The Global African: A portrait of Ali A. Mazuri

The assembling of this anthology on the varied, wide-ranging works of Ali A. Mazuri (hereafter, Mazruiana) was primarily inspired by the opportune convergence of two interrelated factors. First, the early 1990s represented the thirtieth anniversary of Ali Mazurui's debut into academia;, he was first appointed by Makerere University in Uganda to a full-time teaching position in Africana studies in 1963. Then in February, 1993, Mazrui at last attained the mature, ripe age of sixty. This second reason brought some of Ali's students, friends, and peers together to mark the occasion. But even more importantly, we chose to use the event as an opportunity to critically assess the meaning and implications of Ali's cornucopia of academic work. We also wanted him to respond to his critics in person; evaluations after Ali's lifetime would be unlikely to benefit from such a response. Accordingly, Professor Hussein M. Adam of the College of the Holy Cross, Woprcester, Massachusetts, and I am supported by the indefatigable and unflappable Professor Parviz Morewedge at Binghamton University, organized and co-ordinated four scholarly panels that met at the November 1992 annual meeting of the African Studies Association -ASA)in Seattle, Washington, to focus on Mazruiana. Mazrui attended all four panels in person. He was given the chance to respond to his critics at the end of each session. All four events represented a mixture of celebration and candid - some - times very lively, even heated - dialogue and exchange. I am deeply thankful for the immense help and support I got from Adam, Morewedge, and, of course, Mazrui himself, which has culminated in this book. The drafts of many of the essays in this collection were initially presented at the Seattle ASA meetings in 1992. This volume comprises expanded, refined, and edited versions of the Seattle drafts, in addition to articles written after the conference.