Mahmood Mamdani and PhD Supervision Issue

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Adeshina Afolayan

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Jun 21, 2020, 10:14:09 AM6/21/20
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The High court in Kampala has ordered Prof Mahmood Mamdani and Makerere Institute of Social Research (MISR) to refrain from the administration, supervision, and examination of Yusuf Serunkuma’s doctoral thesis.

Serunkuma who was in his final stages of completing his PhD dissertation fell out with Mamdani, the institute director over the administration and supervision of his PhD work in 2016.

https://observer.ug/news/headlines/65247-court-orders-prof-mamdani-off-observer-columnist-doctoral-thesis



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Harrow, Kenneth

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Jun 21, 2020, 12:03:43 PM6/21/20
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this is quite a story.
until i hear mamdani's side, i am not going to accept this account. on the surface it looks like a student who is refusing a prof's requests for changes in a dissertation. no place for a court to intervene, and i know mamdani, a really brilliant scholar.
does anyone know about the politics of this?
ken

kenneth harrow

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From: 'Adeshina Afolayan' via USA Africa Dialogue Series <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>
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Subject: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Mahmood Mamdani and PhD Supervision Issue
 
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Chambi Chachage

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Jun 22, 2020, 7:29:45 AM6/22/20
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Harrow, Kenneth

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Jun 22, 2020, 9:16:24 AM6/22/20
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chambi, that's  lot of homework!
i started the first piece you cited, and it seems, as you're saying, a large controversy is at stake.
k

kenneth harrow

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Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Mahmood Mamdani and PhD Supervision Issue
 

Amatoritsero Ede

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Jun 22, 2020, 7:20:14 PM6/22/20
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Dear Ken,

I usually keep quiet here. But.....MISR is a snakepit. I worked there briefly in 2017. I was also treated brutally. No need for details. Mamdani is messing up his otherwise stellar scholarly reputation by behaving like a dictator. Just think of the Stella Nyazi situation alone. Nyzai is a lecturer at MISR who was locked out of her office by Mamdani. Would he dare lockout a colleague at Columbia? The aggrieved lady then did an 'African woman's "Naked protest" and went barechested, swearing and hollering.  Here is a link:   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GJ7UEDaCHRs


Students in the MISR PhD program have been suing him or protesting against Mamdani forever and ever. My own impression, having been there briefly and also having been brutally treated by the Museveni of MISR, Mamdani, is that the man has no respect for Africans. He considers them beneath him. I attribute this to a Cast system mentality from his native India. I was a Hindu Monk at some point, So I understand about this despicable social hierarchy where, just by dint of birth, some Indians are considered as lower cast and untouchables. And the blacker they are in complexion the more they are discriminated against and hated. I will dare to say that, even if it is unconscious in him, Mamdani is a racist - just as Mathama Gandhi was a racist - even if a great person. Anyone who knows Mamdani personally should talk to him to stop destroying his own legacy. History will not be kind to him.


Amatoritsero


On Sunday, 21 June 2020 12:03:43 UTC-4, Kenneth Harrow wrote:
this is quite a story.
until i hear mamdani's side, i am not going to accept this account. on the surface it looks like a student who is refusing a prof's requests for changes in a dissertation. no place for a court to intervene, and i know mamdani, a really brilliant scholar.
does anyone know about the politics of this?
ken

kenneth harrow

professor emeritus

dept of english

michigan state university

517 803-8839

har...@msu.edu

From: 'Adeshina Afolayan' via USA Africa Dialogue Series <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>
Sent: Sunday, June 21, 2020 10:00 AM
To: Usaafricadialogue <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Mahmood Mamdani and PhD Supervision Issue
 

The High court in Kampala has ordered Prof Mahmood Mamdani and Makerere Institute of Social Research (MISR) to refrain from the administration, supervision, and examination of Yusuf Serunkuma’s doctoral thesis.

Serunkuma who was in his final stages of completing his PhD dissertation fell out with Mamdani, the institute director over the administration and supervision of his PhD work in 2016.

https://observer.ug/news/headlines/65247-court-orders-prof-mamdani-off-observer-columnist-doctoral-thesis



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Harrow, Kenneth

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Jun 22, 2020, 9:45:07 PM6/22/20
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by the way, you do know mamdani grew up in uganda, not india; he was one of those chased out by amin; and his return was a return home, of sorts.
which makes iit all the more a shame that his return has not turned out so well.
ken

kenneth harrow

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har...@msu.edu

From: Harrow, Kenneth <har...@msu.edu>
Sent: Monday, June 22, 2020 7:37 PM
To: usaafric...@googlegroups.com <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Mahmood Mamdani and PhD Supervision Issue
 
thanks a lot for this ama (is MISR his program? what does it stand for?)
k

kenneth harrow

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michigan state university

517 803-8839

har...@msu.edu

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Ibrahim Abdullah

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Jun 22, 2020, 9:45:36 PM6/22/20
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Mahmood is NO racist. I've known him personally since 1986----we lived in the same 'hood' in Cape Town; visited each other unannounced and spoke to each other almost every other week. I have interacted with most of his colleagues in Dar in the 70s; and almost every other African who matter in the CODESRIA family: from the late Samir Amin to the late Thandika. We served in the Scientific Committee together and saw each other twice a year for six consecutive years. I have lived in North America; the UK; and South Africa and I know what RACISM is and who is a racist. Mahmood is not a racist.  

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On 22 Jun 2020, at 11:20 PM, Amatoritsero Ede <esul...@gmail.com> wrote:


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Harrow, Kenneth

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Jun 22, 2020, 9:45:45 PM6/22/20
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thanks a lot for this ama (is MISR his program? what does it stand for?)
k

kenneth harrow

professor emeritus

dept of english

michigan state university

517 803-8839

har...@msu.edu

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Sent: Monday, June 22, 2020 7:19 PM
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Toyin Falola

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Jun 22, 2020, 9:49:59 PM6/22/20
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Mahmood is on this site and he is probably reading all of the posts on him—for and against.

