As campuses across the world grapple with serving their students during the COVID-19 pandemic and racial justice protests, "Liberal Education" asked educators from a range of institutions about their experiences. These educators offered insights into how the current moment is affecting student well-being and community engagement. They…

Higher education transformation in South Africa, as correctly argued by Petro du Preez,Shan Simmonds and Anné Verhoef, should become more 'fluid ["and"] open-ended'. However, even more fluidity and open-endedness might not necessarily be sufficient in enacting transformation in the higher education realm. Consequently, in this article I…

1994 is an important year in South African history. It brought about significant socio-political changes in an attempt to undo the unjust practices perpetuated during the apartheid regime. The apartheid government had severely impacted all spheres and institutions of society, including education. In this interview, Vivek Vellanki asks Doctor Yusuf…

University access programmes inherently and inevitably provide students with a "label". Firstly, students are generally segregated and stigmatised as they are treated as a separate group that accessed university somewhat "illegitimately". Access programmes generally place more emphasis on academic development and in so doing…

This article analyses the National Plan of Higher Education (NPHE) and argues that the NPHE mainly uses formal concepts of social justice in bringing redress and equity to the higher education. It further argues that the plan could meaningfully and better address issues of equity and redress by employing substantive forms of justice. Firstly, the…

Educational policy and practice has resided and continues to reside at the vortex of social and political strife in South Africa, as in the United States. Although school poverty and inequities among schools in the U.S. pale in comparison to conditions in South Africa, the two nations have much in common, including histories of state-sanctioned…

In this article I argue for higher education practitioners to take focused action to contribute to transforming their societies into open and democratically negotiated forms of living, and why they should do so. The need is especially urgent in South Africa, whose earlier revolutionary spirit led to massive social change. The kind of social…

This article interrogates the notion of "glocalization" (Moja, 2004, based on Castells, 2001) as a concept that seeks to integrate the local and the global to address both the need for social justice and the need to participate in a global market economy. The article argues that the relation between the global and the local cannot be…

In this article I contend that we cannot divorce affirmative action from issues about race and racism. Further, debates on affirmative action have to acknowledge the power of words/concepts/definitions and how they can be constructed and used for the purposes of domination or liberation. I argue that, in debating affirmative action, we have to…

The article critically reflects on the positive portrayal of mentorship as a professional development strategy for educators. We argue that the conceptualisation of classical mentorship has been informed mainly by functionalist thinking. We contend that the supposedly beneficial nature of the mentorship relationship has been given such prominence…

Gender equity is one of the foundational principles of the national Department of Education, but there is not a shared understanding of its meaning. Based on interviews conducted in 2008 with officials in the Department of Education, we argue that there are two basic approaches to gender equity. The first, which we term "gender blind",…

When one considers the possibilities for a new progressive era in American higher education, the author contends that it is wise to review the past because there are lessons to be learned. In fact, the latter part of the 20th century was one of great progress for diversity in higher education, generally speaking, and for African Americans in…

The article is an exploration of current trends within, and the desired destiny of, the humanities discipline of English Studies in the context of calls for the "Africanization" of South African universities. The essay advocates the embrace of a non-universalist, emancipationist humanism. (Contains 8 notes.)

Very few large-scale research projects involving lesbian, gay, and bisexual youth have taken place in South Africa. However, there have been several important small-scale studies. One of the major obstacles that researchers of LGB youth encounter in South Africa is the lack of access to these adolescents. There are no national networks for social…

Quality assurance (QA) has gained momentum in South African higher education with national reviews of MBA, MEd, PGECE, BEd and ACE programmes. This article presents an overview of global trends in QA, and comments on some aspects particular to the South African national framework. It explores how the concepts of democracy, knowledge, and social…