During Black August 2026, the Asantehene, Otumfo Osei Tutu II, and Otumfo-Yere Julia Osei Tutu of the Asante People are visiting the United States.
Their trip features a Royal Lecture at Howard University and an Akwasidae Festival at Bowie State University, bracketed by a major African business summit. This historic visit highlights a foundational truth: Global African solidarity and belonging must anchor self-determination to drive local, regional, and global advancement.
This journey takes place amid deep global political friction.
As the old Age of European Expansion rapidly deteriorates, powerful nations scramble to renegotiate global arrangements. Meanwhile, political figures in the U.S. fetishize authoritarian leadership and try to destabilize existing political and economic orders. Domestic U.S. communities also struggle to claim collective authority and protect explicit individual rights within a destabilizing U.S. legal system.
In grappling with relationships between Governance formations and the Social Structures which hold them together, the Asante delegation raises questions of Governance, where authority is informed by the Cultural Meaning-Making that recognizes relationships between memory and vision, the protective custodianship of Ancestral continuity represented by the Golden Stool, and the living assent of the people in renewed and new Governance formations.
As corporate lawfare and a compromised SCOTUS threaten U.S. domestic stability, and neoliberal frameworks continue to buffet the modern university, this week we raise questions of structural autonomy, from the protocols of the Asante to the “jailbreaking” of the Black University, and ask several questions:
What does it mean to truly govern with the people’s assent? How do we reclaim authority when structures built to rule us teeter? What happens when people withdraw their authority? How do we strengthen our global ties for mutual benefit?
