Mahmood Mamdani
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Mahmood Mamdani (b. 1947 in Kampala, Uganda) is the Herbert Lehman Professor of Government in the Departments of Anthropology and Political Science at Columbia University in the United States. He is also the Director of Columbia's Institute of African Studies.[1] He is the current President of the Council for Development of Social Research in Africa (CODESRIA) Dakar, Senegal.
Mamdani's reputation as an expert in African history, politics and international relations has made him an important voice in contemporary debates about Africa. His book Citizen and Subject: Contemporary Africa and the Legacy of Late Colonialism won the 1998 Herskovits Award of the African Studies Association of the USA.
In 2001, he was one of nine scholars to present at the Nobel Peace Prize Centennial Symposium.[2] The US magazine Foreign Policy named him as one of the top 100 public intellectuals in the world in May 2008.[3]
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[edit] Personal
Mamdani was born a third-generation East African of South Asian origin. [4] Upon Uganda's independence from Britain in 1962, Mamdani was offered a scholarship by the United States government. He attended the University of Pittsburgh, receiving a B.A. in 1967. he went on to get an M.A. and A.A.L.D. at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts University in 1969. Mamdani studied for his Ph.D. at Harvard, where he led graduate students in a strike to protest a tuition hike. He received his doctorate in 1974.
He returned to Uganda, only to be forced to leave the country by the dictator Idi Amin, who deported the Indians and confiscated their property. Mamdani lived as a refugee in Britain before getting a teaching job at the University of Dar es Salaam, in Tanzania.
He returned to Uganda when Amin was overthrown and Milton Obote returned to power. In the next years he did adult literacy programs and political activities among railway workers and started working at the Makerere University in Kampala.
His wife is the film director Mira Nair. They have a son, Zohran.
Besides English, he speaks French, Gujarati, Hindi, Luganda, Punjabi, Swahili, and Urdu. His lecturing experience includes the University of Dar-es-Salaam (1973-79), Makerere University (1980-93), and University of Cape Town (1996-99). Mamdani was also the founding director of Centre for Basic Research in Kampala, Uganda (1987-96).
[edit] Selected published works
- Good Muslim Bad Muslim: America, The Cold War, and the Roots of Terror. (New York: Pantheon/Random House, 2004).
- When Victims Become Killers: Colonialism, Nativism, and Genocide in Rwanda. (Princeton Univ. Press, 2001).
- When Does a Settler Become a Native? Reflections of the Colonial Roots of Citizenship in Equatorial and South Africa. Text of Inaugural Lecture as A. C. Jordan Professor of African Studies, University of Cape Town, Lecture Theatre 1, Education Building, Middle Campus, Wednesday 13 May 1998, 8.15 p.m.
- Report of the CODESRIA Mission to the Democratic Republic of Congo. September, 1997. Text of report submitted to the General Assembly of the United Nations
- Council for the Development of Social Research in Africa (CODESRIA) in Dakar, Senegal. December 14-18, 1998, page 2
- Beyond Rights Talk and Culture Talk: Comparative essays on Rights and Culture. ed. (St. Martin's Press, 2000).
- Crisis and Reconstruction -- African Perspectives: Two Lectures (with Colin Leys). (Nordiska Afrikainsinstutet, 1998).
- Citizen and Subject: Contemporary Africa and the Legacy of Late Colonialism. (Princeton University Press, 1996).
- And Fire Does not Always Beget Ash: Critical Reflections on the NRM. (1996).
- Imperialism and Fascism in Uganda. (Africa World Press, Inc., 1983).
- Politics and Class Formation in Uganda. (Monthly Review Press, 1976).
- Myth of Population Control. (Monthly Review Press, 1973)
- From Citizen to Refugee (Francis Pinter Ltd., 1973)
[edit] Selected articles
- "The Politics of Naming: Genocide, Civil War, Insurgency", in London Review of Books, Vol. 29, No. 5, 8 March 2007.
[edit] Notes and references
- ^ Mahmood Mamdani, Columbia University directory]
- ^ Nobel Peace Prize Centennial Symposium: The Conflicts of the 20th century and the Solutions for the 21st century programme
- ^ Foreign Policy: Top 100 Intellectuals
- ^ "Good Muslim, Bad Muslim: AsiaSource Interview with Mahmood Mamdani by Nermeen Shaikh, AsiaSource, May 5, 2004
[edit] External links
- When Victims Become Killers:Colonialism, Nativism, and the Genocide in Rwanda, published by Princeton University, 2001, Introductory Chapter ([1]).
- LRB article skewering the "Kristof" brigade on Darfur
