Expertise

Afrocentricity, intercultural communication, Westernity, location theory, critique of domination, African American experiences, ancient Africa

Biography

Molefi Kete Asante is a professor in the Department of Africology and African American Studies at Temple University in Philadelphia. He is the president of the Molefi Kete Asante Institute for Afrocentric Studies. Asante is professor extraordinarius at the University of South Africa. He was the founding editor of the Journal of Black Studies, serving for 53 years. Selected as the first director of UCLA’s Center for Afro-American Studies, he established the interdisciplinary MA program, and set up the UCLA Center’s African American Library. Asante, often called the most prolific African American scholar, has published over 100 books; among the most recent are The Perilous Center, or When Will the African Center Hold; Radical Insurgencies; The History of Africa, 3rd Edition; An Afrocentric Pan Africanist Vision; The African American People: A Global History; Erasing Racism: The Survival of the American Nation; Revolutionary Pedagogy; African American History: A Journey of Liberation; African Pyramids of Knowledge; Maulana Karenga: An Intellectual Portrait; Facing South to Africa; and the memoir As I Run Toward Africa. 

Asante has published more than 500 articles and is considered one of the most quoted living African authors as well as one of the most distinguished thinkers in the African world. He has been recognized as one of the 10 most widely cited African scholars. Asante has been recognized as one of the most influential leaders in education. He has been named a history maker with an interview in the Library of Congress. In 2019, the National Communication Association named him an NCA Distinguished Scholar, its highest honor, saying that his writings were “spectacular and profound.” He received his PhD from the University of California, Los Angeles, at the age of 26, and was appointed a full professor at the age of 30 at the State University of New York at Buffalo. At Temple University he created the first PhD program in African American studies in 1988. In 2021, he initiated and conceptualized Temple’s Center for Antiracism Research. He has directed more than 140 PhD dissertations, making him the top producer of doctorates among African American scholars. He is the founder of the theory of Afrocentricity, the Cheikh Anta Diop Conference and the think tank the Molefi Kete Asante Institute for Afrocentric Studies in Philadelphia. Asante wrote the mandatory African American history course for the School District of Philadelphia.

Asante was born in Valdosta, Georgia, of Sudanese (Nubian) and Nigerian (Yoruba) DNA heritage. He is one of 16 children. He is married to Ana Yenenga, an African Costa Rican, with Akan ancestry via Jamaica. He has three children, Mario, Eka and M.K. Jr., the latter was born in Zimbabwe. He has six grandchildren, Jamar Ramses, Ayaana, Aion, Nova, Akira and Akila. He is a poet, novelist, dramatist and a painter. His works on African language, African history, multiculturalism, and human communication and philosophy have been cited and reviewed by journals such as the Africalogical Perspectives, Quarterly Journal of Speech, Journal of Black Studies, Black Scholar, Journal of Communication, International Journal of African Renaissance, American Scholar, Daedalus, Western Journal of Black Studies, and International Journal of Pan African Thought.

The Utne Reader called him one of the 100 Leading Thinkers in America. Asante has appeared on numerous television and social media programs in Africa, Asia, North and South America, and Europe. He has received many awards and honors for scholarship and political and community activism. He regularly consults with heads of state in Africa and has become one of the most popular lecturers on issues related to the United States of Africa. He served on the Thabo Mbeki African School of Leadership at UNISA. Asante was invited in February 2020 by the Russian Academy of Sciences and RUDN to co-chair a seminar on Africa affairs with Professor Alexei Vasiliev. In 2022, he was invited to give the bicentennial address at the University of Liberia and asked to serve on the board of Africa’s first Center for Migration and Diaspora Studies.

Asante’s writings are in English, French, Russian, Spanish, Kiswahili, Portuguese, Hungarian and Japanese. He was president of the civil rights organization the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee’s UCLA chapter in the 1960s. In 1995, he was made a traditional king, Nana Okru Asante Peasah, Kyidomhene of Tafo, Akyem, Ghana. He was appointed a wanadu of the Court of Hassimi Maiga, the amiru of Gao, Songhay, Mali, in 2009. Asante trained journalists in Zimbabwe immediately after the Second Chimurenga and was a mentor to the first group of liberated journalists from Zimbabwe Institute of Mass Communication. Asante has received hundreds of awards and honorary doctorates from several institutions, including Pepperdine University, Sojourner-Douglass College, University of South Africa (2020), University of Witwatersrand (2022) and University of New Haven. Asante is the series editor for Anthem Press for Africology, especially in areas of ethics, theory, practice and history.

