Apr 6, 2026
Host Sanjay Ruparelia speaks with Howard French, professor of journalism at Columbia University and author of The Second Emancipation: The Unfinished Project of Liberation and the Modern Black Freedom Struggle, about Kwame Nkrumah, Pan-Africanism, and the global movement for Black liberation in the twentieth century. Their conversation explores how Nkrumah’s political vision was shaped by his experiences in the United States and Britain, the deep connections between African independence movements and the civil rights struggle in the United States, and the promise and limits of postcolonial leadership. They also reflect on the unfinished project of emancipation and what these intertwined histories of freedom, empire, and solidarity can teach us about democracy today.
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Host: Sanjay Ruparelia, Jarislowsky Democracy Chair and Associate Professor of Politics and Public Administration at Toronto Metropolitan University.
Guest:. Howard French, Professor of Journalism at Columbia University and a widely acclaimed journalist who spent decades reporting for The New York Times. Over the course of his career, he served as bureau chief in Central America and the Caribbean, West and Central Africa, Japan and the Koreas, and China, and was one of the paper’s first Black foreign correspondents. He is the author of several prize-winning books on Africa and China. His latest book, The Second Emancipation: The Unfinished Project of Liberation and the Modern Black Freedom Struggle, revisits the global movement for Black liberation that linked struggles across Africa, the Caribbean, Europe, and the United States.
Background Reading:
The Second Emancipation: The Unfinished Project of Liberation and the Modern Black Freedom Struggle
Born In Blackness: Africa And The Making Of The Modern World