Symposium: Re-Shaping US-Africa Policy and the Role of HBCUs

Ambassador Johnnie Carson is a former career diplomat who served as Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs during the first administration of President Barack Obama. In a career that has spanned 40 years, Ambassador Carson has held ambassadorships in three countries: Kenya (1999-2003), Zimbabwe (1995-1997), and Uganda (1991-1994). Earlier in his career, he served as Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for African affairs, Staff Director of the House Subcommittee on Africa, National Intelligence Officer for Africa, and deputy chief of mission in Mozambique and Botswana. Ambassador Carson currently serves as Senior Adviser at the United States Institute of Peace and the Albright Stonebridge Group.

Imani Countess has worked with US-based Africa advocacy, development and social justice organizations for more than 30 years. In September 2019, Imani was awarded an Open Society Foundations Economic Inequality Fellowship and is the founder and director of a new initiative, the U.S./Africa Bridge Building Project. She has held leadership positions with the Solidarity Center, the National Democratic Institute, the TransAfrica Forum, the American Friends Service Committee, Shared Interest, Africa Action, the African Development Foundation, the Africa Policy Information Center and the Washington Office on Africa.

Dr. Anita Plummer is an Assistant Professor of African Studies at Howard University. Her research and teaching focus on African political economy, transnationalism, public diplomacy, and Sino-African relations. Before joining the faculty at Howard University, she taught International Studies at Spelman College in Atlanta, Georgia and she was also a Mellon post-doctoral fellow in the Cultures in Transnational Perspective Program and Visiting Assistant Professor of Global Studies and Political Science at the University of California Los Angeles. She was awarded a Carter G. Woodson Center Pre-doctoral fellowship at the University of Virginia where she researched Mandarin language in Africa.

Dr. Elsie Scott is the Founding Director of the Ronald W. Walters Leadership and Public Policy Center at Howard, launched in 2012. Prior she served as the President and CEO of the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation (CBCF). She has held leadership positions with the New York City Police Department, the Detroit Police Department and the Metropolitan Police Department of the District of Columbia. She also served as executive director of the National Organization of Black Law Enforcement Executives (NOBLE) and has served on the faculty of several universities including Howard University, Rutgers University, North Carolina Central University, and the University of Central Florida.

Dr. Robert Trent Vinson is a Professor at the Carter G. Woodson Institute for African American & African Studies at the University of Virginia and a Research Associate at Stellenbosch University in South Africa. He is a scholar and teacher of 19th and 20th century African & African Diaspora history, specializing in the transnational connections between southern Africa, the Americas and the Caribbean. Vinson’s first book was The Americans Are Coming!: Dreams of ’American Negro Liberation’ in Segregationist South Africa (2012) and his second book was Albert Luthuli: Mandela before Mandela (2018). Vinson serves as President of the Association for the Study of the Worldwide African Diaspora (ASWAD). He earned his Ph.D. in African History from Howard University.

Dr. Pearl T. Robinson has authored more than 40 articles and book chapters on African and African American politics. She is co-author of Stabilizing Nigeria: Sanctions, Incentives, and Support for Civil Society and co-editor and co-author of Transformation and Resiliency in Africa. A member of the Council on Foreign Relations and a past President of the African Studies Association, she has chaired the SSRC/ACLS Joint Committee on African Studies; served on the boards of Oxfam-America and TransAfrica; as a curriculum consultant for the PBS/BBC series The Africans: A Triple Heritage; and as an advisor for Hopes on the Horizon. She is a past Director of Tufts' International Relations Program and has taught at Makerere University in Uganda and the University of Dar es Salaam in Tanzania.

Since her college years at Howard University, Dr. Mary Frances Berry has been one of the most visible activists in the cause of civil rights, gender equality and social justice in our nation. Serving as Chairperson of the U.S. Civil Rights Commission, Berry demanded equal rights and liberties for all Americans during four Presidential administrations. A pathbreaker, she also became the first woman to head a major research university, serving at the University of Colorado at Boulder. Berry also served as the principal education official in the U.S. Department of Health, Education and Welfare, working to improve access and quality education in our schools.