Conversations on contending visions and alternative paths to development need not lead to name-calling…I am surprised.

TF

Amatoritsero Ede

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Jun 23, 2020, 5:38:52 AM6/23/20
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Dear Ken,

MISR stands for Makerere Institute of Social Research. It is a laudable and great program initiated by Mamdani and headed by him. MISR is a standalone institute under the auspices of the main Makerere University. But MISR has been plagued by leadership problems and nonstop crisis for years now. 

Ama


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Ibrahim Abdullah

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Jun 23, 2020, 5:39:31 AM6/23/20
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He was born in Tanzania not India; he speaks Kiswahili sans accent. This name calling is just crazy--that is what it is. And all the moderator can do is to say MM is here. Disappointing. I wait for the day someone will call the moderator an ethnic bigot and a racist. 

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Amatoritsero Ede

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Jun 23, 2020, 5:39:59 AM6/23/20
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Very good. If you know him personally, I will take your word for it, Sir. I  hope so. But he should not do things in such a way as to give off that wrong impression. You need to go to the internet - Pabamzuka News for example - and see the army of his past students who still battle him right and left for one injustice or the other. 



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Amatoritsero Ede

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Jun 23, 2020, 5:40:10 AM6/23/20
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Dear Ken, 

I know he grew up in India and Idi Amin was not kind. That's the more reason why he ought to be kind and should stop behaving like Idi Amin. 





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Amatoritsero Ede

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Jun 23, 2020, 5:40:30 AM6/23/20
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I am happy that he is here. How come I have that impression of him, wrong or not? This is why one has to be careful; It is not enough to be brilliant; one has to be humane as well. 




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OLAYINKA AGBETUYI

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Jun 23, 2020, 6:10:22 AM6/23/20
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Mallam Abdullah.

So you want the moderator to censor opinions he does not like?  What did Amatoritsero say that is racist except call attention to what his (Mamdani's) past students say of him?

Just because Mamdani is your age long associate and he is on this forum does not mean people cannot voice their own opinion about him ( right or wrong)  Why must the moderator pick up the blame for that?


OAA



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-------- Original message --------
From: Ibrahim Abdullah <ibdu...@gmail.com>
Date: 23/06/2020 10:43 (GMT+00:00)
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Mahmood Mamdani and PhD Supervision Issue

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He was born in Tanzania not India; he speaks Kiswahili sans accent. This name calling is just crazy--that is what it is. And all the moderator can do is to say MM is here. Disappointing. I wait for the day someone will call the moderator an ethnic bigot and a racist. 

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On 23 Jun 2020, at 1:45 AM, Harrow, Kenneth <har...@msu.edu> wrote:



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OLAYINKA AGBETUYI

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Jun 23, 2020, 6:10:59 AM6/23/20
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Dear  Ken:

I hate to disappoint you about Mamdani ( I dont know him personally but I have been wondering if he might be Asian for some time now) but Im afraid from my own experience in the UK over 30 years ( I dont know how long you lived in the UK and at what level you interacted with Indians there) but I think what Amatoritsero said of diasporan Indians in relation to diasporan Africans is generally true.  Since you are not ethnically an African you might not know since Mamdani's pattern of behaviour toward you might be different.  Remember the the Ugandans had to give them the shove as a group in the mid 70s ( which was the genesis of their exodus to the UK en mass.)  They had put on the superior territorial airs of colonisers.  They do the same routinely in the UK around their successful private businesses.  

My experience with them in northern Nigeria also confirms these traits.

If you were in the hustling game as I was when I was newly arrived African  in the UK and you have them in a supervisory position over you the traits Amatoritsero identified are palpably visible.  Again it might be a function of the level of education  of Indians positioned at this level.  They are much more ingratiating toward the English than Africans when both are underdogs so the English often prefer them and that consolidates the air of superiority.  They are much more willing to sacrifice subordinates ( including their own kind ) for personal progress  than Africans are. Plus they are among the top 10 billionaires in the UK with their emphasis on business rather than working for wages under the English as soon as they can manage it (and money talks.)  The African mentality is generally conversely the opposite; they are looking for the English who will like their skills so much he will give them a fat salary with a pension.

I also had an Indian professor as my divisional head and faculty senior colleague in the US and he was very shrewd and quite different.  He could not be racist because it was a Black college and he knew he would be booted out if he was.  In fact my president was not pleased with him because he was perceived as not giving me enough assistance to settle in but I saw nothing wrong with him.

In the UK where there is a hustling for minorities to sup at the table with the ' master race' people of Indian descent want to use the racist card to edge Africans out.  They generally want to keep to themselves and think they are superior to Africans.  Even as college undergraduates born and bred in the UK they will only accept to date people of their background or occasionally English ( to give them some social leverage, but not Africans.)  If this is not in-built racism I dont know what is.  I have over the years been pointing out Black on Black and minority to minority racism ( to let people know racism does not only entail white on Black racism.) A bit like age old Nigerian tribalism.

In the case of Mamdani his stellar achievements may have consolidated in him that air of superiority over the Africans with whom he interacted plus the absence of rules to guide against high handedness in a place like Columbia which may be absent in African institutions.

It is highly unlikely that an intellectual of Amtoritsero's level will be wrong on his perception at close quarters of Mamdani.

