Oxford University Press.

According to Susan Chang, an editor at Oxford Press, the British publisher will release a book based on the lecture series next year.

Soyinka will deliver the final lecture of the series, "A Lesson from the Balafon" today at 5 p.m. in Emerson 105