Dr. Salah M. Hassan is founding Director of The Africa Institute. Hassan concurrently holds positions at Cornell University as the Distinguished Professor of Arts & Sciences in African and African Diaspora Art History and Visual Culture in the Department of Africana Studies and Research Center; in the Department of History of Art and Visual Studies; and as Director of the Institute for Comparative Modernities (ICM). Hassan also served as Professor of History of Art in African and African American Studies and Fine Art at Brandeis University, where he was previously awarded the Madeleine Haas Russell Professorship in the Departments of African and Afro-American Studies and Fine Art.