CODESRIA’s Academic Freedom Programme: Brainstorming Meeting

TIME

THEME

SPEAKER

SESSION CHAIR: GODWIN MURUNGA

9:00 – 9:15

Welcome and introductions

Godwin Murunga

Samuel Fongwa

9:15 – 09:45

Academic or Intellectual Freedom? Conceptual Dilemmas.

• There is an unwelcome tension in CODESRIA’s programming on which entry point to prioritise between, on the one hand, academics or on the other hand, intellectuals. This tension owes its origin to insufficient attention within CODESRIA following the seminal forums in 1990 that provided a foundation for the work the Council has since done in this area. This has raised the urgent need of conceptualising each of the two categories, and, as appropriate, differentiating between them. This panel invites a reflection on these categories to illuminate them and their changing meanings.

Mshai Mwangola

Paul Tiyambe Zeleza

09:45 – 10:45

Plenary Conversation

10:45 – 11:15

11:15 – 11:45

The State, the Academy, and Intellectual Freedom

• The state has historically constituted itself as the guardian of freedoms but almost always come through as the main challenge to academic/intellectual freedom in Africa. Thirty-five years after the Kampala declaration, and with all the changes and shifts that have occurred in the higher education sector, how are African academics/intellectuals negotiating freedoms in relations to the state? Conversely, how is the state conceptualising these freedoms and what are the consequences thereof?

Penda Mbow

Ng’wanza Kamata

11:45 – 13:00

Plenary Conversation

13:00 – 14:00

LUNCH

14:00 – 14:30

Diversity, Inclusivity and Academic Freedom

• The university has been plagued by persisting challenges around the question of diversity and inclusion, both being issues at the heart of any academic/intellectual freedom agenda. The desire to break the gender glass ceiling; the persisting ethnic, racial and generational hierarchies in related spaces; divergent opinions on, and approaches to questions surrounding faith and religious identities and/or commitments; the creation of an environment of inclusion for persons of different orientations, be they sexual or not; and, finally, the creation of a higher education social and physical environment that is favourable to persons living with disability are all issues worth brainstorming.

Nansozi Muwanga

Ramola Ramtohul

15:30 – 16:00

Changing Associational Life and Academic Freedom

• Prominent amongst the various shifts in the African university since 1980 triggered by the dynamism of the higher education sector is the overall nature of the associational life in the university. The evolution of the demographic composition of the faculty and student bodies over these 35 years is of special interest here. The importance of the associational life in the university is reinforced by a world of new technologies that has changed modes of communication and of student organising, all pointing to a need to have a sound sociological understanding of how faculty, students and general staff think of the university as a space and how they formulate their concerns and mobilize their engagement with this space and especially with the leadership in these spaces.

Therese Felicitee Azeng

Chikouna Cisse

TIME

THEME

SPEAKER

SESSION CHAIR: MARY BOATEMAA SENTRANA

9:00 – 9:30

Academic/Intellectual Freedom in a Neoliberal Context

• It is impossible to understand the major shifts in the higher education sector broadly, and the university as a particular space, without a proper conceptualisation of the neo-liberal phase in the history of Africa and consequences of the shifts this compelled upon the African university. The idea of the privatisation of the education, the transformation of students into clients, the imagination of education as a commodity all transformed the post-colonial university as we knew it. What have been the major implications of the neo-liberal reforms and what do they potent for the transformation of the university and of higher education in Africa?

Adebayo Olukoshi

Brahim El Morchid

9:30 – 11:00

Plenary Conversation

11:00 – 11:30

TEA BREAK

11:30 – 12:00

Academic/Intellectual Freedom as a Pan-African Agenda

• Academic or intellectual work, by its very definition transcends boundaries; be they ethnic, class, gender or generational or whether they are geographical. Intellectual work involves breaking traditions, of asking each generation to find its mission, fulfil or betray it. We imagine intellectual freedom as a pan- African agenda by how enables the crossing of boundaries, seeking to break traditions and boundaries while retaining that emancipatory thrust that was at the core of nationalist struggles and how we imagined the evolution of what many characterise today as global Africa. What should we be focusing on in our imagination of the place of pan-Africanism in the CODESRIA academic or intellectual agenda in this historical moment?

Noel Obotela

Zubairu Wai

12:00 – 13:00

Plenary Conversation

13:00 – 14:00

LUNCH

SESSION CHAIR: ONALENNA SELOLWANE

14:00 – 14:30

Monitoring Academic Freedom in Africa: Prospects for a Barometer Survey

Hlengiwe Dlamini

BOOK LAUNCH:
Re-envisioning the African and American Academies

(CODESRIA Book Series, 2024)

17:30 – 18:00

Response from the author

Paul Tiyambe Zeleza