political scientist; scholar; writer
Personal Information
Born Ali Al'Amin Mazrui, February 24, 1933, in Mombasa, Kenya; son of Al'Amin Ali (a judge of Islamic law) and Safia (Suleiman) Mazrui; married Molly Vickerman (a teacher), 1962 (divorced 1982); children: Jamal, Al'Amin, Kim Abubakar (all sons); married Pauline Uti, 1991; children: Farid Chinedu, Harith Ekenechukwu (both sons).
Education: University of Manchester (England), B.A., 1960; Columbia University, M.A., 1961; Oxford University, D. Phil., 1966.
Religion: Muslim.
Memberships: International Political Science Association (member of exeutive committee, 1967-76, vice-president, 1970-73); African Studies Association (president, 1978-79); International Congress on African Studies; International African Institute; Pan-African Advisory Council to UNICEF; Athenaeum Club (London); United Kenya Club.
Career
British Broadcasting Corp., associate political analyst, 1962-65, Reith Lecturer, 1979; Makerere University, Kampala, Uganda, lecturer, 1963-65, professor and head of political science department, 1965-69, dean of Faculty of Social Sciences, 1967-73; Radio Uganda, political analyst, 1964-65; Radio Tanzania, special correspondent, 1964-65; University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, professor of political science, 1974-91, director of the Center for Afroamerican and African Studies, 1978-81; Cornell University, Andrew D. White Professor-at-Large, 1986-92, Professor-at-Large Emeritus and Senior Scholar, 1992-; University of Jos, Nigeria, professor of political science, 1981-86, Albert Luthuli Professor- at-Large, 1991-; wrote and hosted television series, "The Africans: A Triple Heritage," 1986; State University of New York, Binghamton, Albert Schweitzer Professor in the Humanities, 1989-, director of Institute of Global Cultural Studies, 1991-; visiting professor and research scholar at numerous universities, including University of Chicago, Northwestern University, Harvard University, and Oxford University, 1965-; guest lecturer, commentator, and advisor on African issues for many publications, broadcasts, and organizations.
Life's Work
Ali Mazrui is one of the world's most prolific and controversial writers on Africa. The author of more than 20 books and hundreds of essays, Mazrui has profoundly influenced ideas about Africa among scholars and members of the general public alike. Although his views do not always sit well with American audiences, Mazrui's powerful writing style has made it impossible for even his harshest critics to ignore the unique perspective he brings to a huge variety of African issues. His soft-spoken charm and eloquence as a lecturer have also made him a favorite among students at every university he has served.
Mazrui was born on February 24, 1933, in Mombasa, Kenya. An old and prominent Muslim clan, the Mazruis had ruled the city-state of Mombasa during the 18th century. Mazrui's father, Al'Amin Ali Mazrui, was Chief Kadhi of Kenya, the country's top judge of Islamic law. As the son of an eminent Muslim scholar, Mazrui was expected to follow in his father's footsteps. British colonialism changed the direction of his education, however, and after attending local schools as a child, Mazrui continued his studies in England. He graduated from the University of Manchester in 1960.
After receiving his B.A. from Manchester, Mazrui received a Rockefeller Foundation fellowship to attend Columbia University in New York, where he received his M.A. in 1961. From there, he returned to England to begin working on his doctorate at Oxford University. In 1962 he took a job as a political analyst for the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC). He also married a teacher named Molly Vickerman that same year. Mazrui moved back to Africa in 1963, but continued working for the BBC on a part-time basis until 1965.
In 1963 Mazrui moved to Kampala, Uganda to teach political science at Makerere University. In addition to his work for the BBC, he did some writing and broadcasting for Radio Uganda and Radio Tanzania over the next couple of years. In 1965 Mazrui was named head of Makerere's political science department. After completing his doctorate at Oxford the following year, he also began taking on visiting professor assignments at overseas universities, including stints in the United States at the University of Chicago, Northwestern University, UCLA, and Harvard University.
Mazrui's first three books were all published in 1967. One of them, Towards a Pax Africana, was a published version of his Oxford dissertation. The Pan-African, anti-colonialist views expressed by that book became ongoing themes in Mazrui's writings over the years. The other two books were The Anglo-African Commonwealth and On Heroes and Uhuru-Worship. The simultaneous publication of those three influential books made Mazrui a rising star among African scholars, and he was chosen as dean of the Faculty of Social Sciences at Makerere soon thereafter. He was also elected to various offices in the International Political Science Association, the International Congress of Africanists, and the International Sociology Association during the period that followed.
