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SIPA Faculty
Mahmood Mamdani
Schermerhorn Hall, Room 452
Herbert Lehman Professor of Government
Phone: 212-854-4552
mahmood.mamdani@sipa.columbia.edu
mm1124@columbia.edu
Biography:
Mahmood Mamdani is from Kampala, Uganda. He received his PhD in government from Harvard University.
He is currently Herbert Lehman Professor of Government in the Department of Anthropology and Political Science and the School of International and Public Affairs at Columbia University, where he was also director of the Institute of African Studies from 1999 to 2004. He has taught at the University of Dar-es-Salaam (1973–79), Makerere University (1980–93), and University of Cape Town (1996–99) and was the founding director of Centre for Basic Research in Kampala, Uganda (1987–96).
He is the author of Good Muslim, Bad Muslim: America, the Cold War and the Origins of Terror (Pantheon 2004); When Victims Become Killers: Colonialism, Nativism and Genocide in Rwanda (Princeton 2001); Citizen and Subject: Contemporary Africa and the Legacy of Late Colonialism (Princeton 1996); and ten other books. Citizen and Subject was recognized as "one of Africa's 100 best books of the 20th century" in Cape Town in 2003 and was also awarded the Herskovitz Prize of the African Studies Association of USA for "the best book on Africa published in the English language in 1996."
Mahmood Mamdani was president of CODESRIA (Council for the Development of Social Research in Africa) from 1999 to 2002. In 2001, he was invited to present one of nine papers at the Nobel Peace Prize Centennial Symposium in Oslo. In 2004, he presented one of nine papers at the African Union–organized Global Meeting of Intellectuals from Africa and the African Diaspora in Dakar. He is a chief advisor to the UN High Level Panel on Alliance of Civilizations for 2005–06.
Research Interests: Africa, Comparative Politics