His research and analysis on new voting trends and realignments in politics have been widely published. He brings a distinctly cultural approach to the study of American politics. His recent scholarship helps to explain the growing political independence among African American voters in particular. He attributes a “black and independent alliance” to the successful presidential nomination of Senator Barack Obama, who broke partisan convention by reaching out to independents and Republicans, in addition to rank-and-file Democrats, during the 2008 primaries.

The author of In the Balance of Power: Independent Black Politics and Third Party Movements in the United States and Black Populism in the New South and a contributing author to History in Dispute: American Social and Political Movements, Ali has served as a guest editor for Souls: A Critical Journal of Black Politics, Culture, and Society and is a contributing editor to The Neo-Independent: The Politics of Becoming. Polls taken by CNN, Gallup, and the Pew Research Center, show that up to 43% of Americans self-identify as politically independent (neither Democrat nor Republican). Who are these independents and what is their history?

Ali has been at the ground level of independent politics since 1992 as both a political organizer and chronicler of its historical development. In the wake of the independent political upsurge spurred by Ross Perot in 1992, Ali reached out to independents around the country. His contribution to the national effort to bring independents together from around the country into a pro-reform political party coalesced in the formation of the Patriot Party in 1994 followed by the national Reform Party one year later. Throughout, Ali worked to increase the presence of young voters in the larger independent political movement while writing about the growth of independents, with an emphasis on the role of African Americans within the movement. Born in Lima, Peru, to South American and East Indian parents, Ali began college at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. While at Michigan, he was awarded an Oxford House scholarship and received research grants from the Lilly Endowment and the Mellon Foundation to work as a research assistant to Prof. Maxwell Owusu, then an advisor to the Committee of Experts on the Ghanaian Constitution. Their research on Ghana helped to inform the rewriting of the country’s constitution in 1993.

Upon graduation from the London School of Economics, Ali returned to the U.S. to work as a national field organizer for Dr. Lenora Fulani’s independent presidential campaign–which focused on the need for an open and equitable electoral process. Following the campaign, he worked in the Department of Public Information at the United Nations, before being awarded a fellowship at Columbia University to complete his doctorate. Under the supervision of Prof. Eric Foner, his dissertation documented the role of African Americans in the rise of the People’s Party in the period following the collapse of Reconstruction and before the consolidation of Jim Crow. (See video clip)

Recognized for his innovative research and engaging teaching style, he was invited to serve as a Lecturer at Columbia‚s Institute for Research in African American Studies after serving as a Visiting Scholar at the Center for the Study of the American South at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. He has since served as a visiting professor at Vanderbilt University, a Fulbright professor at National University in Bogota, Colombia, and a Library Scholar at Harvard University.