Curriculum Vitae (PDF) | Website

Selected Publications

• Molefi Kete Asante and Julie Morgan,  Privileging Communication In An Era of Conflict. Indianapolis: Kendall Hall, 2020.
• Molefi Kete Asante,  The Afrocentric Pan Africanist Vision. Lanham: Lexington, 2020.
• Molefi Kete Asante,  Radical Insurgencies. New York: Universal Write, 2020
• Molefi Kete Asante,  400 Years of Witnessing: The African American Presence in the American Nation. (Poetry), New York: Universal Write, 2019
• Molefi Kete Asante,  The History of Africa. Third Edition. New York: Routledge, 2019.
• Molefi Kete Asante,  The American Demagogue: Donald Trump in the Presidency of the United States. New York: Universal Write, 2018.
• Molefi Kete Asante,  Revolutionary Pedagogy. New York: Universal Write, 2017
• Molefi Kete Asante,  Lynching Barack Obama: How Whites Tried to String Up the President. New York: Universal Write, 2016
• Molefi Kete Asante,  African Pyramids of Knowledge. New York: Universal Write, 2015
• Molefi Kete Asante and Clyde Ledbetter, Jr., eds., Contemporary Critical Thought in Africology and Africana Studies. New York: Lexington Press, 2015
• Molefi Kete Asante,  The Dramatic Genius of Charles Fuller. New York: Universal Write, 2014.
• Molefi Kete Asante, ed., Points of View: Writings on Race from Diverse Perspectives. Cognella, 2015.
• Molefi Kete Asante,  The History of Africa. New York and London: Routledge, 2014. Second Edition.
• Molefi Kete Asante,  Stories from Egypt: Retold by an African Storyteller. Philadelphia: Ramses, 2014
• Molefi Kete Asante,  Facing South to Africa. New York: Lexington, 2014.
• Molefi Kete Asante,  Herodotus On Egypt. Philadelphia: Ramses, 2013.
• Molefi Kete Asante,  The African American People: A Global History. New York: Routledge, 2012.
• Molefi Kete Asante,  As I Run Toward Africa. Boulder, Colorado: Paradigm, 2012
• Ama Mazama and Molefi Kete Asante, eds.,  Barack Obama: Political Frontiers and Racial Agency. Washington, DC: CQ, 2011.
• Molefi Kete Asante, ed.  Ethiopia Unbound by E. Casely Hayford. Baltimore, Md.: Black Classic Press, 2010.
• Molefi Kete Asante and Ron Hall,  Rooming in the Masters’ House. Boulder, Colo.: Paradigm Publishers, 2010.
• Molefi Kete Asante and Ama Mazama.  Afrocentric Infusion for Urban Teachers. Philadelphia: ANKH, 2010.
• Molefi Kete Asante,  Speaking My Mother’s Tongue: Introduction to African American Language. Fort Worth: ThembaHill Press, 2010.
• Molefi Kete Asante,  Erasing Racism: The Social Survival of the American Nation. Amherst: NY: Prometheus Books, 2nd Edition, 2009
• Molefi Kete Asante,  Maulana Karenga: An Intellectual Portrait. London: Polity Press, (2009).
• Molefi Kete Asante and Ama Mazama, eds.,  Encyclopedia of African Religion. 2 volumes. Thousand Oaks: Sage Publications, 2009.

Courses Taught

• Afronography
• Cheikh Anta Diop
• Ebonics: The Language of the Black Community
• Harriet Tubman: The African American Warrior Queen
• Intercultural Communication
• Proseminar in Graduate Studies
• Representing Race
• Seminar on W.E.B. Du Bois
• Theories and Methods of Africology