Academic Freedom in Africa
Academic Freedom in Africa

Author: Mahmood Mamdani

Publisher: Codesria

Published: 1994

Total Pages: 392

ISBN-13:

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Eighteen of Africa's most distinguished scholars have contributed to this major and timely work, including Claude Ake, Archie Mafeje, Ali Mazrui, Issa Shivji and Joseph Ki-Zerbo. As a first step towards greater consideration of the nature of the research environment in Africa and to reflect on the social and material context of research as an intellectual activity, CODESRIA co-organised a major conference on academic freedom and research in Africa in Kampala in 1990. A selection of the conferencepapers are contained in this volume. The papers cover the relationship of capital and the state to academic freedom, the historical processes which have shaped intellectuals in Africa, issue of autonomy and democracy andthe question of funding relationships, and the difficulty of alliances that question the right to independence. The book is divided into fivesections: Reflections; Methodological Perspectives; Global Influences andLocal Constraints; Intelligentsia and Activism; and Organizing Academics.

African Intellectuals
African Intellectuals

Author: Thandika Mkandawire

Publisher: Zed Books

Published: 2005-05

Total Pages: 260

ISBN-13: 9781842776216

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This title provides a study of the African intelligentsia in Africa and the diaspora.

A Thousand Flowers
A Thousand Flowers

Author: Silvia Federici

Publisher: Africa World Press

Published: 2000

Total Pages: 266

ISBN-13: 9780865437739

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Combining theoretical essays with reports and testimonies, this book presents a unique account of the impact of the World Bank's structural adjustment programme on African education. Part I contains an in-depth analysis and critique of the World Bank's policies on the future of African educational systems, while Part II looks at the response of teachers and students to the dismantling of public education and points to the development of a new Pan-Africanist movement.

Academic Freedom in a Democratic South Africa
Academic Freedom in a Democratic South Africa

Author: John Higgins

Publisher: Bucknell University Press

Published: 2014-09-02

Total Pages: 289

ISBN-13: 1611485991

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How do we understand academic freedom today? Does it still have relevance in a global reconfiguring of higher education in the interests of the economy, rather than the public good? And locally, is academic freedom no more than an inconvenient ideal, paid lip service to South Africa’s Constitution as an individual right, but neglected in institutional practice? This book argues that the core content of academic freedom—the principle of supporting and extending open intellectual enquiry—is essential to realizing the full public value of higher education. John Higgins emphasizes the central role that the humanities, and the particular forms of argument and analysis they embody, bring to this task. Each chapter embodies the particular force of a critical literacy in action, one which brings into play the combined force of historical inquiry, theoretical analysis, and precise attention to the textual dynamics of all statement so as to challenge and confront the received ideas of the day. These provocative analyses are complemented by probing interviews with three key figures from the Critical Humanities: Terry Eagleton, who discusses the deforming effects of managerialism in British universities; Edward W. Said, who argues for increased recognition of the democratizing force of the humanities; and Jakes Gerwel, who presents some of the most recent challenges for the realization of a humanist politics in South Africa.

The Politics of Neoliberal Democracy in Africa
The Politics of Neoliberal Democracy in Africa

Author: Usman A. Tar

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

Published: 2008-10-30

Total Pages: 288

ISBN-13: 0857715763

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Since the late 1980s the changing dynamic of global development has driven the tide of democratic expansion in the developing world. In Africa, western donors have sought to impose 'neo-liberal' visions of socio-economic and political institution-building, spreading political reforms and economic liberalisation with far-reaching consequences. Associated with external interventions, but also sometimes conflicting with them, are internal protests against authoritarianism, which have problematically reinforced and/or undermined the donor agenda for democratic reform.Here, Usman Tar questions the assumption that Africa was lacking the essential components for a spontaneous transition to democracy. He explores the dynamic, but contradictory, links between external and internal dimensions of neo-liberal democratic expansion in Africa, focusing on Nigeria. Tar dissects the struggles for democracy, and for democratic policy and practice in a country with rich economic potential but a troubled political dispensation.

Democracy and the Academy
Democracy and the Academy

Author: Robert Weissberg

Publisher: Nova Publishers

Published: 2000

Total Pages: 278

ISBN-13: 9781560727835

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Treatises on democracy in higher education are hardly original undertakings in today's troubled, often acrimonious campus environments. All the "hot button" issues -- racial preferences in admissions, sexual harassment, government funding, multiculturalism, speech codes, even formulating the core curriculum -- sooner or later drag in "democracy". In fact, academic democracy has become a virtual scholarly mini-industry. The authors bring a breath of fresh perspectives to this expansive subject, a collection of analyses written by scholars seldom invited to prestigious conferences dominated by eminent presidents, trustees, provosts, and all the other educational "leaders" who normally define pubic discourse at a safe distance from the classroom. The authors eschew the customary offering of high-sounding speeches, platitudes and rhapsodizing about the democratic role of education, especially well-funded education.

Education Denied
Education Denied

Author: Katarina Tomasevski

Publisher: Zed Books

Published: 2003-03

Total Pages: 228

ISBN-13: 9781842772515

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This unique contribution to global educational debate and policymaking aims to highlight the adverse impacts on children and young people of not having access to effective formal education. In reviewing the emerging commitment to universal education and the difficult history of trying to give effect to this commitment, the author draws on three bodies of literature--on education specifically, on the development process generally, and on human rights. This book shifts the debate from sheer numbers of pupils, funding mechanisms, and market forces, to a deeper discussion about what the right to education should really comprise, how governments actually give effect to it, and what happens to young people within the educational process itself.

Censorship of Historical Thought
Censorship of Historical Thought

Author: Antoon De Baets

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA

Published: 2001-12-30

Total Pages: 712

ISBN-13: 0313016658

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History is an important, dangerous, and fragile subject. Historical thought can be censored in widely diverging political and historiographical contexts, as historians are well aware. Yet the problems of censorship, often thought to be obvious, are rarely studied. Filling a significant void, this guide supplies information on the censorship of historical thought and the fate of persecuted historians in over 130 countries from Afghanistan to Zimbabwe and from 1945 to 2000. With each entry providing a chronological overview of cases and giving a full listing of sources, the book is the first systematic effort to overview the repression of historical thought. Aiming to encompass all countries in which censorship and persecution have taken place, De Baets sketches a world map of repression that goes beyond the well-known and well-studied cases. It assembles scattered data from three types of sources: the works of censors and censored, historical and biographical dictionaries and historiographical surveys, and reports from international human rights organizations. Showing the universality of historical censorship and its infinite variety in amount and degree, the book also provides a basis for further comparative research.