Omar H. Ali is Dean of Lloyd International Honors College, and Professor of Comparative African Diaspora History at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro where he has infused improvisation, performance and play into the curriculum and in the culture of the college and the campus as a whole. Selected as The Carnegie Foundation North Carolina Professor of the Year (2016) and knighted by French Government in 2020 for his work with teachers around the world, Omar is the author of five books, including In the Balance of Power: Independent Black Politics and Third Party Movements in the United States (Ohio University Press, 2020) and Malik Ambar: Power and Slavery Across the Indian Ocean (Oxford University Press, 2016).