OAA



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-------- Original message --------
From: Ibrahim Abdullah <ibdu...@gmail.com>
Date: 23/06/2020 02:53 (GMT+00:00)
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Mahmood Mamdani and PhD Supervision Issue

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Mahmood is NO racist. I've known him personally since 1986----we lived in the same 'hood' in Cape Town; visited each other unannounced and spoke to each other almost every other week. I have interacted with most of his colleagues in Dar in the 70s; and almost every other African who matter in the CODESRIA family: from the late Samir Amin to the late Thandika. We served in the Scientific Committee together and saw each other twice a year for six consecutive years. I have lived in North America; the UK; and South Africa and I know what RACISM is and who is a racist. Mahmood is not a racist.  

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Ibrahim Abdullah

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Jun 23, 2020, 8:29:21 AM6/23/20
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My name is Ibrahim Abdullah--please don't mallamise me; I know where you're coming from. Am no Mallam! 

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Amatoritsero Ede

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Jun 23, 2020, 8:30:13 AM6/23/20
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I only say out aloud what others in Ugandan intellectual circles are thinking but too polite to speak out. Why blame the victim here? I was not thinking of place of birth, and nationality but learned responses and tendencies. I was not born in Germany but learned the language and culture and speak German fluently. I did not have to be born there but I learnt. I could behave in a racist way towards another Nigerian for example, say because of their ethnicity; we usually call it tribalism. But it is just plain racism. I am saying that we are free to treat people the way we like; but those same people have the right to react to our treatment of them the way they see fit. One acts, the other reacts. Michel Foucault is known globally as a solid scholar and an intellectual giant. But what happened to his reputation after he passed? He is written about as an arrogant gay person who deliberately infected others with HIV. This blots out his intellectual achievements. See here:   https://newcriterion.com/issues/1993/3/the-perversions-of-m-foucault

Only a good friend, out of love,  will tell his bosom friend - 'your mouth stinks.' So that the said second friend will do something about it and not go out into the world like that. 



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Harrow, Kenneth

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Jun 23, 2020, 8:51:52 AM6/23/20
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dear ama
i started the piece on foucault, out of curiosity, and found it too difficult to continue after 2-3 sentences as it was clearly an attack on foucault and poststructuralism, deconstructionism, from the right. so, out of sadness and curiosity, googled the question of his spreading aids. the counter to hamilton's claiim came with one click--for what it's worth. here it is: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk%3AMichel_Foucault%2FArchive_3#garbage_about_MF_spreading_AIDS
Here is the quote from Miller in a postscript to the biography: "One evening in the spring of 1987,an old friend who teaches at a university in Boston, where I live, relayed a shocking piece of gossip:knowing that he was dying of AIDS, Michel Foucault in 1983 had gone to gay bathhouses in America, and deliberately tried to infect other people with the disease."
the gist of it is that it is a bogus claim.
we could ask foucault's bones about it, but the bones aint singing
ken


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Sent: Tuesday, June 23, 2020 7:53 AM

Amatoritsero Ede

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Jun 23, 2020, 8:58:30 AM6/23/20
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Dear Ken,

Thank you for the correction. The thing is not even whether it was true or not but that Foucault other personality traits would enable such fabrication in the first place. I still enjoy Foucault's work and ignore the controversies. 

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Emeagwali, Gloria (History)

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Jun 23, 2020, 9:00:57 AM6/23/20
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OA,

Your comment  is laden with stereotypes.  Asians being among the top ten billionaires in the U.K. somehow leads to  Mamdani’s racism?
You crown it all by implying that by seeking wage labor with a pension, as opposed to economic independence, Africans somehow make a better choice. This is upside down logic - and  what in
the world does that have to do with Mamdani’s alleged racism.

 Abdullah’s argument is credible, and is based on direct testimony - and so is Ede’s, and they
 are both highly regarded.

But let us take a deep breath and exercise caution in our discourse. You don’t  automatically prove the racism of a particular person by randomly throwing into the pot  a barrage of disconnected stereotypes, personalities and events.

The ridiculous assumption swirling around in the discussion is that  allusions to Idi Amin, Gandhi, Asian dating patterns, the Caste system, Asian billionaires in the U.K. and maybe Mississippi Masala, the movie-  automatically prove that Mamdani is a racist.

 They do not- even in a Kangaroo court. 

Mamdani may   have a questionable management style, and may,  or may not, have racist tendencies. One thing is certain, though.
 We need a more sober, rational approach in dealing with this issue.


GE














Professor Gloria Emeagwali
Prof. of History/African Studies, CCSU
africahistory.net; vimeo.com/ gloriaemeagwali
Recipient of the 2014 Distinguished Research
Excellence Award, Univ. of Texas at Austin;
2019 Distinguished Africanist Award
New York African Studies Association

From: usaafric...@googlegroups.com <usaafric...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of OLAYINKA AGBETUYI <yagb...@hotmail.com>
Sent: Tuesday, June 23, 2020 5:57 AM
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Subject: RE: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Mahmood Mamdani and PhD Supervision Issue
 

Please be cautious: **External Email**

Harrow, Kenneth

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Jun 23, 2020, 9:09:49 AM6/23/20
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this was added to the wiki discussion.
i am not posting it to clear foucault's name, but in the greater interest i have in the way history is constructed.
you hear a claim, tend to believe it; wonder a little; check a little more; find someone else with a different opinion, read a little more. maybe go iinto it deeply and come to your own balanced conclusion.
history, to me, is like that. not a fact, not indubitable, not a stone with one side, but a round stone with facets about whiich you can learn more, but never maybe get everything everything and be done with it forever.
we all thought newton's laws were the last word on reality, and then along came special relativity and the old objective truth turned out to be just partially true.
one thing does strike me: a rumor by paglia made it to the public ear, citing foucault speaking iin despair when he learned he had aids. a lot of talk. if i were in despair i might say anything too. but to take it as historical evidence was a step too far.
anyway, luckily, those terrible days of aids are mostly past for most people, thanks to medicine. now, if only i could say that about covid!
take care ami
ken



