Tukufu Zuberi

Tukufu Zuberi (born April 26, 1959) is an American sociologist, filmmaker, social critic, educator, and writer. Zuberi has appeared in several documentaries on Africa and the African diaspora, including Liberia: America's Stepchild (2002), and 500 Years Later (2005). He is one of the hosts of the long-running PBS program History Detectives. As founder of his own production company, he produced the film African Independence, which premiered at the San Diego Black Film Festival in January 2013. He is the Lasry Family Professor of Race Relations, professor and chair of the sociology department, and professor of Africana studies at the University of Pennsylvania.

Biography

Born Antonio McDaniel to Willie and Annie McDaniel, and raised in the housing projects of Oakland, California in the 1970s, he changed his name to Tukufu Zuberi, which is Swahili for "beyond praise" and "strength". Zuberi says that he "took the name because of a desire to make and have a connection with an important period where people were challenging what it means to be a human being."

Zuberi received a bachelor's degree from San Jose State in 1981, a master's degree from Sacramento State in 1985, and a PhD from the University of Chicago in 1989. In 1988, he joined the faculty of the University of Pennsylvania, where he became the Lasry Family Professor of Race Relations, the chair of the sociology department between 2007 and 2013, and the director of the Center for Africana Studies between 2002 and 2008. He has been a visiting professor at Makerere University in Kampala, Uganda, and the University of Dar es Salaam in Tanzania.

Zuberi's research focuses on race and African and African diaspora populations.