Greetings Glocal Citizens! We have another two-part conversation featuring writer, journalist, professor and currently Director of New York University Accra, Chiké Frankie Edozien. Like me, NYU is also his alma mater. Frankie, who continues to teach while he leads the Accra program, was named one of the Top 50 journalism professors for 2012 by Journalsimdegree.org. In 2017 he was awarded the university’s prestigious Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Faculty award for excellence in teaching, leadership, social justice and community building. And even more kudos, Frankie’s 2017 memoir, The Lives of Great Men, is a Lambda Book Award winner.
Frankie's career has spanned broadcast journalism working with BET and ABC to the New York Post for 15 years as its City Hall Reporter and lead writer on legislative affairs from 1999-2008. His coverage of major news stories including the aftermath of the shooting death of Amadou Diallo, HIV/AIDS and healthcare disparities in communities around the Big Apple was critically acclaimed. In 2008 he exposed a decades long secretive slush fund scheme that resulted in reforming the way the City Council doled out taxpayer funds and a federal investigation that saw several lawmakers jailed. He covered crime, courts, labor issues and human services public health and politics, reporting from around the country and abroad for the paper.
Prof Edozien has also been keeping busy during the season of lockdowns as a participant in the Afrolit Sans Frontieres Festival which is a virtual literary festival founded by South African author and curator Zukiswa Wanner as a response to the curfews and lockdowns related to the coronavirus pandemic within the African continent.
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