Souleymane Bachir Diagne

Souleymane Bachir Diagne is a professor of Philosophy and Francophone Studies at Columbia University and the Director of the Institute of African Studies. An alumnus of the Ecole Normale Supérieure, Professor Diagne holds a PhD in Philosophy from Sorbonne University. Prior to his appointment at Columbia, Professor Diagne taught philosophy at Cheikh Anta Diop University in Dakar, Senegal, for twenty years before joining Northwestern University in 2002 as a professor in the departments of Philosophy and Religion, with an affiliation to the Program of African Studies.


His fields of research and teaching include history of philosophy, history of logic and mathematics, Islamic philosophy, African Literature and Philosophy. His publications include: Boole, l’oiseau de nuit en plein jour (1989), a study of George Boole’s algebra of logic; Islam and the Open Society: Fidelity and Movement in Muhammad Iqbal’s Thought (2001); Léopold Sédar Senghor, l’art africain comme philosophie (2007). He is the author of African Art as Philosophy: Senghor, Bergson, and the Idea of Negritude (Seagull Books, 2011), The Ink of the Scholars: Reflections on Philosophy in Africa (Dakar, Codesria, 2016), Open to Reason: Muslim Philosophers in Conversation with Western Tradition (New York, Columbia University Press, 2018). In Search of Africa(s). Universalism and Decolonial Thought (co-author of the dialogue: Jean-Loup Amselle), Cambridge, UK & Medford, MA, Polity Press, 2020. Professor Diagne is co-director of Ethiopiques, a Senegalese journal of literature and philosophy, and is on the editorial board of Présence Africaine (Paris), among several other scientific institutions. 


Among Professor Diagne’s honours are Chevalier dans l’Ordre national du Lion, from the Government of Senegal, as well as Grand Croix dans l’Ordre national du Mérite and Officier de l'Ordre National des Arts et Lettres from the French government. An associate member of the Royal Academy of Belgium and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Professor Diagne also served on the Aga Khan Award for Architecture Master Jury in 2010.

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Souleymane Bachir Diagne