Ali Mazrui is Africa's most prolific Muslim author writing in the English language. In 1965 he became the first Muslim to be appointed a full professor at any university in Eastern, Central and Southern Africa. In 1966 he became the first Muslim Dean in the history of East Africa's higher education.

          In 1986 he was appointed the first Black Andrew D. White Professor-at-Large at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York. In 1989 he became the first Black Muslim scholar to be appointed Albert Schweitzer Professor in the Humanities within the state of New York. He helped to create and direct an Institute of Global Cultural Studies at Binghamton University.

          Mazrui's career has included serving as President of the African Studies Association of the United States, President of the Association of Muslim Social Scientists of North America, Chairman of the Center for the Study of Islam and Democracy in Washington, DC, Vice-President of the International Political Science Association in Paris, France, and other leadership roles in the social sciences and Islamic studies. He also served as Ibn Khaldun Professor-at-Large in the experimental Graduate School of Islamic Studies and Social Sciences, Leesburg, Virginia, and Professor at the University of Jos, Nigeria.

          Ali Mazrui's American career technically began as a graduate student at Columbia University in the 1960s. This phase was followed by his years at the University of Oxford for his doctorate, and his ten years at Makerere University in Uganda as a lecturer and professor.

          He returned to the United States when the political situation in Uganda deteriorated under the dictatorship of General Idi Amin Dada. He spent two years in California at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Palo Alto, and at the Hoover Institution on War, Revolution and Peace at Stanford University.

          Ali Mazrui then moved to the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, as a Professor of Political Science, and Director of Afro-American and African Studies. He was at Michigan for about fifteen years. He won the Distinguished Professorship award. He moved to SUNY, Binghamton, in 1989.

          More recently Ali Mazrui served for six years as Chancellor of Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology in Kenya, and Senior Fellow of Prince Alwaleed bin Talal Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding at Georgetown University, Washington, DC.

          In 2006 Mazrui was nominated by Foreign Policy magazine as one of the top 100 public intellectuals alive in the world. This nomination was supported by Prospectus magazine in London at the same time. An American University in Pennsylvania had earlier nominated Mazrui as "an Icon of the 20th century."

          Since the 1990s Ali Mazrui has served as a member of the Board of Trustees of the Oxford Centre for Islamic Studies, Oxford, United Kingdom.

          He has also served on the Board of Advisors at Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts, regarding the Prince Alwaleed Professorships at Harvard. 

• A Conversation with Prof. Ali Mazrui: A video about his views on issues affecting East Africa
• Library of Congress video: Conversation with African Poet and Writer Ali Mazrui

IIIT and ASA Collaborate on "The Study of Islam at African Universities"

November 29, 2012

Under the auspices of the 55th annual meeting of the African Studies Association (ASA), IIIT -in collaboration with the Institute of Global Cultural Studies at Binghamton University- has initiated two panels on "The Study of Islam at African Universities." The ASA annual meeting takes place in Philadelphia from November 29 to December 1, 2012. The panelists are ... More...