By Raffique Shah
August 02, 2025
By the time US President Donald Trump is finished with us, and here I mean the world as we know it now, our world will have changed likely to a backward civilisation, if there is anything civil about reversing progress.
I make this pronouncement boldly as a projection, not prediction, since I don’t believe in hocus-pocus. But he is deep into it and so are many of his “Jim Jones-like cultist followers”.
Continue reading The New Age Hitler
By Dr Selwyn R. Cudjoe
June 28, 2025
I arrived in New York on Thursday. The cooling breeze was welcomed. It was not as hot as Tuesday when New York City’s JFK airport reached 102 degrees Fahrenheit, the hottest temperature recorded since 2013, while Central Park “broke a record set all the way back in 1888”. (June 23, New York Daily News.)
However, the weather on Tuesday did not prepare New Yorkers for the political tsunami that disrupted the city that day. Zohran Kwame Mamdani, a Muslim of Uganda heritage, defeated Andrew Cuomo, former governor of New York State and a scion of a prominent New York political family, in the Democratic primary for mayor.
Continue reading Demonising Mamdani
By Dr Selwyn R. Cudjoe
May 17, 2025
Last Thursday morning, I left Boston to attend the graduation of my second grandson from Morehouse College, “the storied Atlanta school” (The New York Times, May 13). This was a change in the institutions of higher education my immediate family attended.
I attended Fordham University, received my doctorate from Cornell University, and taught at Harvard University. My first daughter did her undergraduate work at Stanford University and got her law degree from Harvard; my second daughter attended Hampton College, received a Master’s from Yale University and a doctorate in theology from Duke University. Tomorrow she will deliver remarks on behalf of the Yale Divinity School Alumni Board, of which she is the president. My son-in-law received his undergraduate degree from Columbia and law degree from Harvard Law School.
Continue reading Defending black excellence against Trump’s academic assault
By Dr Selwyn R. Cudjoe
November 21, 2024
After I arrived in the United States of America in August 1964, I continued to follow the election battle between of Lyndon B Johnson, a Democrat, and Senator Barry Goldwater whom he defeated in the sixth most lopsided US election: Johnson won 44 of the 50 states and the District of Columbia; 486 electoral votes and 61.1% of the popular vote. Goldwater captured 52 electoral votes and 38% of the popular vote.
Continue reading America, the beautiful?
By Raffique Shah
November 12, 2024
The world is what it is today, what it was yesterday, and what it always will be. It will never change because the vast majority of people do not want change. Mediocrity reigns supreme, vandalism rises to the top and so it will be forever and ever, Amen.
I awoke to the not-surprising news that 73 million Americans had voted Donald Trump in as the 47th President of the United States for the next four years.
Continue reading Dumb Trump
By Dr Selwyn R. Cudjoe
October 10, 2024
“And in the fourth watch of the night, Jesus went unto them, walking on the sea” (Matthew 14:25)
On Friday September 27, I flew to Charlotte, North Carolina (NC), to spend the weekend with friends and family. I was also interested in the gubernatorial and presidential races that were taking place there since it is the home of Lieutenant Governor Mark Robinson, one of the most notorious politicians in the US. NC is also a pivotal state in the next presidential election.
Continue reading The Darkest Hour
By Dr Selwyn R. Cudjoe
May 14, 2024
In 1985 I interviewed the president of the South West Africa People’s Organisation (SWAPO) Sam Nujoma when he visited the United Nations Decolonisation Committee to plead for his country’s independence (West Africa, present-day Namibia). Namibia was a German colony from the 1880s to the First World War when South African troops occupied its territory.
From 1904 to 1908, the Germans waged a war that exterminated over 100,000 Africans from the Herero and Nama ethnic groups. It was deemed the first holocaust of the 20th century. In 1920, the League of Nations allowed South Africa to administer the territory.
Continue reading Africa’s holocaust
By Dr Selwyn R. Cudjoe
May 07, 2024
From New York to Los Angeles, from New Hampshire to Texas, thousands of students have risen up against how the Palestinian people in Gaza are being treated. US police have arrested over 2,300 student protesters, and many more will be arrested in the coming weeks. We should congratulate the moral courage of these students.
Edward Luce reminds Americans about their foolhardiness. He wrote: “America is in knots over the foolishness—or worse—of its campus protesters. But it is the adults who are making the biggest dunces of themselves. The role of the grown-ups facing student unrest is to keep the peace without sacrificing rights. These include free speech and physical safety. The task requires principled consistency.” (Financial Times, May 2.)
Continue reading Student outrage over US behaviour
By Dr Selwyn R. Cudjoe
April 23, 2024
On June 30, 2024, I will say farewell to Wellesley College, a place at which I have taught for 38 years. I have taught at several elite institutions in the United States such as Harvard, Cornell, Ohio and Fordham universities, but Wellesley holds a special place in my heart. I have grown fond of it over the years.
The college yesterday held a symposium and dinner to honour my services to the institution and my academic contributions internationally. Paula Johnson, president of the college who was a student at Harvard University when I taught there in the 1970s, and Prof Kellie Carter Jackson, chairman of the Africana Studies Department, opened the function.
Continue reading Age of retirement