In Memoriam: Kimuli Kasara
It was probably a bit daunting to be an external speaker giving a presentation in Columbia’s comparative politics seminar series, as Professor Kimuli Kasara was inevitably sitting at the front of the room, just to the left of the speaker. Everyone in the room knew that Kimuli could – and would – eventually cut to the quick. She would make clear the most essential point of concern, and, unnervingly, she would do so with gentleness and even a sense of humor. Then we would all sigh and think to ourselves, “Humm, why didn’t I think of that…”
Kimuli’s passing on November 26, 2025, will diminish much more than our weekly comparative seminar. A standout scholar, Kimuli had an instinct for addressing deep and important questions that are relevant to the study of Africa and beyond. She tenaciously collected appropriate and hard to obtain data, and applied a high level of methodological rigor, resulting in research that often turned on its head widely held views about ethnicity, distributive politics, political participation, violent conflict, and more.
For example, contrary to the conventional view that politicians favor their co-ethnics in Africa, Kimuli provides evidence that politicians in Africa often do not favor their own group, but rather favor members of other groups, and they do this to entrench their own power. This was but one of Kimuli’s lasting contributions to the study of ethnic politics. In a study of Kenya, she shows that inter-ethnic trust is strongest in locales that have the greatest levels of ethnic diversity, and that electoral competition does not affect levels of inter-ethnic trust, contrary to common claims that elections are used to inflame ethnic rivalries. In other research, Kimuli shows that ethnic integration reduces violence while segregation increases it. This runs counter to much conventional wisdom and to policy prescriptions that call for partition and separation of ethnic groups as a means to reduce ethic violence.
In papers co-authored with Pavrithra Suryanarayan, her former graduate student mentee, Kimuli also made two novel contributions linking a country’s bureaucratic capacity to the nature of its electoral politics. In one paper, Kimuli and Pavi show that contrary to the conventional view that the rich tend to vote in greater numbers than the poor – a wisdom based on examining only rich democracies – in fact, the relative propensity of rich and poor to vote depends on a country’s bureaucratic capacity. When such capacity is high, the rich have a strong interest in voting because the state can credibly commit to taxing the rich. But when bureaucratic capacity is low, the rich are safe from high taxes, and electoral politics has a more clientelist flavor, focusing on the allocation of small benefits and jobs. This gives poorer voters a greater interest in electoral participation. Kimuli and Pavi also link bureaucratic capacity to the intensity of class voting. Such capacity makes redistributive taxes and transfers a greater threat to the rich, and a greater benefit to the poor, and thus leads to more class-based voting behavior.
Sadly, Kimuli passed before she could complete other fascinating research in progress, including studies of how electoral violence shapes segregation, of the incidence of intersectional discrimination, of the mobilization of violence in some ethnic groups but not others, and of electoral reforms aimed at reducing violence.
Kimuli’s presence will be deeply missed in the classroom. She taught an important course on ethnic politics. In it, students not only learned important theories of political development and ethnic politics in African countries, but they also learned campaign songs and dances from African elections! This creativity in teaching also brought classroom success in the introductory comparative politics course, where, among other things, students ran simulations of elections and government formation, and interrogated their own political preferences, as applied to spatial models of voting. And Kimuli engaged many undergraduates in small seminars, including classes on agrarian politics in sub-Saharan Africa, on religion in politics, and on democratization and regime change. At the graduate level, she was an anchor in the teaching of our comparative politics field survey, and she offered specialized graduate seminars on party politics and on democracy, autocracy, and regime change.
Kimuli’s passing also leaves big shoes to fill when it comes to the day-to-day work of running our department and university. She filled too many roles to list here, but in all of them, she was able to serve up her stern and incisive judgment with a side of kindness and humor, whether the issue at hand was about hiring, promotion, graduate admissions, the responsibilities of PhD students, or the right and wrong ways to pursue various forms of diversity. Beloved by the department staff, year by year and chair by chair, Kimuli surveyed the daily tasks and trials of university work from her office in the back of the administrative suite, and became an unofficial partner and coach.
We invite you to join us in mourning the loss of a valued colleague, friend, and teacher, and in celebrating all that Kimuli brought to our discipline, to our department, to our University, and to its students.
Condolences may be directed to Professor Page Fortna, Chair, Columbia University Department of Political Science; [email protected]; 420 W. 118th Street, New York, NY 10027.