Dr. Joseph Jordan is Interim Vice Provost for Academic and Community Engagement, Director of the Stone Center for Black Culture and History and Adjunct Associate Professor, African/African American and Diaspora Studies at UNC at Chapel Hill. His work focuses on diaspora social justice movements and the cultural politics of race, identity and artistic production in the diaspora. Prior he served as Director of The Auburn Avenue Research Library on African American Culture and History; as Visiting Professor at the Instituto Superior de Educação, Cape Verde and at the Universidad Politecnica Argelia Laya in Venezuela, and as Associate Professor/Founding chair, African/African American Studies at Antioch College. He holds a Ph.D. in African Studies from HU.

Tonija Hope Navas brings over 19 years of experience in the international exchange, international education, and management fields to the Ralph Bunche International Affairs Center at Howard University. In South Africa she worked with a professor at the University of Cape Town to develop mechanisms to encourage exchange among international and South African students. At the DC-based international non-profit, Phelps Stokes Fund, she was promoted to Director of Programs for Latin America and the Caribbean. She also served as the founding Executive Director of the Baoba Fund for Racial Equity-North America.

Now Retired, Ambassador Battle has had a long and blessed career having served in most every level of academia from Instructor in Philosophy and Religion, University Chaplain, Associate Vice-President, Vice President, Executive Vice President/Provost, to President of a major Theological Seminary. His non-academic work included 20 Years as a U.S. Army Reserve Chaplain, retiring with the rank of Lieutenant Colonel. His continued service to the nation included serving as U.S. Ambassador to the African Union and U.S. Representative to the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa, and Senior Advisor to the State Department for the U.S./Africa Leaders Summit hosted by President Obama.

Dr. Menna Demessie is the Vice President of Policy Analysis and Research for the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation where she works on civil rights issues and economic development as well as other policy areas concerning African Americans and the black Diaspora. She received her joint Ph.D. in Public Policy and Political Science from the University of Michigan. Menna worked for Rep. Barbara Lee in the 112th U.S. Congress as an American Political Science Association Congressional Fellow.  Menna currently serves as the historian for the National Conference of Black Political Scientists (NCOBPS) and is the national youth coordinator for the Society of Ethiopians Established in the Disapora (SEED).

Dr. Errol A. Henderson is Associate Professor of International Relations (IR) at Pennsylvania State University. He earned a PhD in Political Science at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. He has authored 50 scholarly publications including five books—the latest: The Revolution Will not be Theorized. Henderson established the Diasporas and Politics (DAP) project in 2019 to analyze the influence of racial and religious diasporas in world affairs. He is an original co-sponsor of the Liberation Film Series at the Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History in Detroit, MI. Henderson is a veteran of the US Army.

Dr. Mohamed Saliou Camara is a professor and chair of the Department of African Studies at Howard University. He received a Ph.D. from Northwestern University in History on a Fulbright Scholarship. Prof. Camara is the author of six books, book chapters and peer-reviewed articles on African studies, with a focus on political history, media and society, religion and philosophy, the military and politics, and intra-African foreign relations. He is the founder of the Guinean Alliance for the Promotion of Citizenship (GAPC), a think tank geared toward the cultivation of civic leadership with a view to advancing national unity and democratic governance in the Republic of Guinea.

Dr. Christopher L. Daniels is an American academic, a Professor at Florida Agricultural and Mechanical University in the Center for Global Security and International Affairs. He is also the Chief Strategist for the New Era Entrepreneur Network. He previously worked as an adjunct professor at Georgetown University in the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service where he taught the course Government and Politics in Sub-Saharan Africa. He also interned with the Department of State in the Bureau of African Affairs at the U.S. Embassy in Maseru, Lesotho. He received his Ph.D. in African Studies from Howard University in May 2010.

Dr. Msia Kibona Clark is an Associate Professor of African cultural & feminist studies in the Department of African Studies at Howard University. She is originally from Tanzania and received her doctorate in African Studies from Howard University. Her work focuses on representations of Pan Africanism, African feminism, and African/Diaspora identities in popular culture. Her work examines hip-hop in Africa’s importance as social commentary, especially around Pan Africanism and African feminist thought. She has published three books (Hip Hop and Social Change in Africa: Ni Wakati, Hip-Hop in Africa: Prophets of the City and Dustyfoot Philosophers, and Pan African Spaces: Essays on Black Transnationalism).