John Atta Mills, the current president of Ghana, died this Tuesday at age 68. Mills, a Stanford grad, died five months short of finishing his first term in office. He was planning to seek re-election in Ghana’s upcoming elections in December.

Before coming to Stanford to pursue a law degree on a Fulbright Scholarship, Mills earned a law degree from the University of Ghana in 1967 and a doctorate from the School of Oriental and African Studies at the University of London.

Mills, an advocate for democracy on an often war-torn continent, was the third president in the Fourth Republic of Ghana.

— Molly Vorwerck