Ali Al'amin Mazrui (24 February 1933 – 12 October 2014), was a Kenyan-born American academic, professor, and political writer on African and Islamic studies, and North-South relations. He was born in Mombasa, Kenya. His positions included Director of the Institute of Global Cultural Studies at Binghamton University in Binghamton, New York, and Director of the Center for Afro-American and African Studies at the University of Michigan. He produced the television documentary series The Africans: A Triple Heritage. Early life Mazrui was born on 24 February 1933 in Mombasa, Kenya Colony. He was the son of Al-Amin Bin Ali Mazrui, the Chief Islamic Judge in Kadhi courts of Kenya Colony. His father was also a scholar and author, and one of his books has been translated into English by Hamza Yusuf as The Content of Character, to which Ali supplied a foreword. The Mazrui family was a historically wealthy and important family in Kenya, having previously been the rulers of Mombasa. Ali's father was the Chief Kadhi of Kenya, the highest authority on Islamic law. Mazrui credited his father for instilling in him the urge for intellectual debate, as his father not only participated in court proceedings but also was a renowned pamphleteer and public debater. Mazrui would, from a young age, accompany his father to court and listen in on his political and moral debates. Mazrui initially intended to follow the path of his father as an Islamist and pursue his study in Al-Azhar University in Egypt. Due to poor performance in the Cambridge School Certificate examination in 1949, Mazrui was refused entry to Makerere College (now Makerere University), the only tertiary education institute in East Africa at that time. He then worked in the Mombasa Institute of Muslim Education (now Technical University of Mombasa). Education Mazrui attended primary school in Mombasa, where he recalled having learned English specifically to participate in formal debates, before he turned the talent to writing. Journalism, according to Mazrui, was the first step he took down the academic road. In addition to English, Mazrui also spoke Swahili and Arabic. After getting a Kenyan Government scholarship, Mazrui furthered his study and obtained his B.A. degree with Distinction from Manchester University in Great Britain in 1960, his M.A. from Columbia University in New York in 1961, and his doctorate (DPhil) from Oxford University (Nuffield College) in 1966. He was influenced by Kwame Nkrumah's ideas of pan-Africanism