Throughout the remainder of the 1960s, Mazrui's reputation as one of Africa's leading scholars continued to grow. In 1971, a military coup brought Idi Amin to power in Uganda. For a while, Mazrui was one of Amin's favorite intellectuals. Within a year, however, the notoriously unpredictable dictator had changed his opinion, and Mazrui prudently opted to leave the country. In spite of this turmoil, Mazrui remained very productive during this period, publishing three books between 1970 and 1972, including his only novel, The Trial of Christopher Okigbo. The Trial of Christopher Okigbo, published in 1971, is a utopian tale taking place in heaven that addresses the question of the artist's role in politics.
In 1973 Mazrui accepted a position at the University of Michigan. He remained there for the next 18 years, serving as director of the university's Center for Afroamerican and African Studies from 1978 to 1981. At Michigan, Mazrui solidified his position as one of the most important writers on African politics in the world. He continued to write prolifically, and in 1979 he was selected to give the prestigious Reith Lectures, delivered annually in England over the BBC. The lectures were subsequently published in book form as The African Condition.
Mazrui became a well-known figure outside of academia in 1986, when he wrote and hosted the nine-part television series The Africans: A Triple Heritage, broadcast in England on the BBC and in the United States on PBS. The show's subtitle refers to the three legacies-- Islamic, indigenous, and Western--that have been most apparent in the formation of modern African identity. The controversy that surrounded the series brought Mazrui a degree of fame far beyond what his appearance on the screen could have accomplished alone. Conservatives, led by National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) chairperson Lynne Cheney, condemned the series for what they perceived as an anti-Western bias. Among their complaints were that Mazrui spoke favorably of Libyan leader Moammar Qaddafi. The NEH went so far as to demand that its name be removed from the show's credits.
In reality, colonialization and the West shared the blame for Africa's ills with a number of other culprits in Mazrui's analysis. Rather than presenting an unbalanced view of African issues, Mazrui insisted that part of the intent of The Africans was to restore balance to the overwhelmingly pro-Western coverage of African matters generally seen in America, by presenting a purely African perspective. In spite of the wrath it incurred, the series was widely acclaimed in many other circles, and the accompanying book of the same title was a best-seller in England.
The criticism that Mazrui received from conservatives as a result of The Africans did not hurt is career a bit. While the controversy was still raging, Mazrui was named Andrew D. White Professor-at- Large at Cornell University. In 1989 he was lured away from Michigan by the State University of New York, Binghamton, after receiving a call from New York Governor Mario Cuomo. Having divorced his first wife in 1982, after 20 years of marriage, Mazrui married Pauline Uti, a teacher from Nigeria, in 1991. That year, he was named director of Binghamton's Institute of Global Cultural Studies. During his time at Binghamton, Mazrui has continued to serve in an advisory capacity on numerous issues to numerous organizations, including the United Nations, and has served on the editorial boards of several academic journals.
In his writing, Mazrui has frequently referred to his own background--a combination of Islamic law, Kenyan culture, and a Western education--as a reflection of the triple heritage that has shaped modern Africa. Like the range of influences that produced his thinking, the range of subject areas that Mazrui has chosen to study over the course of his career is also extremely broad. In fact, some critics believe that Mazrui writes about so many different topics that none of them ever receive the thorough treatment that they deserve. That criticism does not bother Mazrui. His role, as he sees it, is to provoke debate. There is no doubt that he has succeeded in achieving that goal.
Awards
National Unity Book prize, Northwestern University, 1969; Distinguished Faculty Achievement Award, Universtiy of Michigan.
Works
Writings
Further Reading
Monograph
— Robert R. Jacobson
Ali Al'amin Mazrui (born February 24, 1933 in Mombasa, Kenya) is an academic and political writer on African and Islamic studies and North-South relations. He is an Albert Schweitzer Professor in the Humanities and the Director of the Institute of Global Cultural Studies at Binghamton University in Binghamton, New York.
