Ali Al'amin Mazrui (24 February 1933 – 12 October 2014), was a Kenyan-born American academic, professor, and political writer on African and Islamic studies, and North-South relations. He was born in Mombasa, Kenya. His positions included Director of the Institute of Global Cultural Studies at Binghamton University in Binghamton, New York, and Director of the Center for Afro-American and African Studies at the University of Michigan. He produced the 1980s television documentary series The Africans: A Triple Heritage.
Mazrui was born on 24 February 1933 in Mombasa, Kenya Colony. He was the son of Al-Amin Bin Ali Mazrui, the Chief Islamic Judge (Qadi) in Kadhi courts of Kenya Colony. His father was also a scholar and author, and one of his books has been translated into English by Hamza Yusuf as The Content of Character (2004), to which Ali supplied a foreword. The Mazrui family was a historically wealthy and important family in Kenya, having previously been the rulers of Mombasa. Ali's father was the Chief Qadi of Kenya, the highest authority on Islamic law. Mazrui credited his father for instilling in him the urge for intellectual debate, as his father not only participated in court proceedings but also was a renowned pamphleteer and public debater. Mazrui would, from a young age, accompany his father to court and listen in on his political and moral debates. Mazrui initially intended to follow the path of his father as an Islamist and pursue his study in Al-Azhar University in Egypt. Due to poor performance in the Cambridge School Certificate examination in 1949, Mazrui was refused entry to Makerere College (now Makerere University), the only tertiary education institute in East Africa at that time. He then worked in the Mombasa Institute of Muslim Education (now Technical University of Mombasa).
Mazrui attended primary school in Mombasa, where he recalled having learned English specifically to participate in formal debates, before he turned the talent to writing. Journalism, according to Mazrui, was the first step he took down the academic road. In addition to English, Mazrui also spoke Swahili and Arabic. After getting a Kenyan Government scholarship, Mazrui furthered his study and obtained his B.A. degree with Distinction from Manchester University in Great Britain in 1960, his M.A. from Columbia University in New York in 1961, and his doctorate (DPhil) from Oxford University (Nuffield College) in 1966. He was influenced by Kwame Nkrumah's ideas of pan-Africanism and consciencism, which formed the backbone of his discussion on "Africa's triple heritage" (Africanity, Islam and Christianity).
Mazrui began his academic career at Makerere University in Uganda, where he had dreamed of attending since he was a child. At Makerere, Mazrui served as a professor of political science, and began drawing his international acclaim. Mazrui felt that his years at Makerere were some of the most important and productive of his life. He told his biographer that 1967, when he published three books, was the year that he had made his declaration to the academic world "that I planned to be prolific – for better or for worse!" During his time at Makerere, Mazrui also directed the World Order Models Project in the Department of Political Science, a project which brought together political scientists from across the world to discuss what an international route to lasting peace might be.
Mazrui reflected that he felt forced to leave the University of Makerere. His departure was likely the result of his desire to remain a neutral academic in the face of pressures to attach his growing prestige as a political thinker to one of the regional factions.
His first solicitation was from John Okello, the leader of the Zanzibar Revolution, who came to Mazrui's house in 1968 to urge Mazrui to join his cause. Okello originally tried to convince Mazrui to become an advisor to him and then simply tried to enlist Mazrui's assistance in writing a constitution for Zanzibar. Mazrui told Okello that, while he was inclined to sympathize with the cause, it would be a violation of the moral duty of a professor and an academic to join with a political agenda. This incident shows the level of international prestige that Mazrui had already accumulated. Okello had sought him out specifically because he knew and valued Ali's reputation as an anti-imperialist intellectual.
Mazrui was later approached by Idi Amin who was the president of Uganda at the end of Mazrui's time at Makerere. Amin, according to Mazrui, wanted Mazrui to become his special adviser. Mazrui declined this invitation, for fear that it would be unsafe, and by doing so lost his political standing in Uganda. This would be what Mazrui ultimately felt forced him to leave the University of Makerere. Mazrui often said that he would like to return to Uganda, but cited his strained relationship with the Ugandan government, as well as the unfriendliness of the Ugandan people towards a Kenyan political scientist as the factors keeping him away.
In 1974, Mazrui was hired as a professor of political science at the University of Michigan. During his time at Michigan, Mazrui also held a professorship at the University of Jos in Nigeria. He held that spending time teaching and being part of the discourse in Africa was important to not losing his understanding of the African perspective.
From 1978 until 1981 Mazrui served as the Director of the Center for Afro-American and African Studies (CAAS) at the University of Michigan. While he had a relatively quiet tenure in the chair, his presence there was important for a couple reasons. First, it was a central view of Mazrui's that the African American and the African connection had to be strengthened. He believed the way to better Africa was to educate African Americans in global politics and to strengthen their connection with Africa, all things that could be under the purview of CAAS. However he also seemed to doubt the ability of a program like CAAS to accomplish anything. During his earlier years at University of Michigan he criticized such programs saying that, in response to black activism, "some universities just established a black-studies program with a kind of political cynicism which I found rather difficult to admire, to say the very least."
Mazrui taught at the University of Michigan until 1989, when he took a two-year leave of absence to accept the Albert Schweitzer professorship at SUNY Binghamton. Mazrui's departure from University of Michigan was no less eventful than his departure from Makerere. Mazrui announced his resignation from the University of Michigan on 29 May 1991. Leading up to this point, there had been a highly publicized bidding war between University of Michigan and SUNY. Reportedly, SUNY offered Mazrui a $500,000 package which included a $105,000 salary (as compared to his $71,500 salary at University of Michigan) as well as the funds for three professors of Mazrui's choosing, three graduate assistants, a secretary, and travel expenses. The University of Michigan reportedly matched this offer, but Mazrui decided it was too little too late. He stated that he was unconvinced by University of Michigan's commitment to the study of political science in the third world. Both governor Mario Cuomo from New York and Governor James Blanchard from Michigan gave Mazrui personal calls to convince him to choose the university in their states. The whole affair sparked questions about the commodification as well as the celebrity of university professors.
His departure also caused a conversation about racial diversity at the University of Michigan; a conversation he had not been a huge part of for the fifteen years while he was on the University of Michigan campus. In spite of the University of Michigan's efforts to retain Ali Mazrui, James Duderstadt, the president of the university at the time, came under heavy fire for not being proactive enough in the retention of an esteemed Black professor. Mazrui had been hired in 1974, while the university was under heavy criticism, especially from the second Black Action Movement, for not keeping its promises for diversity in the student body and among the faculty. In contrast, Duderstadt argued that, by 1989, the university was doing a much better job of diversifying. They had added 45 minority faculty that year, 13 more than the year before and the College of Literature, Science and the Arts had seen "skyrocketing minority recruitment." Even still there was a worry that the university was focusing only on recruiting minorities, and not on making them stick around.