Hisham Aidi is a political scientist and filmmaker. He is Senior Lecturer at Columbia University's School of International and Public Affairs. He is the author of Redeploying the State (Palgrave 2008) a comparative study of market reform and labor movements in Latin America; co-editor, with Manning Marable, of Black Routes to Islam (Palgrave 2009); and author of Rebel Music: Race, Empire and the New Muslim Youth Culture (Pantheon 2014). As a cultural reporter, his work has appeared in The Atlantic, Foreign Affairs, The Nation and The New Yorker. Aidi is the recipient of the Carnegie Scholar Award (2008), the American Book Award (2015), and the Hip Hop Scholar Award (2015). He is also director of three documentaries -- Malcolm X and the Sudanese (2020), A Thousand and One Berber Nights (2022) and Sister Aisha: Queen Mother of Harlem (2023).