This search yields more info in the form of an article by Page DuBois that mentions it. Apparently this started with Miller's biography rather than with Camille, but the latter was all too willing to help spread the ludicrous rumor. This would have been 1983, when the disease was barely understood. On Foucault's deathbed, according to Defert, his doctors were still saying "if it's AIDS..." Eribon writes that Foucault suspected but did not know that he had AIDS -- "He never knew the nature of this suffocating illness. Even in the hospital he was making enthusiastic plans for a trip to Andalusia." I haven't read Miller's bio, but according to O'Farrell's (also found through google books), "Even Miller has to admit that he believes the rumor about Foucault's alleged behavior to be 'essentially false' (Miller, 1993: 375)." O'Farrell cites Michael Bartos: "The rumour that Foucault had gone to American bath-houses to deliberately spread HIV should be seen for what it is: a commonplace of the demonisation of people with HIV and an iteration of the standard myths of the malevolent importation of HIV/AIDS." (1997:687-8). OFarrells book is Michel Foucault, SAGE 2005. Sara Mills writes "These stories do seem to be simply part of a fictional backlash response to homosexuality and bear little resemblance to reality." (Michel Foucault, Routledge, 2003, p. 19). There is more for the enterprising researcher to follow up on -- there is more written about this than I had imagined, but looking through google books, almost every mention of the rumor discounts it. Truly, it does not make a lot of sense. And the most likely first source for the rumor does not believe it himself -- according to Jonathan Dollmore (Textual Practice, 9:1 p. 42): "The rumour that Foucault deliberately tried to infect others is discounted; although circulating for almost a decade, Miller finds no evidence for it." Apparently Miller wrote that the rumor was circulating in 1983; this too does not make sense. Among whom was this rumor spreading, one must ask? But of course by stringing together out of context quotes from Foucault about sex and death ("Sex is worth dying for") and placing them in a context where a lot more is known about AIDS than 1983, Foucault is imagined as this predatory killer. It's a vicious way to discredit a scholar. And it's a fascinating example of the academic telephone game. Miller states the rumor and immediately states that it is false, but others reproduce the rumor, citing Miller without noting that he also found no evidence for it. As for Paglia, I find her utterly delusional, and this is far from the only example of that.--csloat 19:38, 9 October 2006 (UTC)

These rumous are very interesting, and very dubious indeed. I think its especially telling that its not necessary "conservative detractors" but, in the case of Paglia, an anti-Foucaultian feminist critic that spreads them...--Agnaramasi 22:46, 9 October 2006 (UTC)
Prima facie, it appears to be a rumor and nothing more.Vector4F 16:35, 10 October 2006 (UTC)



kenneth harrow

professor emeritus

dept of english

michigan state university

517 803-8839

har...@msu.edu

Sent: Tuesday, June 23, 2020 8:55 AM

Michael Afolayan

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Jun 23, 2020, 4:19:39 PM6/23/20
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Professor Agbetuyi:

I have a problem with your position, and I am sorry I have to disagree with you on this matter because I have always seen you as an objective assessor of issues (not necessarily that you are subjective on this one, too, since it is based on your personal experience) but it sounds a jingle of ethnocentrism and snugly fits the pattern of what Chimamanda Ngozie Adichie calls "the danger of a single story." 

I understand your experience with Indians in the UK but that does not necessarily slot all Indians into that category nor support the indictment of Mahmood Mamdani. I will site three of my own personal experiences and they would not align with your own experience. I must admit upfront, though, that it does not mean my experience is a universal vindication of Indians: 

First of all, earlier in my career in academia, I was a lecturer at Adeyemi College of Education, Ondo. The provost (then called Principal) was an Indian man, whom we simply called Mr. Nina (or Naina). While Mr. Nina brought a good number of fellow Indians to the campus, especially to teach mathematics, which was not a field that many Nigerians were known for, he made sure he was fair in attracting other Nigerians into the campus, my friend and I included, and the man had no bone of duplicity in him. In fact, he was known to be respectful of Nigerians. Some thought he was being respectful because he was only afraid of us but that was their judgment, not what I saw. Example Two: I dealt with an Indian businessman, coincidentally by the name "Mr. Nina" also. He was in Chicago and many of us Nigerians who lived in Wisconsin in the 1980s patronized his business, shipping stuff home through his company. The man also owned one of the few stores in the midwest where we could purchase 220-240 voltage appliances to send home. Not only was Mr. Nina respectful of us, he loved Nigeria and Nigerians and was among the first person I knew who ever did a multilingual thesaurus on Hausa, Igbo and Yoruba. My last example: I was a professor together with an Indian man in the same department at Southern Illinois University in Edwardsville. He was there more than ten years before me. Right from the first day, he took me as a friend and brother, giving me survival tips in an almost culturally monolithic environment. If he ever looked at me, I never saw it. In my book, he was a good man, quite unbiased in his relationship with me.

If I would base my judgment on my personal experience with Indians, I could say all Indians are great, but I would be committing a fallacy of illicit generalization, and I would hate to be found guilty of such vice as part of my fairness to ethnicity and humanity. I would also hate to be seen as embracing "the danger of a single story."

Like you, I don't know Mahmood Mamdani from Adam! Indeed, I am catching this whole story in the middle when I saw the multiple thread on my screen. However, I think the culture of victimizing graduate students (or any university student for that matter) in African academia is grossly endemic! I recall vaguely when our colleagues, Prof. Bolaji Aluko was VC of one of the newly created Nigerian universities and one NUC executive visited the campus and expected him (Aluko) to treat a group of students in a patronizing manner; the former refused and made it a teachable moment that I loved so much. I have said this to many of my close friends who are a part of universities in Nigeria, you can't just treat students like your minor children at home or see them as exploitable products. I can't stand it! It is worst dealing with female students. One of my young sisters-in-law once sent me an abstract for her PhD dissertation from a highly acclaimed Nigerian university. It took me five minutes to read the abstract and I wrote a two-page comment to help her out. She submitted the abstract. It took two years for some "committee" to read the young woman's abstract and send her a one-page set of "corrections" she needed to do. If she tells you the story of what the ordeal she went through, you would want to shut down the whole university. Thank God, she scaled through like passing through fire, though 3-4-5 times the time it could have taken her in a moral academic environment, all things being equal. 

