"You go to the library, pick up Time magazine, and see how often Africa gets on the cover. It's there quite a lot. But there's never a picture of a person. It's always an animal, always a giraffe or an elephant. [The articles] are always about things of interest to people with cameras and guns, about tourism," he says. "This is a continent which at the moment has huge quantities of refugees all over place, wars and rumors of wars, as well as wonderfully positive things, none of which ever surface. So I think people both need more information and need to stop thinking about Africa as a place that should interest Black Americans. the problems of Africa are human problems."

A similary broad sensibility informs his view of African-American history. "The pride I feel in African-American achievements is the pride in human achievement," he says.

Appiah has been for the duration of his scholarly life a staunch opponent of Afrocentric ideology ("The history they teach is rubbish," he says). He rejects the racialized version of history offered by many contemporary Afrocentric writers.

Instead, Appiah is interested in African Americans not because they come from a common "race," but because they have played a pivotal role in the history and ideology of America.

"The problem [with Afrocentrism] is that it neglects entirely a very important source of pride for African-Americans, which is African-American history, which despite all the negative aspects has seen astonishing achievements...it worries me that people feel they have to go somewhere else."

His stance runs counter to the viewpoints of many of his outspoken students, he says. "People sometimes say we [in Afro-American Studies] aren't Afrocentric enough," he says.

Students, he says, ask him to discuss the Pan-African thinkers who believed an international racial alliance was the only way to solve the problems of American blacks and Africans.

"I have been teaching it for ten years, I write about it I think they were fascinating guys," he says. "I don't agree with them, but then I don't agree with anyone in the nineteenth century about anything."

In general, though, he says the differences between his views and those of his students have not been counterproductive. There is always a "gap in understanding" between students and professors, he says. "If there's [not], then you should get better professors."

Appiah believes his views on race are painfully obvious. "I take most of what I say to be part of intelligent common sense," he says. "When people like Skip urged me, having talked to me, to write down those things that I thought, I thought it would be a waste of time."

Very few people concur in this modest account of his work.

Nicholas L. Sturgeon, chair of the philosophy department at Cornell, calls his former colleague "terrific, a real catch academically. He's published a lot on standard philosophical issues, and he's extremely learned on African thought. He manages to bring these two together quite fruitfully."

"He was a superb colleague," says Robert N. Brandon, chair of Duke's philosophy department. "I think he's quite unusual in having a range of interests from mainstream topics in analytic philosophy to contemporary culture to African thought. there are very few people who have that breadth."

And in a recent review for The New York Times, novelist Charles Johnson called In My Father's House" one of the handful of theoretical works on race that will help us preserve our humanity and guide us gracefully into the next century."

Despite his sedate appearance, Appiah is astoundingly busy with a variety of projects that give new meaning to the term "interdisciplinary scholar."