Mazrui and His Critics

Abstract

This work is a review essay of two books: Africanity Redefined: Collected
Essays of Ali A. Mazrui, edited by Ali Alamin Mazrui, Ricardo Rene
Laremont, Tracia Leacock Seghatolislami, Michael A. Toler, and Fouad
Kalouche (Africa World Press: 2002) and Governace and Leadership:
Debating the African Condition: Ali Mazrui and His Critics, edited by
Alamin M. Mazrui and Willy Mutunga (Africa World Press: 2003) These
are the first two volumes in a three-volume work dealing with the correspondence
among Ali Mazrui and his opponents, as well as his supporters,
on issues relating to Africa.
Mazrui, a Kenyan scholar, is currently Albert Schweitzer professor in
humanities and director of the Institute of Global Cultural Studies, Binghamton
University, State University of New York. An Oxford scholar, he is
also Albert Luthuli professor-at-large in humanities and development studies
at the University of Jos, Nigeria, as well as Andrew D. White professorat-
large emeritus and senior scholar in Africana studies at Cornell
University (www.islamonline.net). In addition, he has authored many publications
and television and radio documentaries. Perhaps his best-known
work in the West is his BBC radio and television documentary series “The
Africans,” which was co-produced by the BBC and the public television
station WETA.
Writing on Mazrui, Sulayman Nyang of Howard University states:
Ali Mazrui is a controversial but independent and original thinker. He is
a master word-monger and certainly does not belong to that class of men
who lament that words fail them. …It is because of his conjurer’s ability
to negotiate between the realm of serious issues and the province of ...