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ALI A. MAZRUI was born in
Mombasa, Kenya, on February 24, 1933. He is now Albert
Schweitzer Professor in the Humanities and Director of the
Institute of Global Cultural Studies at Binghamton
University, State University of New York. He is also
Albert Luthuli Professor-at-Large in the Humanities and
Development Studies at the University of Jos in Nigeria.
He is Andrew D. White Professor-at-Large Emeritus and
Senior Scholar in Africana Studies at Cornell University.
He was Ibn Khaldun Professor-at-Large, Graduate School of
Islamic and Social Sciences, Leesburg, Virginia
(1997-2000). He was also Walter Rodney Professor at the
University of Guyana, Georgetown, Guyana (1997-1998).
Mazrui obtained his B.A. with Distinction from Manchester
University in England, his M.A. from Columbia University
in New York, and his doctorate from Oxford University in
England. For ten years he was at Makerere University,
Kampala, Uganda, where he served as head of the Department
of Political Science and Dean of the Faculty of Social
Sciences and from where he launched his professorial
career. He once served as Vice-President of the
International Political Science Association and has
lectured in five continents. Professor Mazrui also served
as professor of political science (1974-1991) and as
Director of the Center for Afroamerican and African
Studies (1978-1981) at The University of Michigan, Ann
Arbor, Michigan. He has also been Visiting Scholar at
Stanford, Chicago, Colgate, Singapore, Australia,
Malaysia, Oxford, Harvard, Bridgewater, Cairo, Leeds,
Nairobi, Teheran, Denver, London, Ohio State, Baghdad,
McGill, Sussex, Pennsylvania, etc. Dr. Mazrui has also
served as Special Advisor to the World Bank. He has also
served on the Board of Directors of the American Muslim
Council, Washington, D.C., and is chair of the Board of
the Center for the Study of Islam and Democracy,
Washington, D.C. He is also on the Board of the Center for
Muslim-Christian Understanding, Georgetown University,
Washington, D.C., and is a Fellow of the Institute of
Governance and Social Research, Jos, Nigeria.
His more than twenty books include Towards a Pax Africana
(1967), and The Political Sociology of the English
Language (1975). He has also published a novel (reprinted
a number of times) entitled The Trial of Christopher
Okigbo (1971). His research interests include African
politics, international political culture, political
Islam, and North-South relations. Other books include
Africa's International Relations (Heinemann and Westview
Press, 1977, reprinted a number of times), Political
Values and the Educated Class in Africa (Heinemann
Educational Books and University of California Press,
1978, reprinted subsequently), and The Political Culture
of Language: Swahili, Society, and the State, co-author
Alamin M. Mazrui, (IGCS and James Currey, 1995). His most
comprehensive books include A World Federation of
Cultures: An African Perspective (published by the Free
Press in New York in 1976) and Cultural Forces in World
Politics (James Currey and Heinemann, 1990). Among his
books on language in society is The Power of Babel:
Language and Governance in Africa's Experience (co-author
Alamin M. Mazrui) (James Currey and University of Chicago
Press, 1998), which was launched in the House of Lords,
London, at a historic ceremony saluting Mazrui's works.
Dr. Mazrui
has also written for magazines and newspapers. He has been
published in The Times (London), the New York Times, the
Sunday Nation (Nairobi), Transition (Kampala and Cambridge,
Mass., USA), Al-Ahram (Cairo), The Guardian (London) and
(Lagos), The Economist (London) and the Cumhuriyet (Istanbul
and Ankara), Yomiuri Shimbun (Tokyo and Osaka),
International Herald Tribune (Paris), Elsevier (Amsterdam),
Los Angeles Times Syndicate (USA) and Afrique 2000 (Brussels
and Paris).
Professor
Mazrui is married and has five sons (Jamal, Al'Amin, Kim
Abubakar, Farid Chinedu and Harith Ekenechukwu). Dr. Mazrui
is a Kenyan. One of his sons is also Kenyan and four are
U.S. citizens.
Dr. Mazrui
was President of the African Studies Association of the
United States from November 1978 to November 1979 and
Vice-President of the International Congress of African
Studies (1979-1991). He is also Vice-President of the Royal
African Society in London. Dr. Mazrui has been elected an
Honorary Fellow of the Ghana Academy of Arts and Sciences,
and member of the College of Fellows of the International
Association of Middle Eastern Studies. In 1979 Dr. Mazrui
delivered the prestigious annual Reith Lectures of the
British Broadcasting Corporation (named about the founder
Director-General of the BBC, Lord Reith). The lectures
(entitled The African Condition) have since been repeatedly
reprinted by Cambridge University Press (Cambridge has the
American rights). Part of Mazrui's work has been translated
into other languages. The National University of Lesotho has
awarded him a Distinguished Service honor, Nkumba University
in Uganda has awarded him a Doctor of Letters, and Lincoln
University in Pennsylvania, USA, has elected him an Icon of
the Twentieth Century. Morgan State University in Baltimore,
Maryland, has extended him to the DuBois-Garvey Award for
Pan-African Unity. In 1999 he gave the Eric Williams
Memorial lecture sponsored by the Central Bank of Trinidad
and Tobago. Dr. Mazrui has been elected President of the
Crescent University Foundation whose aim is to establish a
modern world-class Muslim University in the United States.
In 1998
Professor Mazrui became the Academic Associate of the
Atlantic Council at Binghamton University. In the same year
he was elected to the Board of Trustees of the Oxford Centre
for Islamic Studies, England, and to the Board of Directors
of the National Summit on Africa, Washington, D.C.. The year
1998 also marked the publication of the first comprehensive
annotated bibliography of all Mazrui’s works (written and
electronic) from 1962 to 1997 [The Mazruiana Collection,
compiled by Abdul S. Bemath, and published by Sterling in
New Delhi and Africa World Press in New Jersey]. Another
book entitled The Global African: A Portrait of Ali A.
Mazrui, edited by Omari H. Kokole, has also been published
by Africa World Press in 1998.
Dr. Mazrui's
television work includes the widely discussed 1986 series
The Africans: A Triple Heritage, jointly produced by the BBC
and the Public Broadcasting Service (WETA, Washington) in
association with the Nigerian Television Authority. A book
by the same title has been jointly published by BBC
Publications and Little, Brown and Company. In 1986 the book
was a best seller in Britain and was adopted or recommended
by various Book Clubs in the U.S.A., including the Book of
the Month Club. Dr. Mazrui has also published hundreds of
articles in five continents. |
