Mahmood Mamdani

Mahmood Mamdani is the Herbert Lehman Professor of Government

at the Department of Anthropology at Columbia University. 

He is also the Director of the Institute of African Studies

at SIPA.

Mahmood Mamdani's reputation as an expert in African history,

politics and international relations has made him an important voice

in contemporary debates about the changing role of Africa in a

global context.  His book Citizen and Subject: Contemporary Africa

and the Legacy of Late Colonialism (Princeton University Press,

1996) has been hailed as one of the

best scholarly works on Africa published in English, and won the

prestigious Herskovits Award of the African Studies Association of

the USA (1998).  Other books include When Victims Become Killers:

Colonialism, Nativism, and the Genocide in Rwanda (Princeton

University Press, 2002), Beyond Rights Talk and

Culture Talk: Comparative Essays on the Politics of

Rights and Culture (editor, Palgrave Macmillan,

November 2000), Crises and Reconstruction -

African Perspectives: Two Lectures (with Colin

Leys, Nordiska Afrikainstitutet, December 1998), Imperialism and Fascism in Uganda

(Africa

World Press Inc., 1983), and many others.

Recent works include "Iraq: Collective Punishment

in War and Peace," in Irwin Abrams and Wang Gungwu,

eds., The Iraq War and Its Consequences:

Thoughts of Nobel Peace Laureates and Eminent

Scholars (World Scienti.c, 2004); and When

Victims Become Killers: Colonialism, Nativism, and

the Genocide in Rwanda (Princeton University

Press, 2002). He is also author of the Good

Muslim, Bad Muslim: America, the Cold War, and the

Roots of Terror (2004).

Professor Mamdani holds a BA from the

University of Pittsburgh (1967).  He received an MA

and MALD from Tufts University Fletcher School of Law and

Diplomacy in 1969, and in 1974 he received his PhD

from Harvard University.  His other academic

appointments include A.C. Jordan Professor of African Studies and

Director for the Center for African Studies at the University of

Cape Town (South Africa).  He has taught at the University of Dar-es-Salaam (Tanzania) and Makerere University (Uganda). 

He is the

founding Director of the Centre for Basic Research in Kampala,

Uganda, and is the current President (1999-2002) of the Council for

the Development of Social Research in Africa (CODESRIA), Africa's

social science body based in Senegal.  Mr. Mamdani's current work

focuses on internal conflict and civil war in Africa, with

particular attention given to the political and social restructuring

which such conflict elicits.