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ɬ�﷬’s new Department of African Diaspora Studies (ADS) is all about bringing the stories, creativity, and experiences of people of African descent to the center of campus life. Rooted in Black, Pan-Africanist, Africana, and Black feminist traditions, the department encourages students to explore how African and diasporic communities have shaped, and continue to shape, the world through art, culture, resilience, and imagination.

Leading the way is John Thabiti Willis, the Kesho Scott Chair of African Diaspora Studies and associate professor of History. Thabiti’s work dives into the history of Africa and its global connections from the Atlantic to the Indian Ocean and how performance, labor, and heritage help tell those stories. We caught up with him to talk about what this new department means for ɬ�﷬, what excites him most about the work ahead, and what inspires him beyond the classroom. 
 

Q: Where did you grow up, and how did your early years shape your sense of community? 

A: I spent the nine months of the academic years of my childhood in Birmingham, Alabama, and the other three months of the summer in Wilmington, Delaware, before I ended up spending the last two years of high school in Delaware. 

Beyond my immediate family, most of my relatives lived in a different state; thus, I deeply internalized an understanding of community building that required I extend myself outside of my comfort zone to build bridges between different worlds, perspectives, and experiences. Those early experiences taught me that forming connections across difference is not optional but necessary, in part because the people who matter to us are rarely confined to one place. For me, community is always already plural and trans-local. 

As I began to travel frequently internationally during graduate school, my family and community extended across the globe. 
 

Q: What interests, hobbies, or activities do you enjoy outside your academic work? 

A: My interests include science fiction, travel, and dance. I developed a passion for West African dance (Guinean traditions in particular) while in undergraduate and graduate school in Atlanta, Georgia, as well as for Chicago style stepping (a form of couple’s dance). 

Dance, for me, has come to represent more than movement: it is cultural memory and expressive practice. Reading speculative or science fiction opens imaginative space to challenge the constraints of the present and imagine other possibilities for the past and the future. Traveling, conversely, deepens my sense of how histories of connection, rupture, and movement shape people and places. 
 

Q: Why is it important that ɬ�﷬ now has a Department of African Diaspora Studies? 

A: Establishing African Diaspora Studies as a department is both overdue and urgent. It signals that ɬ�﷬ recognizes the study of Africa and its diasporas as central,  — not peripheral, — to understanding our world today. The experiences and ideas of people of African descent have shaped every major sphere of modern life — political, economic, artistic, and spiritual — yet their stories have too often been fragmented or marginalized within higher education. 

 In a moment marked by national and global divisions, cultural erasure, and historical amnesia, African Diaspora Studies invites us to remember and to reconnect with that which has been scattered and divided by oceans, by national boundaries, and by imposed ideas of race, culture, and civilization. It calls us to piece together histories that colonialism and slavery sought to sever, to listen across languages and faiths, and to recover the intellectual, artistic, and spiritual continuities that bind Africa and its diasporas. 

 In doing so, ADS challenges the false separations that have long structured academic disciplines and public discourse alike. It reminds us that what has been divided can also be reimagined through study, dialogue, and collaboration as a shared human story. This work of reconnection is not nostalgic; it is visionary. It equips us to face the complexities of our present moment with a deeper sense of relation, responsibility, and possibility. 

For students and faculty alike, ADS is not simply a field of study, it is a practice of engagement. It calls us to learn from the past with humility, to confront the inequities of the present with courage, and to imagine futures rooted in justice, empathy, and belonging. The creation of this department affirms that ɬ�﷬’s commitment to social responsibility and global learning must include the voices, histories, and visions of the African world. 
 

Q: What do you hope will emerge from the establishment of the department? 

 A: I hope the establishment of African Diaspora Studies will create a space where the study of Africa and its global diasporas is not only pursued as an academic field but lived as a practice of connection, remembrance, and transformation. My vision is for a department that cultivates curiosity and empathy — where students, faculty, and staff engage deeply with histories of movement, creativity, and self-determination that continue to shape our world. 

I want ADS to nurture a community of thinkers and doers who see learning as a relational act — linking classrooms in Iowa to archives in Oman, museums in Zanzibar, markets in the Arabian and Persian Gulf, and mosques throughout the Indian Ocean rim. Through these encounters, I hope we build new forms of collaboration, pedagogy, and storytelling that reimagine what it means to study, teach, and live through a diasporic lens.  

The creation of this department also expands what it means to be a ɬ�﷬ian to include people we may never have imagined would call this “jewel of the prairie” their home, and to affirm that the liberal arts can thrive in conversation with the world, not apart from it. African Diaspora Studies invites collaboration across every part of the institution. It will support the development of a new major, generate faculty and staff development opportunities, and foster interdisciplinary collaborations that bridge departments, divisions, and centers. I envision lecture series, artist residencies, and research initiatives that connect our campus to community partners across the state of Iowa and around the world, strengthening ɬ�﷬’s identity as a global liberal arts college rooted in place yet open to the world. 

Ultimately, I hope the department becomes a model for how higher education can evolve: integrating scholarship, creative practice, and community engagement in ways that are grounded in justice, humility, and belonging. 
 

Q: What brought you to ɬ�﷬, and how has your experience here been so far? 

 What drew me to ɬ�﷬ was its enduring commitment to social responsibility, critical inquiry, and the belief that ideas can and should shape the world. The invitation to build the Department of African Diaspora Studies felt like a rare opportunity to help reimagine what a liberal arts education can be in the 21st century, and to do so within a community that values both intellectual rigor and moral imagination. 

I was also drawn to the people: the students who ask bold questions, the faculty who engage deeply across disciplines, and the staff whose work animates the college’s mission every day. My experience so far has been deeply rewarding. There’s a spirit of openness here — a willingness to experiment, to listen, and to grow together — that gives real meaning to the phrase “the life of the mind.” ɬ�﷬’s scale allows for relationships that are both personal and transformative, and that’s where genuine learning happens.