What's my point? 

I am not a Mahmood Mamdani apologist. But would just like to say that his reported attitude to the student may have absolutely nothing to do with his ethnicity. He was dancing to the rhythm of the prevailing culture in our academia, and we have spoken sky-vast volumes on this topic on this list in the past. While I recognize a great deal of academics who are literally burning their candles at both ends to do what they are supposed to do, we already have a prevailing culture of disrespect and assault on students and it is so much engrained into the fabrics of our campus culture that those doing the right things are in the micro-minority. 

lf professor Mahmood Mamdani is doing that in Uganda, trust me, Professor Lagbaja and Professor Lakasegbe are doing the same in Nigeria and/or even worse.

Michael O. Afoláyan
(Iustum est aequum et justum)





OLAYINKA AGBETUYI

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Jun 23, 2020, 4:54:22 PM6/23/20
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I did Foucault in my first graduate work and I enjoyed it. 

But I insist Foucault was not in the least thinking shout Africa when he theorised bringing the liminal to the centre. Africans in the diaspora knowing they are in the liminal space found it expedient to latch onto it to regularise their position and earn a livelihood.  I vaguely learned about his sexuality but could not confirm nor do I care   So this is not for me Foucault- bashing.  I just felt it is not just anything learnt in the West that must be copies hook line and singer onto African soil.  

Diaspora academics are but a minuscule of African scholars?  Why should the minority dictate to the majority on what to adopt?

Of course we can do what we like in the West.  Show how Foucault is the messiah the West has been waiting for in our writings.

As for Mamdani.  What students and colleagues say matter.  My head of division that  I referenced earlier had several opportunities to be replaced we kept rooting for him to continue in his post .  No single student had issues with him and you know how difficult it is to please Black American students in Black colleges. They would saunter into his office and chat to him like their long lost uncle.  He was born in India and had all his education to doctorate level in India.  To me he was an Indian only by accident of birth.  He was a world citizen   I was one of his closest confidants.

So in the end its a question of general attitude.  Students are very intelligent even if they are transgressive.  

OAA



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-------- Original message --------
From: Amatoritsero Ede <esul...@gmail.com>
Date: 23/06/2020 14:00 (GMT+00:00)
To: USA Africa Dialogue Series <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Mahmood Mamdani and PhD Supervision Issue

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Dear Ken,

Thank you for the correction. The thing is not even whether it was true or not but that Foucault other personality traits would enable such fabrication in the first place. I still enjoy Foucault's work and ignore the controversies. 

ᐧ

On Tue, 23 Jun 2020 at 08:51, Harrow, Kenneth <har...@msu.edu> wrote:

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Harrow, Kenneth

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foucault has nothing much to do with postcolonial much less african studies. it's more poststructuralism that built on his work.
why do we care? first of all, i wish we'd argue for the usefulness of any theory not based on the ethnicity or race or origins of the person. much less sexual oriention.
his work inspired said and then mudimbe; they built notions of orientliism, and its african equivalent, very much using his genealogies of knowledge and the ways a culture informed epistemologies.
all that was following barthes, a way to move away from structuralism. for reasons i think were not so great, structuralism became a dominant mode of theorizing in african circles in the 60s and 70s, and even 80s. we had to break away from its rigidities about language. that's what foucault enabled said to do with orientalism, and then spivak, bhabha followed that direction; with mudimbe later inn the 1980s.
that's all. not sure why we are rehearsing this ancient history now.
ken

kenneth harrow

professor emeritus

dept of english

michigan state university

517 803-8839

har...@msu.edu

From: usaafric...@googlegroups.com <usaafric...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of OLAYINKA AGBETUYI <yagb...@hotmail.com>
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Subject: RE: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Mahmood Mamdani and PhD Supervision Issue
 

Biko Agozino

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Jun 23, 2020, 6:26:47 PM6/23/20
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Edward Said, in Culture and Imperialism, took Foucault and Habermas to task on why they wrote volumes about the micro-physics of knowledge-power axis and about the colonization of the life world by monetary power, respectively, but without a word about actually existing macro-physics of imperialist domination and decolonization resistance? On that note, Said credited Fanon with being the model theorist of imperialist power relations but Foucauldians and Habermasians would always use the alibi that they theorized the history of Europe and not the History of the world with a capital H, nor specifically that of Africa. Said rebutted that there is no way you can explain the history of Europe and exclude the unequal relationships with Africa and with the rest.

Since Mamdani is on this list, he should climb down from his knowledge-power asses and explain what is going on at MISR. We expect the author of the critical books that he authored to be accountable to communities of interpretation especially when they go beyond the structure of his theory to question the post-structuralism of his exercise of power. His story as told by his students and junior colleagues is coming across as the story of the bad shepherd. Not good.

I suspect that Mamdani means well. He wishes to produce critical scholars of his own timber and caliber as a contribution to help Africa rise. Unfortunately, no supervisor has the magic wand to turn students into his own mirror images. The doctoral dissertations remain the independent works of the students and they pass or fail on their merits. 

Mamdani should be easing himself out of the iron cage of rational bureaucratic ideal type of administration and he should allow a succession plan to be implemented. I nominate the performance artist, Stella Nyanzi, or a female colleague, to succeed him as the Director of MISR. That will leave the author of Imperialism and Fascism in Uganda (with the pro-gender justice opposition to laws measuring the mini skirts of ladies to make sure that they reach below the knees which I cited in my dissertation on Black Women and the Criminal Justice System), Good Muslim - Bad Muslim, and Define and Rule, to do what he does best. Leave administration to the dark forces of technocrats. 

