Sobukwe Odinga
Sobukwe Odinga
Assistant Professor of African American Studies & US Foreign Policy
Email: sodinga@afam.ucla.edu
Biography
Sobukwe Odinga is an Assistant Professor in the Department of African American Studies at UCLA. His areas of expertise are international relations, diplomatic history, African security politics, and race and US foreign policy. His research focuses on the global and regional security relations of African states. His book, Treachery and Diplomacy: The Shadow Politics of US-Africa Relations, documents the interplay of realpolitik and racial politics in US security cooperation with allies such as Liberia, Ethiopia, Zaire (D.R.C.), and Uganda. He is also working on a monograph that explores shifting African American conceptions of national security in the context of contemporary US domestic and foreign policy. Before joining the faculty at UCLA, Dr. Odinga completed a Vice Provost Postdoctoral Fellowship at the University of Pennsylvania.
Education
- Ph.D., Political Science, The City University of New York Graduate Center
- M.A., Africana Studies, New York University
Publications
- Sobukwe Odinga, Treachery and Diplomacy: The Shadow Politics of US-Africa Relations (Columbia University Press, 2026)
- Sobukwe Odinga, “A Fragile Agenda for Peace: Continuity and Change in the Biden Administration’s Africa Policy,” Peace Review 36, no.1 (2024)
- Sobukwe Odinga, “Senate Eyes Plan to Send Military Aid to Africa to Fight Beijing and Moscow,” Responsible Statecraft, November 19, 2021.
- Sobukwe Odinga, “Nigeria and the Nation-State: Rethinking Diplomacy with the Postcolonial World by John Campbell,” H-Diplo/H-Net, November 17, 2021.
- Sobukwe Odinga, “In This Land of Plenty: Mickey Leland and Africa in American Politics by Benjamin Talton,” Africa Today 67, no.2/3 (2020/2021).
- Sobukwe Odinga, “What’s at Stake in Uganda for Black Americans?” The Black Scholar Blog, January 19, 2020.
- Sobukwe Odinga, “The Privileged Friendship: Reassessing the US Central Intelligence Agency Operation at Zaire’s Kamina Airbase,” Diplomacy and Statecraft 29, no. 4 (2018).
- Sobukwe Odinga, “We Recommend Compliance: Bargaining and Leverage in Ethiopian-US Intelligence Cooperation,” Review of African Political Economy 44, no. 153 (2017).
- Sobukwe Odinga, “An Interview with Chinua Achebe,” Black Renaissance 6, no. 2 (2005).
Awards, Honors, & Fellowships
- 2017 APCG-Lynne Rienner Best Dissertation Award
- African Politics Conference Group, American Political Science Association
- 2015 The Ralph Bunche Dissertation Fellowship
- The Ralph Bunche Institute for International Studies
- 2015 Award for Archival Research in African Diaspora Studies
- The Advanced Research Collaborative, The CUNY Graduate Center
