l. What is your favorite history course to teach and why?

"Africa Meets East and West" is fun to teach. I picked some of the more enticing events in the last 2000 years of African History, and we go into them more deeply than is possible when simply skimming over the surface trying to cover everything as one does in a survey course. Who was this African queen Cleopatra, really, and was she Black? She has become a center of controversy as Afrocentrists such as Bernal and Diop debate their critics on such issues as the race of the Ancient Egyptians and the influence of Egypt on Ancient Greece.

In medieval times caravans of camels crossed the Sahara, bringing gold to the markets of North Africa and Europe. We now know quite a bit about the Kingdom of Mali in West Africa, through sources such as Ibn Battuta, Africa's Marco Polo. Napoleon invaded Egypt in l798, winning the "Battle of the Pyramids" against a larger (but more lightly armed) force of Mamelukes. But the Africans roundly defeated the British at Isandlwana in l879, much to the consternation of Queen Victoria, who complained that the Zulus would "make us the laughing-stock of the world". Stanley and others explorers searched for the "Mountains of the Moon" and the sources of the Nile. Governor "Chinese" Gordon lost his head (literally) and his army to the Mahdists of the Sudan in l885. Karen Blixen said "I had a farm in Africa, at the foot of the Ngong hills", but Africans had another perspective on the expropriation of their land which turned them into the "White Highlands".

These then are some of the topics we cover in the course. Each has a book devoted to it, and each student reads one book and reports on parts of it to the class. And throughout these encounters between Africa and the world we try to bring in an element which is new to many of the students--the African perspective on these events which have often been seen through Western eyes.

Hollywood has also found these African and foreign characters fascinating, and I don't mind using parts of these dramatizations to illustrate history (taken with a certain critical awareness, of course). These films include Mountains of the Moon, Out of Africa, and White and Black in Color. There is also the magnificent set of documentary videos by Basil Davidson entitled Africa.

2. What do you like best about teaching at Wittenberg?

In each course it has been my pleasure not only to have a group of fine young people, but a few really outstandingly intelligent and motivated ones. They always make the class more stimulating and active. Secondly there are my colleagues, who have always been most supportive and cheerful. Thirdly I have found the administration most efficient and competent (and I have taught in other colleges). Finally the college has a most wholesome environment for learning. I love its rich array of talent as presented in its concerts of music and dance, its plays, its lectures, and its high quality programs, mostly free!

3. If you could design a new course at Wittenberg, what would it be?

None of my courses are standard, so perhaps I should design an ordinary survey of African History. In one of my current courses we read only novels by Africans. In another we examine individual countries in depth since Independence in the l960s.
In a third we analyze problems which historians of Africa debate, such as whether Europe "underdeveloped" Africa as Rodney asserted. I described the Africa Meets East and West course above. So you can see, perhaps I should do something normal for a change!

4. How do you envision Wittenberg in fifty years?

Obviously computer technology will be having a fundamental impact over the next half century, which will greatly change our access to material and our methods of exploiting it. Web sites will give information of current affairs in Africa, replacing many of the published journals. In fact this is to a certain extent already happening. No doubt more "paper" writing will be done, and transmitted to classmates, on the computer, just as we used to distribute dittoed copies of our papers in classes in my college days.

The Interlibrary Loan system is developing by leaps and bounds, and will make material even more accessible. I'm in Seventh Heaven already being able to get my hands on so many good books so easily--just a few minutes on the computer. It's magical.

I imagine there will be more international contacts as well, with more students going to Africa, and coming from there, for semesters as well as for four years. The Continuing Education component will grow proportionately as well. Colleges will be getting more like Ivan Illich talked about -- education on demand. I'm taking a computer course this summer, for instance, and don't plan to count it toward another degree.

5. Is there anything else about you that you would specifically like put in your biography?

Please see the attached piece which I wrote about myself for the original web page. My thirty plus years in Africa inspire me to share those experiences with American students, who often have not had much access to information about that continent, other than the distorted news one gets in the papers and on T.V., or in Tarzan books and their successors, such as those of Crichton. I loved my years there, and hope that American students would catch some of that enthusiasm.

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