Dr. Maulana Karenga
Professor and Academic Advisor
Department of Africana Studies
California State University, Long Beach
B.A., M.A. University of California, Los Angeles
Ph.D. United States International Unviersity
San Diego
Ph.D. University of Southern California
Los Angeles
Dr. Maulana Karenga is professor of Africana Studies at California State University, Long Beach. An activist-scholar of national and international recognition, Dr. Karenga has played a significant role in Black intellectual and political culture since the 60’s, especially in such educational and social movements as Black Studies, Black Power, Black Arts, Independent Schools, Afrocentricity, ancient Egyptian studies, Ifa ethical studies, the Million Person Marches, and reparations.
Furthermore, he is chair of Us (The Organization Us), and the National Association of Kawaida Organizations and executive director of the Kawaida Institute of Pan-African Studies. He has lectured on the life and struggle of African peoples on the major campuses of the USA and in Africa, the People’s Republic of China, Cuba, Trinidad, Britain and Canada.
Also, he is the creator of the pan-African cultural holiday Kwanzaa and author of numerous scholarly articles and books, including: Introduction to Black Studies; Kwanzaa: A Celebration of Family, Community and Culture; Kawaida: A Communitarian African Philosophy; Odu Ifa: The Ethical Teachings; Selections From The Husia: Sacred Wisdom of Ancient Egypt; and Maat, The Moral Ideal in Ancient Egypt: A Study in Classical African Ethics.
Having earned Ph.D.’s in social ethics (University of Southern California) and in political science (U.S. International University), his fields of teaching and research within Black Studies are: Black Studies theory and history, Africana (continental and diasporan) philosophy; ancient Egyptian (Maatian) ethics; ancient Yoruba (Ifa) ethics; African American intellectual history; ethnic relations and the socio-ethical thought of Malcolm X. He is currently writing a book on Malcolm X and the Critique of Domination: An Ethics of Liberation.
New Book
Maulana Karenga:
An Intellectual Portrait
by Molefi Kete Asante
Cornel West, Princeton University
"To have the seminal thinker Molefi Asante writing on the legendary Maulana Karenga is a great treat! This work is an historic encounter of great significance and contemporary relevance."
F.Abiola Irele, Harvard University
"In this remarkable study, Professor Asante not only provides an intellectual biography of Karenga, undertaken with rare devotion and deep understanding, but also renders homage to an outstanding scholar whose work, spanning some four decades, has been fundamental in the development of African American cultural Awareness in our time."
Charles Henry
University of California, Berkeley
"Asante has given us the first in-depth study of the thought of Maulana Karenga. A major cultural influence in the sixties, Karenga's Kawaida Philosophy serves as a primary source of Afrocentric thinking today."