If graduate students refuse advice and fail, let them fail on their own. Let your people go! Micheal shared the anecdote of the abstract of his daughter-in-law who received two pages of comments on her abstract alone from him under 5 minutes and an additional one page of comments from the committee after forever. That shows that the daughter-in-law no sabi book self. No be so? The abstract is usually written last but even when it is written first as part of the proposal, for it to receive three pages of comments means that it is seriously wanting. I sympathize with the dedicated scholars who have to lead the blind students without access to up-to-date libraries, a situation that cannot be remedied with easy access to Wikipedia bolekaja experts that sometimes offer good references to be followed up by attentive scholars.

Biko

Harrow, Kenneth

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culture and imperialism deals with what? european literature, in fact english literature. said never wrote about african literature; he wrote about european epistemologies, systems of knowledge, skewed by power. your implication that he favored fanon over foucault is not borne out in his own actual work. was it an alibi.,  or a fact that foucault was a europeanist? though on his death started to turn toward africa? were the unequal relations with africa excluded in foucault, or simply relegated to a lesser importance?
k

kenneth harrow

professor emeritus

dept of english

michigan state university

517 803-8839

har...@msu.edu

From: 'Biko Agozino' via USA Africa Dialogue Series <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>
Sent: Tuesday, June 23, 2020 6:08 PM

Biko Agozino

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Ken, you are watching too many movies and re-reading less. Here is the relevant page from the chapter on opposition and resistance:


Harrow, Kenneth

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Jun 23, 2020, 10:29:15 PM6/23/20
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pretty good chapter indeed.

k

professor emeritus

dept of english

michigan state university

517 803-8839

har...@msu.edu

From: 'Biko Agozino' via USA Africa Dialogue Series <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>
Sent: Tuesday, June 23, 2020 10:05 PM

OLAYINKA AGBETUYI

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Jun 24, 2020, 5:10:46 AM6/24/20
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Prof Afolayan.

What I tried to sketch is a pattern or general trend. I also detailed my encounter with an Indian professor who was highly de-ethnisized.

If Prof Mamdani was drafted in from Colombia it was because they thought he would not join the trend in student victimisation in Africa to which you alluded. That he joined in is a sad story of indictment by his students whatever the reason might be for him to join the trend.

I took Amatoritsero's story in  its totality including that of the female colleague who was forced to go bare- chested in protest.  Before a colleague is forced to that recourse things must have gone really bad in their relationship. She must have felt treated as inferior. So on what grounds would attract such treatment if not ethnicity?  On what grounds was Amatoritsero given the treatment he complained of?  He was not a student

My Indian head of division presided over a lady professor whom many of us her colleagues knew as a potential trouble maker who almost crossed out the demarcation line between students and professors asking them to drop in and visit her at home frequently. The way my head of division  handled the whole affair she was not able to cause problems in the division.

Often we think if professor's are high flyers intellectually their administrative and people skills will be on the same par.  It does not logically follow.

OAA



Sent from my Samsung Galaxy smartphone.



-------- Original message --------
From: 'Michael Afolayan' via USA Africa Dialogue Series <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>
Date: 23/06/2020 21:21 (GMT+00:00)
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Mahmood Mamdani and PhD Supervision Issue

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Professor Agbetuyi:

I have a problem with your position, and I am sorry I have to disagree with you on this matter because I have always seen you as an objective assessor of issues (not necessarily that you are subjective on this one, too, since it is based on your personal experience) but it sounds a jingle of ethnocentrism and snugly fits the pattern of what Chimamanda Ngozie Adichie calls "the danger of a single story." 

I understand your experience with Indians in the UK but that does not necessarily slot all Indians into that category nor support the indictment of Mahmood Mamdani. I will site three of my own personal experiences and they would not align with your own experience. I must admit upfront, though, that it does not mean my experience is a universal vindication of Indians: 

First of all, earlier in my career in academia, I was a lecturer at Adeyemi College of Education, Ondo. The provost (then called Principal) was an Indian man, whom we simply called Mr. Nina (or Naina). While Mr. Nina brought a good number of fellow Indians to the campus, especially to teach mathematics, which was not a field that many Nigerians were known for, he made sure he was fair in attracting other Nigerians into the campus, my friend and I included, and the man had no bone of duplicity in him. In fact, he was known to be respectful of Nigerians. Some thought he was being respectful because he was only afraid of us but that was their judgment, not what I saw. Example Two: I dealt with an Indian businessman, coincidentally by the name "Mr. Nina" also. He was in Chicago and many of us Nigerians who lived in Wisconsin in the 1980s patronized his business, shipping stuff home through his company. The man also owned one of the few stores in the midwest where we could purchase 220-240 voltage appliances to send home. Not only was Mr. Nina respectful of us, he loved Nigeria and Nigerians and was among the first person I knew who ever did a multilingual thesaurus on Hausa, Igbo and Yoruba. My last example: I was a professor together with an Indian man in the same department at Southern Illinois University in Edwardsville. He was there more than ten years before me. Right from the first day, he took me as a friend and brother, giving me survival tips in an almost culturally monolithic environment. If he ever looked at me, I never saw it. In my book, he was a good man, quite unbiased in his relationship with me.

If I would base my judgment on my personal experience with Indians, I could say all Indians are great, but I would be committing a fallacy of illicit generalization, and I would hate to be found guilty of such vice as part of my fairness to ethnicity and humanity. I would also hate to be seen as embracing "the danger of a single story."