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Mazrui studied at schools in Mombasa, in Kenya. Mazrui obtained his B.A. with Distinction from Manchester University in Great Britain in 1960, his M.A. from Columbia University in New York in 1961, and his doctorate (DPhil) from Oxford University (Nuffield College) in 1966.
Upon completing his education at Oxford University, Mazrui joined Makerere University (Kampala, Uganda), where he served as head of the Department of Political Science and Dean of the Faculty of Social Sciences. He served at Makerere University until 1973, when he was forced into exile by Idi Amin. In 1974, he joined the faculty of the University of Michigan as professor and later was appointed the Director of the Center for Afroamerican and African Studies (1978–1981). In 1989, he was appointed to the faculty of Binghamton University, State University of New York as the Albert Schweitzer Professor in the Humanities and the Director of the Institute of Global Cultural Studies (IGCS).
In addition to his appointments as the Albert Schweitzer Professor in the Humanities, Professor in Political Science, African Studies, Philosophy, Interpretation and Culture and the Director of the Institute of Global Cultural Studies (IGCS), Mazrui also holds three concurrent faculty appointments as Albert Luthuli Professor-at-Large in the Humanities and Development Studies at the University of Jos in Nigeria, Andrew D. White Professor-at-Large Emeritus and Senior Scholar in Africana Studies at Cornell University, Ithaca, New York and Chancellor of the Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology, Nairobi, Kenya. In 1999, Mazrui retired as the inaugural Walter Rodney Professor at the University of Guyana, Georgetown, Guyana. Mazrui has also been a Visiting Scholar at Stanford University, The University of Chicago, Colgate University, McGill University, National University of Singapore, Oxford University, Harvard University, Bridgewater State College, Ohio State University, and at other institutions in Cairo, Australia, Leeds, Nairobi, Teheran, Denver, London, Baghdad, and Sussex, amongst others.
In 2005, Ali Mazrui was selected as the 73rd topmost intellectual person in the world on the list of Top 100 Public Intellectuals by Prospect Magazine (UK) and Foreign Policy (United States).[1]
In addition to his academic appointments, Mazrui has also served as President of the African Studies Association (USA) and as Vice-President of the International Political Science Association and has also served as Special Advisor to the World Bank. He has also served on the Board of the American Muslim Council, Washington, D.C.
Mazrui's research interests include African politics, international political culture, political Islam and North-South relations. He is author or co-author of more than twenty books. Mazrui has also published hundreds of articles in major scholastic journals and for public media. He has also served on the editorial boards of more than twenty international scholarly journals.Mazrui is widely consulted by heads of states and governments, international media and research institutions for political strategies and alternative thoughts.
He first rose to prominence as a critic of some of the accepted orthodoxies of African intellectuals in the 1960s and 1970s. He was critical of to African socialism and all strains of Marxism. He argued that communism was a Western import just as unsuited for the African condition as the earlier colonial attempts to install European type governments. He argued that a revised liberalism could help the continent and described himself as a proponent of a unique ideology of African liberalism.
At the same time he was a prominent critic of the current world order. He believed the current capitalist system was deeply exploitative of Africa, and that the West rarely if ever lived up to their liberal ideals. He has opposed Western interventions in the developing world, such as the Iraq War. He has also long been anti Israel, being one of the first to try to link the treatment of Palestinians with South Africa's apartheid.
Mazrui was criticized for being an 'Anti-Semite,' spewing hate and crude 'genetic' racism upon the Jewish people and for supremacy of Arabs and generalization of all Jews VS all Arabs.[2][3]
Especially in recent years, Mazrui has also become a well known commentator on Islam and Islamism. While rejecting violence and terrorism Mazrui has praised some of the anti-imperialist sentiment that plays an important role in modern Islamic fundamentalism. He has also argued that sharia law is not incompatible with democracy.
In addition to his written work, Dr. Mazrui was also the creator of the television series The Africans: A Triple Heritage, which was 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 was jointly published by BBC Publications and Little, Brown and Company.
Mazrui is a regular contributor to newspapers in Kenya, Uganda, and South Africa, most notably The Nation (Nairobi), The Standard (Nairobi), The Monitor (Kampala), and The City Press (Johannesburg).
Dr. Mazrui is ranked among the world's top 100 public intellectuals by readers of Prospect Magazine (UK) Foreign Policy Magazine (Washington, D.C.) (see The 2005 Global Intellectuals Poll).
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