Professor Mahmood Mamdani is Herbert Lehman Professor of Government. From 2010–2022 he served as Executive Director of the Makerere Institute of Social Research in Kampala, where he established an inter-disciplinary doctoral programme in social studies. Having received a doctorate from Harvard University in 1974, he has specialised in the study of colonialism, anticolonialism and decolonisation. His works explore the intersection between politics and culture, a comparative study of colonialism since 1452, the history of civil war and genocide in Africa, the Cold War and the War on Terror, the history and theory of human rights, and the politics of knowledge production. Prior to joining the Columbia faculty, Mamdani was a professor at the University of Dar-es-Salaam in Tanzania (1973–1979), Makerere University in Uganda (1980–1993), and the University of Cape Town (UCT) (1996–1999).
Mamdani has received numerous awards and recognitions, including being listed, in 2008, as one of the “Top 20 Public Intellectuals” by magazines such as Foreign Policy (in the United States [US]) and Prospect (in the United Kingdom [UK]). In 2021, he was nominated as being among “The World's Top 50 Thinkers”, by Prospect Magazine.
His latest work, Neither settler nor native: The making and unmaking of permanent minorities (Harvard University Press, 2020), was shortlisted for the British Academy Book Prize for Global Cultural Understanding (2021), and as “World History Finalist” by the Association of American Publishers Awards for Professional and Scholarly Excellence (Prose Awards).
From 1998–2002, he served as President of Codesria (Council for the Development of Social Research in Africa). His essays have appeared in the New Left Review and the London Review of Books, among other journals.
He teaches courses on Major Debates in the Study of Africa; the Modern State and the Colonial Subject; the Cold War and the Third World; the Theory, History and Practice of Human Rights; and Civil Wars and the State in Africa.
Mamdani's books include Saviors and survivors: Darfur, politics, and the war on terror (2009); Good Muslim, bad Muslim: America, the Cold War and the roots of terror (2004); When victims become killers: Colonialism, nativism and genocide in Rwanda (2001); Citizen and subject: Contemporary Africa and the legacy of late colonialism (1996) (awarded the Herskovits-Prize of the African Studies Association); Politics and class formation in Uganda (1976); From citizen to refugee (1973); and The myth of population control: Family, class and caste in an Indian village (1972).
