Mahmood Mamdani

Mahmood Mamdani
20th Director of Makerere Institute of Social Research
Incumbent
Assumed office June 2010
Preceded by	Nakanyike Musisi
Director of the Institute of African Studies, Columbia University
In office 1999–2004
Preceded by	George Bond
Succeeded by	Mamadou Diouf
Director of the Centre for African Studies, University of Cape Town
In office 1996–1999
Personal details
Born	(1946-04-23) 23 April 1946 Mumbai, British India
Nationality	Ugandan
Spouse(s)	Mira Nair (m. 1991)
Children	1
Residence	Kampala, Uganda New York, United States
Alma mater	University of Pittsburgh (BA) Fletcher School (MA), (MALD) Harvard University (PhD)
Religion	Islam
Professorships	UDSM (1973–79) Makerere (1980–93) UCT (1996–99)
Notable work(s)	Citizen and Subject
Notable Awards	Herskovits Prize (1997) Lenfest Award (2011)

Professor Mahmood Mamdani (born 23 April 1946) is a Ugandan academic, author and political commentator. He is the Director of the Makerere Institute of Social Research (MISR),^[1] the Herbert Lehman Professor of Government at the School of International and Public Affairs^[2] and the Professor of Anthropology, Political Science and African Studies at Columbia University.^[3]

Early life and education

Mamdani is a third generation Ugandan of Indian ancestry. He was born in Mumbai and grew up in Kampala. Both his parents were born in the neighbouring Tanganyika Territory (present day Tanzania). He was educated at the Government Primary School in Dar es Salaam, Government Primary School in Masaka, K.S.I. Primary School in Kampala, Shimoni and Nakivubo Government Primary Schools in Kampala and at Old Kampala Senior Secondary School.^[4]

He received a scholarship along with 26 other Ugandan students to study in the United States. The scholarships were part of the independence gift that the new nation had received.^[5] Mamdani joined the University of Pittsburgh in 1963 and graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in political science in 1967.

He was among the many northern students who made the bus journey south to Birmingham, Alabama organised by the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) to participate in the civil rights movement. He was jailed during the march and was allowed to make a phone call. Mamdani called the Ugandan Ambassador in Washington, D.C for assistance. The ambassador asked him why he was 'interfering in the internal affairs of a foreign country' to which he responded by saying that this was not an internal affair but a freedom struggle and that they too had got their freedom only last year.^[6]

He then joined The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy and graduated in 1968 with a Master of Arts in political science and Master of Arts in Law and Diplomacy in 1969. He attained his PhD in government from Harvard University in 1974. His thesis was titled Politics and Class Formation in Uganda.

Career

Mamdani returned to Uganda in early 1972 and joined Makerere University as a teaching assistant at the same time conducting his doctoral research; only to be expelled later that year by Idi Amin due to his ethnicity. He left Uganda for a refugee camp in the United Kingdom in early November just as the three-month deadline was approaching for people of Asian heritage to leave the country.

He left England in mid-1973 after being recruited to the University of Dar es Salaam in Tanzania.^[6] In Dar es Salaam, he completed writing his thesis and was active with anti-Amin groups. In 1979, he attended the Moshi Conference as an observer and returned to Uganda after Amin was overthrown following the Uganda–Tanzania War^[7] as a Frontier Interne of the World Council of Churches. He was posted with the Church of Uganda offices in Mengo and was assigned to research the former regime's foreign relations. His report was published as a book: Imperialism and Fascism in Uganda.

In 1984, while attending a conference in Dakar, Senegal he became stateless after his citizenship was withdrawn by the government under Milton Obote due to his criticism of its policies.^[8] He returned to Dar es Salaam and was a visiting professor at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor for the spring semester in 1986. After Obote was deposed for the second time, Mamdani once again returned to Uganda in June 1986.^[5] He was the founding director of the Centre for Basic Research (CBR), Uganda's first research non-governmental organisation from 1987 to 2006.^[4]

He was also a visiting professor at the University of Durban-Westville (January to June in 1993), at the Nehru Memorial Museum & Library in New Delhi (January to June in 1995) and at Princeton University (1995–96).

In 1996, he was appointed as the inaugural holder of the AC Jordan chair of African studies at the University of Cape Town.^[9] He left after having disagreements with the administration on his draft syllabus of a foundation course on Africa called 'Problematizing Africa'.^[10] This was dubbed as the Mamdani Affair. From 1998 to 2002 he served as President of Council for the Development of Social Science Research in Africa (CODESRIA). In December 2001, he gave a speech on Making Sense of Violence in Postcolonial Africa at the Nobel Centennial Symposia in Oslo, Norway.^[11]

Mamdani specialises in the study of African and international politics, colonialism and post‐colonialism, and the politics of knowledge production. His works explore the intersection between politics and culture, a comparative study of colonialism since 1452, the history of civil war and genocide in Africa, the Cold War and the War on Terror, and the history and theory of human rights.^[12]

In 2008, in an open online poll, Mamdani was voted as the 9th "top public intellectual" in the world on the list of Top 100 Public Intellectuals by Prospect Magazine (UK) and Foreign Policy (US).^[13] His essays have appeared in the London Review of Books, among other journals.

Personal life

He is married to Mira Nair, the Indian film director and producer. They met in Kampala, Uganda in 1989 when Nair was researching for her film, the Mississippi Masala.^[5] She had read his book The Myth of population Control whilst an undergrad at university and From Citizen to Refugee just before their meeting. They married in 1991 and have a son.

Honours and awards

Awards

• 1997: Herskovits Prize for Citizen and Subject: Contemporary Africa and the Legacy of Colonialism
• 1999: University of Cape Town Book Award for Citizen and Subject: Contemporary Africa and the Legacy of Colonialism^[14]
• 2009: GDS Eminent Scholar Award from the International Studies Association
• 2011: Lenfest Distinguished Faculty Award^[15]
• 2012: Scholar of the Year at the 2nd Annual African Diaspora Awards for his immense contribution to African Scholarship^[16]
• 2012: Ugandan Diaspora Award 2012^[4]

Honorary degrees

• University of Johannesburg, DLitt (Honoris Causa), 25 May 2010^[17][18]
• Addis Ababa University, Doctor of Letters (Honoris Causa), 24 July 2010^[19]
• University of KwaZulu-Natal, DLitt (Honoris Causa), April 2012^[20][21]

Works

• Uganda Studies in Labour (Codesria Book Series)
• Scholars in the Marketplace. The Dilemmas of Neo-Liberal Reform at Makerere University, 1989–2005
• From Citizen to Refugee: Uganda Asians Come to Britain
• Academic Freedom in Africa
• Imperialism and Fascism in Uganda
• Studies in Labor Markets (National Bureau of Economic Research Universities-National Bureau Conference Ser)
• Politics and Class Formation in Uganda'
• African Studies in Social Movements and Democracy (Actes-Sud Papiers)
• Beyond Rights Talk and Culture Talk: Comparative Essays on the Politics of Rights and Culture
• The Myth of Population Control: Family, Caste and Class in an indian Village
• Citizen and Subject: Contemporary Africa and the Legacy of Late Colonialism
• When Victims Become Killers
• Good Muslim, Bad Muslim: America, the Cold War, and the Roots of Terror
• Saviors and Survivors: Darfur, Politics, and the War on Terror

References

External links

• Mahmood Mamdani on Twitter

Authority control WorldCat VIAF: 34581220 LCCN: n84021809 ISNI: 0000 0001 2127 4666 GND: 130812846 BNF: cb12690344s (data) NDL: 00448646