Wednesday, December 17, 2014

The Embassy of the Kingdom of Morocco, the Institute of African Studies, and the History Department

Today I went to see the ambassador of the Kingdom of Morocco give a donation to the Institute of African Studies for a project that is clearly focused on historical research. This is something that has occurred repeatedly. The Institute of African Studies has regularly gotten huge donations from various donors including corporations like Guinness while the History Department has gotten absolutely nothing, not a single peswa since I have been here. All of the money for history research gets sent to the historians working in the Institute of African Studies and none goes to the historians in the History Department. I am not sure why this extreme imbalance of funding exits. But, if you are interested in historical projects refusing to provide any funds to the History Department and the lecturers that work there does not seem like the most logical strategy. On the other hand success which is only measured in terms of money in today's global capitalist economy attracts more money and monopolizes it. So it appears we are locked into a typical neo-colonial pattern whereby all the donations by foreign governments, corporations, and rich individuals for historical projects all go to the Institute of African Affairs forever and none will ever go to the History Department.

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