Like you, I don't know Mahmood Mamdani from Adam! Indeed, I am catching this whole story in the middle when I saw the multiple thread on my screen. However, I think the culture of victimizing graduate students (or any university student for that matter) in African academia is grossly endemic! I recall vaguely when our colleagues, Prof. Bolaji Aluko was VC of one of the newly created Nigerian universities and one NUC executive visited the campus and expected him (Aluko) to treat a group of students in a patronizing manner; the former refused and made it a teachable moment that I loved so much. I have said this to many of my close friends who are a part of universities in Nigeria, you can't just treat students like your minor children at home or see them as exploitable products. I can't stand it! It is worst dealing with female students. One of my young sisters-in-law once sent me an abstract for her PhD dissertation from a highly acclaimed Nigerian university. It took me five minutes to read the abstract and I wrote a two-page comment to help her out. She submitted the abstract. It took two years for some "committee" to read the young woman's abstract and send her a one-page set of "corrections" she needed to do. If she tells you the story of what the ordeal she went through, you would want to shut down the whole university. Thank God, she scaled through like passing through fire, though 3-4-5 times the time it could have taken her in a moral academic environment, all things being equal. 

What's my point? 

I am not a Mahmood Mamdani apologist. But would just like to say that his reported attitude to the student may have absolutely nothing to do with his ethnicity. He was dancing to the rhythm of the prevailing culture in our academia, and we have spoken sky-vast volumes on this topic on this list in the past. While I recognize a great deal of academics who are literally burning their candles at both ends to do what they are supposed to do, we already have a prevailing culture of disrespect and assault on students and it is so much engrained into the fabrics of our campus culture that those doing the right things are in the micro-minority. 

lf professor Mahmood Mamdani is doing that in Uganda, trust me, Professor Lagbaja and Professor Lakasegbe are doing the same in Nigeria and/or even worse.

Michael O. Afoláyan
(Iustum est aequum et justum)





On Tuesday, June 23, 2020, 6:11:00 AM EDT, OLAYINKA AGBETUYI <yagb...@hotmail.com> wrote:




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Harrow, Kenneth

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Jun 24, 2020, 9:12:25 AM6/24/20
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there are two sides to every story. we can't take the side of those who complain as always necessarily being the whole story. especially when you have someone in a position of authority and one under that authority, it is common enough that someone might complain about the authority figure abusing his or her authority.
not good enough. we have to hear both sides. (anyone ever been a chair here? without any complaints???)

i have lots in my mind, and will try to say little. mamdani is a major figure in our field; many like myself came across him or invited him to speak at our campuses, with wonderful experiences. accusations against him of racism make no sense to me. the issue of indianness has to be erased from our minds when considering someone who is actually a colleague in our field.

so i was thinking, how are we supposed to reflect on ethnicity, or the other things like race or gender, when considering the motivations or biases of an individual? racism means bias, and we don't need, should not, counteract biases with biases. that should be a rule for us.

yet the other side, which cannot be applied here, is that there are larger social biases within larger social groups. we can talk about groups of people generally embracing white supremacy--how could we fight it if we don't acknowledge its presence? there are biases of racial and ethnic communities toward each other, including anti-indian or anti-black or anti-african (not to say anti-nigerian) antipathies within the larger ethnic communities. there are words that go with these biases, like makwerewere, or you name it. we can't deny it. women are abused, we can't deny it. but that doesn't make all accusations of abuse automatically credible. we have to hear both sides.

what we can deny is that you can point to an individual and say, he is indian, he is one of them, and the "them" becomes a stand-in for identity for everyone.

i say that having learned about the unfortunate reports given here about the situation in his institute. don't judge it without hearing his side, as well as those who are accusing him. without it we can't really imagine a fair judgment can be given.
ken

kenneth harrow

professor emeritus

dept of english

michigan state university

517 803-8839

har...@msu.edu

Sent: Wednesday, June 24, 2020 1:40 AM
To: usaafric...@googlegroups.com <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: RE: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Mahmood Mamdani and PhD Supervision Issue
 

Toyin Falola

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Jun 24, 2020, 9:22:55 AM6/24/20
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Dear Ken:

A small contribution. “Supervision” has become a sub-field in some disciplines, with specialists writing essays and books on the subject.

Bottom line: all models have problems, and conflicts are inevitable. I even know students whose supervisors refuse to write references for them.

TF

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Harrow, Kenneth

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Jun 24, 2020, 9:55:33 AM6/24/20
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what a tricky thing this can be. famous case now oof a prof in umich who refused to write a letter of rec for jewish student wanting to study in israel because he, the prof, supported bds. he was severely reprimanded for that. what are you supposed to do if your student is so bad you can't honestly write a good letter for him or her? one answer might be not to write the letter, but then you shouldn't be on the committee or supervising. the art of writing a bad letter....that too we have to learn to do.
ken

kenneth harrow

professor emeritus

dept of english

michigan state university

517 803-8839

har...@msu.edu

OLAYINKA AGBETUYI

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Jun 24, 2020, 10:38:02 AM6/24/20
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TF:

Yours truly has been a victim of professors refusing to write references.

In my first graduate studies in the UK when I let it be known I would be leaving for the US to complete my doctorate the whole department rose up against me.  I was deliberately downgraded in my grades.

Then the only major American professor let it drop in his class that no one should approach him for a reference and that he used to write them in the past but had been threatened with a sack ( that he would be fired) if he continued.

My eventual supervisor whom I approached for a reference ( who was (wo)mandated to write references for me) just wrote what amounted to no reference. ' attended a course from year so and so to year so and so'  Meaning they wanted to block any chance of me being admitted to PhD in any institution in the US since they knew how competitive admissions could be.

I had to start all over again  in the US to re-establish myself at a level I knew I belong.


OAA



Sent from my Samsung Galaxy smartphone.



