Biography

ZAHEER ALI is a doctoral student in history at Columbia University, where he is focusing his research on twentieth-century African-American history and religion. He is conducting an oral history of the Nation of Islam's community in Harlem, which will also be the focus of his dissertation.

At Columbia's Institute for Research in African American Studies, he teaches "Islam in the African American Experience," a research seminar that traces the historical relationship between Islam and Black America. And, he also teaches "The American Experience," a survey course in American history, at New York University.

Under the direction of Dr. Manning Marable, he has served as project manager and senior researcher of the Malcolm X Project (MXP) at Columbia University, a multi-year research initiative on the life and legacy of Malcolm X. As project manager, he served as associate editor of an online annotated multimedia version of The Autobiography of Malcolm X, developed by MXP and the Columbia University Center for New Media Teaching and Learning (CCNMTL) (2004), and is currently a lead researcher for Dr. Marable's biography of Malcolm X, due to be completed in 2009.

He also serves as Senior Advisor for New Muslim Cool, the first full-length documentary film project to explore the formation of indigenous American Muslim culture and its deep connections to hip-hop and African American and Latino cultural and social justice movements, scheduled for Summer 2009 broadcast on "POV" for PBS television.

He received his Bachelor of Arts degree with a concentration in Afro-American studies from Harvard University, where he was a Mellon Undergraduate Fellow under faculty advisors Henry Louis Gates, Jr. and Catherine Clinton. During that time, he also served as a research fellow for the "Pluralism Project: World Religions in America," a multi-year research initiative under the direction of Harvard religion professor Diana Eck, for which he researched the history and diversity of African-American Muslim communities in New York City.

He is a recipient of Columbia University's Merit Scholars Graduate Fellowship, and a multi-year recipient of the Social Science Research Council's Mellon Mays Pre-Doctoral Research Grant. He is currently a member of the Editorial Advisory Board of SOULS: A Critical Journal of Black Politics, Culture and Society.

He has given presentations in both academic and non-academic settings, and is available to speak on a broad range of topics, including Islam and Black America, the history of Black nationalism and the Black freedom movement, the life and legacy of Malcolm X, and the importance of historical preservation through oral history and archiving.

For more information, please direct all inquiries via email.