Category Archives: Blog

We take each other’s minds
And we’re capable of take each other’s souls
We do it every day
Just to reach some financial goal
Lord, isn’t it a pity, my God
Isn’t it a pity, my God
And so unnecessary…

Just a little time, a little care
A little note written in the air
Just the little thank you
We just forget to give back
Cause we’re moving too fast
Moving too fast
Forgetting to give back…

Where am I going? What am I doing?
I don’t know, I don’t know.

Just try to do your very best
Stand up be counted with all the rest…

Classically trained pianist, black power icon and legendary recording artist, Nina Simone lived a life of brutal honesty, musical genius, and tortured melancholy. In the upcoming Netflix original documentary, What Happened, Miss Simone? (which just opened Sundance with a roar), Academy Award® nominated filmmaker Liz Garbus interweaves never-before-heard recordings and rare archival footage together with Nina’’s most memorable songs, creating an unforgettable portrait of one of the least understood, yet most beloved artists of our time…

When I started working in film at age 13, I was determined to spend the rest of my life making movies. Though my MFA in Playwriting/Screenwriting from Brown granted me time to hone my craft with Pulitzer-prize winning writers, no degree program can really prepare women for the realities of the male-dominated filmmaking business. A new article in the NYTimes, Lights, Camera, Taking Action, investigates the structural and ideological reasons why women have never been as “underrepresented on screen as they are now,” and why the film industry is failing women now more than ever.

While out on the town tonight in Beirut, my friends and I found ourselves exchanging medieval Sufi poems to the accompaniment of an ecstatic oud. My favorite verses were the ones below by Amir Khusraw, a 13th century Sufi poet and musician, who was the “father of Qawwali” and a disciple of Nizamuddin Auliya of Delhi…

Khusrau darya prem ka, ulti wa ki dhaar,
Jo utra so doob gaya, jo dooba so paar.

Oh Khusraw, the river of love
Runs in strange directions.
One who jumps into it drowns,
And one who drowns, gets across.

This afternoon, on my way home from whirling with Sufis in Beirut, an unexpected license plate caught my eye…

The NYTimes’ latest Room for Debate asks: When Should Antiquities Be Repatriated to Their Country of Origin?

Next week in Mali, the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), the Malian Government and the Ahmed Baba Institute of Higher Learning and Islamic Research will discuss long-term conservation of Mali’s invaluable ancient manuscript collection at an international conference in Bamako…

As a professor who is dedicated to international education and the liberal arts, I read with great interest yesterday’s Room for Debate in the NYTimes: Are global universities hurting or helping American higher education?

I’m very grateful to have my new academic article on Malcolm X, “X Marks the Spot: Mapping Malcolm’s Encounters with Sudan,” appear in a Special Issue of the Journal of Africana Religions: The Meaning of Malcolm X for Africana Religions: Fifty Years On. This special issue can now be purchased on Amazon, and a summary of its contents is below. Recently, I wrote a Huffington Post piece about my experience of retracing part of Malcolm’s route in Africa and the Middle East with his old friends from Khartoum and Beirut: Following in the Footsteps of Malcolm X.

Since his violent death on February 21, 1965, the man who changed his name from Malcolm Little to Malcolm X and then finally to El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz has stood at the symbolic center of global Africana debates about diasporic consciousness, political liberation, and strategies for Black empowerment. Half a century later, the intellectual and activist legacy of Malcolm X is also more important than ever for understanding the religions and the cultures of Africana people in the modern world. Featuring the work of scholars Maytha Alhassen, Saladin Ambar, Cedric Burrows, Juan Floyd-Thomas, Alex Lubin, Terrence Johnson, Emily O’Dell, Hussein Rashid, and Eboni Marshall Turman, this special issue of the Journal of Africana Religions breaks new ground in its analysis of the historical and contemporary meaning of Malik Shabazz. Its historical coverage of Shabazz’s trips to Great Britain, Egypt, France, Lebanon, and Sudan offer fresh perspectives on Malcolm X’s international religious and political connections. The significance of Shabazz’s legacy in the contemporary world is analyzed through his influence on British hip hop, Black theology, gender studies, English language instruction, ethics, and Black literature. This special issue commemorates a singularly important figure whose life continues to stimulate new directions in the study of Africana religions.

Will my country ever learn?
Must it kill at every turn?
We’ve got to know by now–
what the consequences will bring…

It really boils down to this: that all life is interrelated. We are all caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied together into a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. We are made to live together because of the interrelated structure of reality…before you finish eating breakfast in the morning, you’ve depended on more than half the world. This is the way our universe is structured, this is its interrelated quality. We aren’t going to have peace on Earth until we recognize the basic fact of the interrelated structure of all reality…

— Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., 1967 Christmas Sermon on Peace