Omar H. Ali

Education: Ph.D., History, Columbia University, New York, 2003; B.Sc., Social Anthropology, London School of Economics and Political Science, 1992.

There are 18 included publications by Omar H. Ali :

TitleDateViewsBrief Description
African and Afro-Indian Rebel Leaders in Latin America: Con Tanta Arrogancia 2018 929 On Christmas Day in the year 1521, and half a world away from home, a group of enslaved West African Muslim warriors led a slave revolt on the island of Hispaniola, a distant island across a vast ocean. The Wolof slaves had little chance of success, ...
The African Diaspora in the Indian Ocean World 2011 11682 Over the course of nearly 20 centuries, millions of East Africans crossed the Indian Ocean and its several seas and adjoining bodies of water in their journey to distant lands, from Arabia and Iraq to India and Sri Lanka. Called Kaffir, Siddi, Hab...
The African Diaspora in Latin America: Afro-Peru and San Martín de Porres 2013 1908 On May 7, 1962, The New York Times published an eye-opening article describing how “the illegitimate son of a sixteenth-century Spanish knight and a freed Negro slave girl was proclaimed a saint by Pope John XXIII.”2 The person the Roman Catholic Chu...
Afro-Peru: A Legacy of Black Labor and Culture 2014 2958 This article discusses the history and cultural impact of the African diaspora in Peru.
American Foreign Policy: A Question of Democracy 2001 1670 Speaking as an American and a New Yorker, not everyone around here agrees on the U.S. government's military response to the September 11th terrorist attacks on the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon. With few exceptions, none of these disagreements ...
Declaration of the Independents 2012 1871 The widely-discussed yet continually misunderstood "independent voter" is neither ideologically driven nor a closet partisan (be it Democrat nor Republican). We are not "swing voters,"' nor are we "moderates." Rather, we come from across the politica...
Development in Africa and the Diaspora: Democracy as Performed Activity in the Making of a Post-Modern World 2009 919 Some twenty years ago I began a journey that has led me to becoming a scholar of Africa and the Diaspora (the histories of men and women of African descent in the Atlantic and Indian Ocean worlds), focusing on issues of democracy and development. I s...
Diversity Reimagined: Creating a Culture of Possibilities by Relating to Others as Partners, Fellow Learners and Builders 2018 272 There’s no doubt. ‘Diversity’ has gotten a bad rap. It has become increasingly equated with a kind of moralism or political correctness that is not helpful. The word tends to get people all wound up, bent out of shape, and either clamped up or up on ...
Fulani's Tools and Results: Development as Black Empowerment? 2012 1420 Standing in front of a mostly white audience at the Second Sex Conference held in New York City on September 29, 1979, the black feminist Audre Lorde offered a searing critique of white feminists for using what she called "the master's tools." Lorde ...
Independent Black Voices from the Late 19th Century: Black Populists and the Struggle Against the Southern Democracy 2005 4116 Fueled by religious and secular conviction, grounded by political reality, and limited by grinding poverty, African Americans in the 1880s would not allow Democratic Party rule to go unchallenged following the collapse of Reconstruction. Between 1886...
Islam and the African Diaspora in the Indian Ocean World 2010 6605 In the following article historian Omar H. Ali explores a lesser-known aspect of the global African Diaspora, the spread of African peoples and their cultures throughout the Indian Ocean basin.
The Jim Crow of Bipartisan Rule 2010 1320 President Barack Obama says that the U.S. Senate rules which require sixty votes to end filibustering are not only extra-Constitutional but, more importantly stifle the flow of necessary legislation based, more often that not, on partisan interests. ...
Malik Ambar: The Legacy of an Ethiopian Ruler in India 2011 14889 Among the tens of thousands of men, women, and children captured in Africa and sold into slavery in the Middle East and India was an Ethiopian of fierce determination: Malik Ambar. Born Chapu in 1548 in Harar, where the Ethiopian highlands meet the d...
The Mu’azzin’s Song: Islam and the African Diaspora of the Indian Ocean 2012 2059 Among my earliest memories as a child living in North Africa during the mid-l970s was listening to the azan, the melodic call to prayer heard daily across much of the Muslim world. Each morning, just before sunrise, I would hear the "song" as it gent...
A Professor’s Perspective 2008 655 I decided to write about the topic when I was approached by Ohio University Press to produce a book that would do a sweep of the history of African Americans and their involvement with the independent political movement and third parties.
Reflections on History as Performance (an afsana for Abu) 2005 1081 I recently traveled to India with my father, a muhajeer —"refugee" — who was returning home after fifty years. After leaving India to go to Pakistan in 1954 during the turbulent years following partition which displaced millions of Muslims and Hindus...
Standing Guard at the Door of Liberty: Black Populism in South Carolina, 1886-1897 2006 1806 Black populism – the movement of African American farmers, sharecroppers, and agrarian workers that paralleled the white Populist movement in the late nineteenth century—took initial form in South Carolina in 1886 with the creation of the Cooperative...
‘Yes, and’ as Teaching-Learning Methodology 2017 1268 Here we present ‘Yes, and,’ a concept derived from improvisational theatre, as a teaching-learning methodology that supports engaged experiential learning. In this approach, the leader of the group and co-participants affirm each other and creatively...