Mahmood Mamdani is the Herbert Lehman Professor of Government. He was also professor and executive director of Makerere Institute of Social Research (2010-2022) in Kampala, where he established an inter-disciplinary doctoral program in Social Studies. He received his PhD from Harvard University in 1974 and specializes in the study of colonialism, anti-colonialism and decolonisation. His works explore the intersection between politics and culture, a comparative study of colonialism since 1452, the history of civil war and genocide in Africa, the Cold War and the War on Terror, the history and theory of human rights, and the politics of knowledge production. Prior to joining the Columbia faculty, Mamdani was a professor at the University of Dar-es-Salaam in Tanzania (1973–1979), Makerere University in Uganda (1980–1993), and the University of Cape Town (1996–1999). 

Clifford Geertz was an American anthropologist who is remembered mostly for his strong support for and influence on the practice of symbolic anthropology, and who was considered "for three decades...the single most influential cultural anthropologist in the United States."^[1] He served until his death as professor emeritus at the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton.

When the Department of Anthropology was officially created in 1971, it quickly became known as a hot spot for its vibrant ethnographic approach to interpretive anthropology, in neighborly dialogue with the work of Clifford Geertz, who founded the School of Social Science at the Institute for Advanced Study. Following his passing in 2006, the Department created an annual honoring Clifford Geertz’s influential intellectual legacy as an on-going horizon of engagement and debate both within anthropology and at its interdisciplinary verges. 

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