We just talked to the Ugandan anthropologist and political scientist Mahmood Mamdani, a Columbia University professor and one of the world’s most influential thinkers on colonialism and its long shadow over modern life. We spoke about the ideas of power and justice and belonging that have defined his career — and that have become of great public interest now that his son, Zohran Mamdani, is about to be the next mayor of New York City. A parent’s ideas are not necessarily revealing about a child’s, but in this case, the rhymes between the father and the son are unignorable.
Professor Mamdani has a new book out, Slow Poison: Idi Amin, Yoweri Museveni, and the Making of the Ugandan State, a study of his home country’s post-independence strongmen, and a memoir of his own political and academic journey. We talked about:
How he is processing his son’s victory on a platform that in many ways resonates with the father’s work
Some of the essential personal qualities that he sees in Zohran that help explain his rise
How Mamdani senior came to America on a scholarship and found in the civil rights movement a calling
The enduring, tragic power of the ideas belonging and not-belonging in politics
How visiting apartheid South Africa reshaped his view of his own upbringing, of the situation in Israel and Palestine, and the postcolonial experience in general
How he responds to threats from those who would strip his son’s citizenship — having lost his own citizenship twice
His warning about the essential difference between a vision of justice that means turning the tables, the oppressed becoming the oppressors, and a vision of justice that means the rule of law for everyone
The anxieties he hears from many Jewish New Yorkers about his son’s politics, and why he believes the real fear is less about Zohran than about many in an older generation mourning their loss of control of the story their own children hold.
You won’t want to miss this conversation with one of the most important political thinkers of our time. Just click on the video player above.
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Join us tomorrow, Tuesday, November 11, at 12:30 p.m. Eastern, when we speak with author George Packer, followed by a conversation with Carmen Rojas, president of the Marguerite Casey Foundation. Then on Wednesday, November 12, also at 12:30 p.m. Eastern, the Ink Book Club will meet with journalist and author Beth Macy. Then on Thursday, November 13, at 12:30 p.m. Eastern, we welcome back messaging guru Anat Shenker-Osorio.
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