Former Chair SC – CODESRIA

Souleymane Bachir Diagne

Souleymane Bachir Diagne is a former student of the Ecole Normale Supérieure de la rue d’Ulm, agrégé and Doctor of Philosophy. After teaching philosophy at Cheikh Anta Diop University in Dakar, Senegal, and then at Northwestern University in Evanston, he is now Professor at Columbia University in New York, where he also directs the Institute of African Studies. He is the author of numerous works in the fields of the history of algebraic logic, Islamic philosophy and philosophy in Africa. His research interests lie in the history of philosophy and algebraic logic, the history of Islamic philosophy and African philosophy. At the centre of his philosophical work is the reflection on a universal of the encounter, a universal from the plural of the world. His most recent works are :

From Language to Language. L’hospitalité de la traduction, Paris, Albin Michel, 2022 ; Le fagot de ma mémoire, Paris, Philippe Rey, 2021 (prize; La controverse. Dialogue sur l’islam (with Remi Brague), Paris, Stock, 2019 ; En quête d’Afrique(s). Universalisme et pensée décoloniale (with Jean-Loup Amselle), Paris, Albin Michel, 2018 ; Comment Philosopher en islam, Paris, Philippe Rey, 2013 ; Bergson postcolonial. L’élan vital dans la pensée de Léopold Sédar Senghor et de Mohamed Iqbal. Paris, CNRS Editions, 2011.

Souleymane Bachir Diagne is an associate member of the Académie Royale de Belgique and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Chachage Seithy Loth

Takyiwaa Manuh

Mamadou Diouf

Mamadou Diouf is a Senegalese historian and specialist in colonial history and religion in Senegal. He is the Leitner Family Professor of African Studies and the Director of Columbia University’s Institute for African Studies. Before joining the faculty at Columbia University, he was the Charles D. Moody Jr. Collegiate Professor of History and African American Studies at the University of Michigan, from 2000 to 2007. Before that, he was Head of the Research, Information, and Documentation Department of the Council for the Development of Social Science Research in Africa (CODESRIA) from 1991 to 1999 and faculty member of the History Department of Cheikh Anta Diop University in Dakar, Senegal.

He is the author of several books, including: Tolerance, Democracy, and Sufis in Senegal [ed. 2013], New Perspectives on Islam in Senegal: Conversion, Migration, Wealth, and Power (with Mara A. Leichtman) [2009], La Construction de l’Etat au Sénégal (with M. C. Diop & D. Cruise O’Brien) [2002], Histoire du Sénégal: Le Modèle Islamo-Wolof et ses Périphéries [2001], Histoires et Identités dans la Caraïbe. Trajectoires Plurielles (with Ulbe Bosma) [2004]; Les Jeunes, Hantise de l’espace public dans les sociétés du sud? (with R. Collignon) [2001] ; Les figures du politique : Des pouvoirs hérités aux pouvoirs élus (with M. C. Diop) [1999] ; L’Historiographie indienne en débat. Sur le nationalisme, le colonialisme et les sociétés postcoloniales(edited) [1999] ; Academic Freedom and Social Responsibility of the Intellectuals in Africa (with Mahmood Mamdani) [1994]; Le Sénégal sous Abdou Diouf (with M.C. Diop) [1990]; La Kajoor au XIXe siècle : Pouvoir Ceddo et Conquête Coloniale [1990].

Professor Diouf is a member of the editorial board of several professional journals including the Journal of African History (Cambridge), Psychopathologie Africaine(Dakar), la vie des idées.fr (Paris), Public Culture, and a co-editor (with Peter Geschiere) of the book series, Histoires du Sud/Histories of the South published by Karthala, Paris and New National Histories in Africa published by Palgrave MacMillan.

Professor Diouf studied history at the University of Paris-Sorbonne, where he received his doctorate degree in 1982.

Pr. Mahmood Mamdani (1998-2002)

Mahmood Mamdani was born on 23 April 1946 in Bombay, India. He grew up in Uganda and acquired his B.A from the University of Pittsburgh, before going on to obtain his Masters and PhD from Harvard University in 1974. Mamdani specializes in the study of African and international politics, colonialism and post‐colonialism, and the politics of knowledge production. is an academic, author and political commentator. As a student, Mamdani joined the civil rights movement in the US and participated in marches in places like Birmingham.

Mamdani has taught at the University of Dar‐es‐Salaam (1973‐79), Makerere University (1980‐1993), and the University of Cape Town (1996‐1999). In 1972, the Amin regime revoked Mamdani’s Ugandan citizenship after he made a speech suggesting that famine in Uganda was as much man-made as a result of natural disaster. Mamdani had to leave Uganda in November 1972. From 1998 to 2002, Mamdani served as President of CODESRIA (Council for the Development of Social Research in Africa).

In 2008, in an open online poll, Mamdani was voted as the 9th topmost intellectual person in the world on the list of Top 100 Public Intellectuals by Prospect Magazine (UK) and Foreign Policy (US). In 2010, he received honorary doctorates from Addis Ababa University and the University of Johannesburg. Mamdani’s work explores politics and culture, colonialism since 1452, the history of civil war and genocide in Africa, the Cold War and the War on Terror, and the history and theory of human rights. He has published extensively and some of his works include:

Uganda Studies in Labour, Scholars in the Marketplace,
Academic Freedom in Africa,
When Victims Become Killers,
Good Muslim, Bad Muslim,
Saviors and Survivors: Darfur, Politics, and the War on Terror
His latest book, Neither Settler Nor Native: The Making and Unmaking of Permanent Minorities, Harvard, 2020, was shortlisted for the British Academy Book Prize for Global Cultural Understanding, 2021, and as “World History Finalist” by Association of American Publishers Awards for Professional and Scholarly Excellence (PROSE Awards)

Mamdani is the 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 was also Professor and Director of the Makerere Institute of Social Research at Makerere University (2010-2022) in Kampala, Uganda where he established an inter-disciplinary doctoral programme in Social Studies.