Arthur Lee Smith, Jr., is the birth name of scholar and educator, Dr. Molefi Kete Asante (1942– ), whose first name means “keeper of tradition.” A scholar of intercultural communication and speech and also of black nationalist intellectual history, he is professor and chairperson of the Department of African-American studies at Temple University. He earned a bachelor's degree from Oklahoma Christian College (1964), a master's degree from Pepperdine University (1965), and a doctorate from the University of California, Los Angeles (1968). The author of more than seventy books and four hundred articles on communication theory and the African-American experience, he is considered to be the leading proponent of the Afrocentric movement, which promotes the importance of African people as agents of history and culture. His autobiography, As I Run Toward Africa, was published in 2012, and his most recent book, The African Pyramids of Knowledge, was published in 2015. His more than one-hundred awards include induction into the Literary Hall of Fame for Writers of African Descent (2004).
