He believes the power of language can heal a country.

Isak Nti Asare calls people towers of Legos. If we join in conversation, we should leave with a piece of the other, the way Lego structures never make a clean break.
Nti Asare explains ideas in simple images, but his vision is anything but portrait-sized. “Sometimes people ask you what your vision is and you feel like you have to ratchet it down,” he says. His face stretches into its comfortable smile. “I would like to change the world.”

For Nti Asare, that change will come through the languages of the continent his father called home, the continent he calls the next Middle East — Africa.

Although his father is Ghanaian and speaks the Ghanaian language Akan-Twi, Isak didn’t learn the language until he came to IU in 2007. Now, he speaks Twi comfortably, but he’s also studied Bambara, Swahili, Portuguese, and speaks fluent Spanish.
“The best way to know a people is to know their language,” he says. He spent last summer in Ghana, studying the relationship between Ghanaian institutions (chiefs, kings, sultans) and democracy. He stayed with extended family members who shared the stories of his family, passed down verbally through generations. “In the West, we’re all about finding out how we’re different,” he says. “In Africa, we’re trying to find a way to make people African.”

Nti Asare said Africans try to find a way to connect with everyone they meet, and this mentality infuses his leadership style. He is the president of the African Student Association, which welcomes both African students and those interested in Africa.
“Our goals are to highlight aspects of the African continent that people may not realize, to foster conversation, to incite action, and to help students reevaluate the beliefs they hold,” he says.

He takes inspiration from the current president of the United States, as well as a past president of IU.
“Herman B Wells said that small minds think about 10 years and big minds think about 50 years ahead,” he says. “It’s not to say that I have a big mind, but I aspire to be one who has a big mind.”

The only thing that can shrink a curious mind, Nti Asare says, is envisioning too little.
“We have this mindset of trying to get to whatever standard we set for ourselves, and the truth of the matter is that we can achieve whatever we want to achieve in life,” he says. “The difference between those who go far and those who don’t is just where they place their own ceilings.”

Nti Asare says he hopes to shape the world through the study of language, foreign policy, and a focus on Africa. He says he believes a world connected by language is a powerful one.

He tells the story of the Tower of Babel as an example of the strength of language. In Genesis, the story goes something like this: People start building a tower to heaven, God realizes they just might, God trips up their tongues and scatters them, people are weakened by their lack of understanding. For Nti Asare, this story reveals the ability of language to unite and empower.