The Institute of Afro-American Affairs at New York University was founded in 1969 to research, document, and celebrate the cultural and intellectual production of Africa and its diaspora in the Atlantic world and beyond. The Institute is affiliated and shares leadership, staff, and facilities with NYU's Africana Studies Program. Both organizations are committed to the study of Blacks in modernity through concentrations in Pan-Africanism and Black Urban Studies. Now called the Institute of African American Affairs, the Institute each year brings to NYU Artists and Scholars-in-Residence, who during their residencies, participate in seminars, offer public presentations of their work, and meet with students. Past Artists-in-Residence have included author Walter Mosley; poet and essayist Amiri Baraka; actor, playwright, and performance artist Anna Deavere Smith; poet Jayne Cortez; actor and producer Danny Glover; and Malian musician Salif Keita. Our Scholars-in-Residence have included Nigerian author and Nobel Laureate Wole Soyinka; and David Levering Lewis, MacArthur Fellow and Martin Luther King, Jr. Professor of History at Rutgers.