Few can be as dangerous – and pitiful – as an ignorant and less than truthful professor. It is especially bad when he chooses, as some have been known to do, to be ignorant, refuse to see or accept the truth when it does not fit into his pre-determined positions on an issue or contradicts it.

Professors’ pronouncements carry a lot of weight and respect. What they say is taken to be true or valid because it is assumed to have gone through an intellectual process of valuation and distillation so that what remains at the end is credible.

Even when there is doubt, they are still taken seriously and given the benefit of the doubt because they are supposed to be scholars, experts and authorities in their field.

That is normal and what is expected of professors. But that is not always the case and that is where the danger lies. Sometimes they stray from their area of expertise and wade into unknown and unfamiliar territory and attempt to be experts there as well,

They then become ordinary like most of us, say the most banal things, and make sweeping, baseless generalisations about individuals, systems or countries. And because they are clueless, they clutch at anything and everything and try to use it to prove their pre-conceived ideas.

It is sad, but also dangerous, when all they can do is parrot the repeated, tired and discredited opinions of others with all the biases, inaccuracies and distortions, and outright falsehoods. Yet they have the tools to sift through such stuff, pick and keep what is correct and discard the lies, the irrelevant and immaterial. They have the ability to distinguish the highly subjective or that driven by personal interests, emotions or some sort of ideology from the dispassionate and objective. They are able to tell what is driven by grudge or rage, hate or intolerance.

But the wilfully ignorant do not. In this, they betray their intelligence and academic integrity, and the public that holds them in high regard and believes every word they pronounce.

It is equally pitiful to hear an African professor especially in a foreign land (but even at home) become his master’s voice, repeat all he says and take joy in denigrating fellow Africans as if his acceptance depends on it.

Professor Makau Mutua, a Kenyan, who teaches law at the State University of New York, has lately taken to commenting on Rwandan matters. But it is obvious that he either has no clue about the country, or has embraced wholesale the views of Rwanda’s detractors, or has elected to ignore the evidence before him.

Now, Makau Mutua is an eminent, highly learned professor of law. No one can question his knowledge of the law. But on Rwanda, he betrays total lack of understanding of the country, its people, history and politics.

His comments on President Kagame, for instance, read like a collection of headlines from different media publications or comments from the country’s habitual detractors that he has stringed together into a story.

He presents an uninformed, distorted, and revised version of Rwanda post-1994 from material obviously gleaned from press reports or conversations with anti-Rwanda elements.

He overdoes even himself when writing about Paul Rusesabagina whose trial and sentence is the main point of his recent piece on Rwanda. He offers nothing new, only repeating the same accusation of abduction. But Makau Mutua is a lawyer and should know the distinction between abduction and arrest but chooses to be ignorant.

He lists Rusesabagina’s honours and saviour claims as if they were exculpatory factors in a criminal trial. Would he present them in court as such?

Then he adds his voice to a chorus of demands for Rusesabagina’s release, never mind the irrefutable evidence linking him to the murder of innocent Rwandans and destruction of property. In effect Prof Makau Mutua is calling for a political overturn of a judicial decision. And this from a man who wanted to be Kenya’s Chief Justice and prides himself as a human rights lawyer.

To cap it all, he insults the Rwandan judiciary, calling its proceedings ‘nothing short of a kangaroo court’. Did the good professor actually follow the trial which was held in the open and streamed live? Apparently not. He reveals his bias and is only keen to attach derogatory labels to a judiciary that is highly regarded around the world.

The irony is, Makau Mutua has been accused of the same things: intolerance, high-handedness and dictatorial tendencies when he was dean of the SUNY Law School, which he has vehemently denied. He should know better than to make similar allegations without proof.

But perhaps we are too harsh on the law professor and should be more charitable and try to understand where he is coming from. He is an activist whose view of African politics and politicians was shaped in the 1980s in President Daniel arap Moi’s Kenya and his opposition to the Moi government.

Problem is, his activism seems to have evolved little since. He seeks to project this activism rooted in a different era and place to Rwanda in 2021. It simply does not fit. He still sees African politics through the prism of anti-Moi activism. Which distorts or blurs his vision and colours his judgement on countries like Rwanda.

It would be easy to dismiss Prof Makau Mutua’s comments as the ranting of a madman. But he is not. He is a lawyer and professor and columnist whose pronouncements should be measured and weighty. Only that in this case they are the views of a man who has elected to be ignorant about Rwanda. That is why they are dangerous.

The views expressed in this article are of the writer.