Dr. Ife Williams is an Africologist, an expert in the historical and present experiences of Africans and African Descendants throughout the Diaspora. She holds a Bachelors degree from Lincoln University, a Master’s degree in American Government (1981), and Doctorate in Political Science from Clark Atlanta University (1988).

Her manuscript, “Police Brutality: A Philadelphia Story,” was published by Lexington Press in 2023. This city has had a long history of indifference towards and violation of Black bodies through overzealous street-level enforcement and sweeps, culminating in the 1985 bombing of a back-to-nature group housed in a Black community. The work’s central theme is redress from brutalization, as the absence of consistent punitive punishment of the perpetrators is a sanction and a badge of slavery.

Dr. Ife’s teaching career spans three decades and a number of institutions: Dillard University; University of Illinois; Savannah State University; Clark Atlanta University; Delaware County Community College and Cheyney University. Courses taught include African Politics; Black Politics; African American History; Black Philosophy; International Relations; International Organizations; Public Administration; Comparative Politics and Caribbean Studies.

To broaden the scope of the classroom, she took a number of workshops at Scribe Video and became a Multimedia Producer of the following documentaries: “Payback: A Reparations Story” and “‘Africa Is Not a Zoo'” on the displacement of indigenous people for game reserves. The knowledge acquired led her to seamlessly become an expert in curriculum development for online platforms of Canvas, Blackboard, WebStudy and Desire to Learn; serving as a consultant to Barbados Community College to transition to distance learning. The Chester school system commissioned her to create an interactive text supplement on the History of African Americans in Chester, Pennsylvania.

Traveling throughout the world to uncover the history of Africans and African Descendants, she has been to over thirty-two countries and has led group tours to Egypt, Ghana, Jamaica, and South Africa internationally, and New York, Baltimore, Washington, Georgia, and Alabama. These tours include lectures on history, culture and political activities, museums, sites of enslavement and revolts!

Most recently, she received a Mellon/ACLS Community College Faculty Fellowship for Enhancement of Digital Map on African and African Descendants’ Resistance Against Enslavement, building upon decades of scholarship on slavery, bringing the stories of revolts from across the globe into an interactive, digital modality.

As a Scholar-Activist, Ife Williams has engaged in social justice activities and research around global reparations serving as a Non-Governmental Representative for the United Methodist Church to the World Conference Against Racism (2001). Attending and documenting numerous conferences on Reparations by the World Social Forum, National Coalition of Blacks for Reparations in America (N’COBRA), Global Afrikan Congress (GAC), and National Conference of Black Political Scientists (NCOBPS).

A three-time Fulbright award recipient, lecturing at the University of Dar es Salaam and University of West Indies, Cavehill, while researching the Barbados Task Force on Reparations. She is presently on the distinguished roll of Fulbright Specialists.

The commemoration of the Tulsa Massacre in 2021 allowed her to present a legal analysis of reparations to the Oklahoma School of Law, Westchester County Black Bar Association, and the Tulsa Centennial Commission’s National Day of Learning.

Dr. Williams was honored to serve as President of the African Heritage Studies Association, (2018-2021) founded by John Henrik Clarke, to promote scholarship on Africa and the African Diaspora.