About the Event

In his new book, Neither Settler nor Native: The Making of and Unmaking of Permanent Minorities, Professor Mahmood Mamdani argues that the nation-state and the colonial state created each other. In case after case around the globe -- from the New World to South Africa, Israel to Germany to Sudan -- the colonial state and the nation-state have been mutually constructed through the politicisation of a religious or ethnic majority at the expense of an equally manufactured minority.

Mahmood Mamdani is Herbert Lehman Professor of Anthropology and of Middle Eastern, South Asian and African Studies at Columbia University. He is the author of Citizen and Subject, When Victims Become Killers and Good Muslim, Bad Muslim.

Moderator: Mohammad-Mahmoud Ould Mohamedou is Professor of International History and Politics and Chair of the International History and Politics Department at the Graduate Institute.