-------- Original message --------
From: Toyin Falola <toyin...@austin.utexas.edu>
Date: 24/06/2020 14:33 (GMT+00:00)
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Mahmood Mamdani and PhD Supervision Issue

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Dear Ken:

A small contribution. “Supervision” has become a sub-field in some disciplines, with specialists writing essays and books on the subject.

Bottom line: all models have problems, and conflicts are inevitable. I even know students whose supervisors refuse to write references for them.

TF

 

From: dialogue <usaafric...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of "Harrow, Kenneth" <har...@msu.edu>


Reply-To: dialogue <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>
Date: Wednesday, June 24, 2020 at 8:12 AM

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OLAYINKA AGBETUYI

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Jun 24, 2020, 10:47:25 AM6/24/20
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Dear Ken.

Yours is truly a reflective sagacious intervention.  .  It is true we have not heard Professor Mamdani's side.  He may or may nor choose to respond.  Unless and until he responds I will provisionally hold on to the version I heard from Prof Ede as tenable and credible.

If Prof Mamdani chooses to respond and it is revealed that I have been misled to come to a hasty and unjustified conclusion about him I would tender an unreserved apology to him and Prof Ede would need to explain why he has given such a misleading and wicked report about his colleague.

Luckily both of them are here with us.


OAA



Sent from my Samsung Galaxy smartphone.



-------- Original message --------
From: "Harrow, Kenneth" <har...@msu.edu>
Date: 24/06/2020 14:18 (GMT+00:00)
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Mahmood Mamdani and PhD Supervision Issue

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there are two sides to every story. we can't take the side of those who complain as always necessarily being the whole story. especially when you have someone in a position of authority and one under that authority, it is common enough that someone might complain about the authority figure abusing his or her authority.
not good enough. we have to hear both sides. (anyone ever been a chair here? without any complaints???)

i have lots in my mind, and will try to say little. mamdani is a major figure in our field; many like myself came across him or invited him to speak at our campuses, with wonderful experiences. accusations against him of racism make no sense to me. the issue of indianness has to be erased from our minds when considering someone who is actually a colleague in our field.

so i was thinking, how are we supposed to reflect on ethnicity, or the other things like race or gender, when considering the motivations or biases of an individual? racism means bias, and we don't need, should not, counteract biases with biases. that should be a rule for us.

yet the other side, which cannot be applied here, is that there are larger social biases within larger social groups. we can talk about groups of people generally embracing white supremacy--how could we fight it if we don't acknowledge its presence? there are biases of racial and ethnic communities toward each other, including anti-indian or anti-black or anti-african (not to say anti-nigerian) antipathies within the larger ethnic communities. there are words that go with these biases, like makwerewere, or you name it. we can't deny it. women are abused, we can't deny it. but that doesn't make all accusations of abuse automatically credible. we have to hear both sides.

what we can deny is that you can point to an individual and say, he is indian, he is one of them, and the "them" becomes a stand-in for identity for everyone.

i say that having learned about the unfortunate reports given here about the situation in his institute. don't judge it without hearing his side, as well as those who are accusing him. without it we can't really imagine a fair judgment can be given.
ken

kenneth harrow

professor emeritus

dept of english

michigan state university

517 803-8839

har...@msu.edu

From: usaafric...@googlegroups.com <usaafric...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of OLAYINKA AGBETUYI <yagb...@hotmail.com>
Sent: Wednesday, June 24, 2020 1:40 AM
To: usaafric...@googlegroups.com <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: RE: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Mahmood Mamdani and PhD Supervision Issue
 

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Chambi Chachage

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Jun 24, 2020, 12:14:51 PM6/24/20
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Ken, I am not sure you read all the three articles I sent earlier, including my own brief blog post. I happen to be a friend of both camps so it has been challenging to balance their stories. But, as we speak, two Tanzanian students have gone back home  without graduating. One of their complaints is that it is us, friends of those in academic authority, who overlook and sanitize authoritarian actions of our friends.

PS 1. This is what some of the brilliant PhD students from East Africa who had to leave without graduating wrote way back in 2016:

Saving Makerere Institute of Social Research?

https://www.pambazuka.org/education/saving-makerere-institute-social-research

PS 2. This was my own attempt at writing an analysis that would be fair to both camps, that was also 2016 and problems are still there:

Reforming Makerere: Mamdani's Dream Deferred? 
http://www.udadisi.org/2016/08/reforming-makerere-mamdanis-dream.html?q=mamdani


Harrow, Kenneth

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Jun 24, 2020, 1:55:52 PM6/24/20
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hi chambi
it was a bit too much for me. i started on it, and as i saw it, we heard the story from the perspective of that student who won the lawsuit. i stopped at that point since it seemed enough. after that i said, hmm, what's the version on the other side. but i doubt we will get more on that. i like ama ede, and like you feel i have reason to listen to both ends of it. but without that, i reserve judgment.
perhaps i'll add it was a bit of a sshock when mamdani left columbia for makerere. people of his stature, in an ivy league school, woould be very hard to peel off. zeleza another major figure who left for administrative position in e africa. irele briefly to kwara state after he had retired.
i thought mamdani was determined to create a program of real stature.
i will admit i admire his work considerably, and that he is not a conventional thinker, as his book on rwanda shoows. his citizen and subject is a foundational text for our field.
and my exchannges w him have been very cordial.
so, before i could easily let go of these feelings and thought, it would have to take a strong case to knock him down. not enough just to hear from those who were unhappy with his leadership.
that's all i know about it. thanks for providing your materials.
i'll stop at that.
ken


ken

kenneth harrow

professor emeritus

dept of english

michigan state university

517 803-8839

har...@msu.edu

From: usaafric...@googlegroups.com <usaafric...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Chambi Chachage <chachag...@gmail.com>
Sent: Wednesday, June 24, 2020 11:51 AM
To: usaafric...@googlegroups.com <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Mahmood Mamdani and PhD Supervision Issue -
 
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