Dr. Tukufu Zuberi is familiar to millions of viewers on the popular PBS “History Detectives” program, a television series in its eighth season devoted to “exploring the complexities of historical mysteries, searching out the facts, myths and conundrums that connect local folklore, family legends and interesting objects,” according to its Web site.
His day job? Zuberi is the Lasry Family Endowed Professor of Race Relations at the University of Pennsylvania, where he serves as chair of the sociology department.He still finds time in between teaching and filming his television show to cha cha, waltz and swing with his student-instructor at Penn.
He is one of eight professors selected to participate in an on-campus “Dancing with the Professors” extravaganza modeled after ABC’s hit show, “Dancing with the Stars.”
“I can’t dance a lick,” says Zuberi. “The rehearsals have been filled with a lot of sweat, pain and fun.”
Despite his celebrity status as one of the nation’s most recognized Black intellectuals, Zuberi, who first burst onto the national scene in the early 1990s, has found a way to hone all of his academic interests without forcing himself to choose one discipline over another.
“I am trying to be a scholar like W.E.B. Du Bois,” says Zuberi, who authored numerous texts including Thicker Than Blood: An Essay on How Racial Statistics Lie.
“Du Bois was an interdisciplinary scholar.
