Yes, and thank you. I think that was a very interesting lecture, professor.
And I think all of us have been listening and thinking of some of the ideas that were presented here.
And of course, where we are now is is coming into the panel without any waste of time will say that due to some of the
ideas that are picked up is understanding or looking into after you of that sense and how we then,
you know, reconcile with the view that there are complexities and other issues of diversity that we're brought up from this lecture.
So I wouldn't want to to take on the time my name is Caesar quite nicely.
I'll be moderating the panel this evening. So I would like to take this chance then to to give our panellists the chance to introduce themselves.
I would start with Shavar then running and we will come to you.
So if you could just take a few minutes of introduction and get to meet our audience?
Tell us about your yourselves and the other veterans.
Thank you. Greetings, everyone.
I think they gave us quite a deep introduction by sitting here in Oxford at a talk on decolonisation does have a particular sense of irony.
But like some people say, Moses was raised in the home of the pharaoh and indeed the crisis of capitalism.
Patriarchy and colonialism can be felt the world over.
So wherever we speak about this, the challenge is very real and today is also the 15th of May, which is Knockabout Day,
which marks the 70th anniversary of the catastrophe and the occupation of Palestine by the apartheid State of Israel.
So I'd like to say my solidarity to the Palestinian people.
And I'd also like to send my solidarity to the people of Sudan who are trying to protect the revolution to the people of Western Sahara as
they continue their struggle against Morocco's occupation and everywhere else in the world where people are resisting an unjust status quo.
Decolonising education is not simply a university project because the university
should be anchored by the society and the world in which it finds itself.
FeesMustFall reminded us as students and society in South Africa, at large and globally as well.
I sometimes get chills when I hear people at Oxford talking about FeesMustFall because
when we sat down in front of the university gates on the 14th of October in 2015,
we had no idea the impact that it would have globally.
And so what it taught us as young people is that the youth have the power if they are united to shape the core of an unjust system.
And us first question to us. When you sent us prepared questions was what are we doing at the moment to deal with the project of decolonisation?
And because I said that decolonisation is not just a university project,
myself and a few other young people have founded a platform in South Africa called the Big Platform and Beginning Seed in Swahili.
And this is a platform to try and help bridge the geospatial and other divides that
exist in South Africa by taking South African graduates into communities on the margins.
Firstly, because we have so much of organic knowledge to learn from these communities,
and secondly, because what good are our skills and our education?
If we're not using them to create value where it's needed most? And so this takes place in urban areas.
But at the moment, I'm on a bit of a sabbatical from that because I'm here doing my master's at Oxford,
so I'll continue on my course following the questions that you give to us.
But that's a short introduction. Thank you. Thank you. Over to you.
OK, thank you very much for the invitation to be here.
Appreciated to be with these. All of you are very esteemed in my in my life and I appreciate it very much.
I'm coming at this from you'll see from a fairly different angle being from the United States and my work.
My position. Naledi first is as an African-American working in NPR, in the environmental arena,
both in formal and informal settings, both in schools and in other learning sort of informal learning situations.
And specifically, I'm working in environmental education with and in communities of colour, low income communities in throughout the United States.
More recently, in the last decade or so.
It's typically in the West Coast, California, up through the Pacific Northwest and into Alaska, just a couple of quick stories with that.
In 1969, I went to Outward Bound, which has a great tradition here in Great Britain also.
And I remember being in North Carolina outward bound at that time, about 15 or 16 years old.
And and I remember writing in my journal, which I have by my bed in San Francisco, where I also have residents,
and I like to look at that journal, that entry journal from that 15 or 16 year old boy who said I would love to be an outward bound instructor.
I wonder if I can because I'm black. So the representation issue came, and I could not understand that at that time.
But later in the Marin Headlands, as an environmental and outdoor educator, leading a group of children from East Oakland,
African-American, primarily Latino and recent immigrants from Southeast Asia,
kids there were nine, 10,
11 years old and we were on a big parade field at an old military base that's now a national park and national recreation area for the park service.
And this one student came over to me in the middle of games that we were playing an
educational sort of things that we were doing and said to me why the police watching us?
And so I, I looked at him sort of strange.
I couldn't understand what he was talking about because we were out in nature and we were doing environmental education.
And I said, Well, they're not watching us. He said, Oh, yes, they are.
And he pointed across the parade field amongst some trees,
and there was a park service policeman who in fact was directed towards us and was in the car.
And that, to me was like took me back to the outward bound experience in some ways because we were confronting.
We were confronting racism, confronting racism in a national park.
We're confronting racism in outdoor education. And this is a really important moment for me, and I've taken that on as part of my life's work.
The final quick story is with an African-American woman who told me this story during a talk that I was giving in East in Richmond, California,
in an area called the iron triangle,
because it's basically a residential area that's enclosed by industrial facilities and fenced in by a railroad track.
And she said, I was sitting in my front yard like I do in the Sun all of the afternoon,
and a woman came in who was dressed in strange clothing and she had a baby on her on her chest, and she was scrounging around in my backyard.
And I was wondering, what is she doing in my yard or my front yard? So she ran out and she chased this woman away.
And the woman obviously did not know English, and she backed off and she was very sorry about this.
So but this got this African-American woman thinking about her own past a little bit and she decided,
you know, the next time this woman comes here, I am going to ask her, What is she doing in my yard?
So the woman came back one day and the African-American woman ran out.
The woman thought she'd been caught again, tried to rush, and she said, No, no, no, no.
The African-American says, no, no stay, stay. I want you to to tell me, what is it that you're doing?
And the woman was foraging for things plants to eat.
She was recognising the plant life in the in the front yard. This got the African-American woman, and she told me really thinking about her own past,
about how she and Mississippi was actually taught by her great grandmother, how to recognise medicinal plants, what plants were good to eat.
And this was a really important story for me because it told me that we actually all of us have a connexion to the natural world.
But that connexion to the natural world has been broken by racism, classism and all the other isms that are out there.
And so really, my work is centred finally around re-establishing that connexion with the natural world that we all we all have.
It is a part of our as a part of our human heritage as while he was talking about it in somewhat different context.
Thank you. But I think you know you are you here and here, she should be able.
OK, yeah. And could you give us a brief introduction of yourself?
And welcome to this kind of discussion group. Hi, everyone.
Cynthia, you go get, you know, I was me to physically,
but I guess I explained I couldn't come but insist that we try and have a
conversation virtually the accommodation on the fourth industrial revolution,
the very beginning of Africa. So then I that I'll be joining the conversation.
Virtually everyone got excited in Syria. Indeed. The fourth industrial revolution is coming to light.
My name is movement from Khadra, and I hope I have been introduced.
I think as we go into this conversation, the new the main title that might refer to myself as a good would.
Again, a return on those are the Mexican use of leadership and governance.
And as I sit on this board,
I'm very honoured as someone who's an aspiring specialist in education because I think for me as a former student activist at this university,
it's vital.
It's very important that we find a way to close the gap between the Basic Education System Africa and the higher education system of America.
And as we speak about decolonising higher education, I think it's very important that we have the very same conversation in basic education and then
TransAfrica Forum of having conversations around making history a compulsory subjects in basic education.
You then begin to see that this is an attempt to make the two spaces right.
So so the basic education system is not left behind as we're talking about people innovation and high education.
Because if the learners that we are putting through the basic education system,
the matriculants, if they're not ready to get into a system that is as a student activists,
as activists of higher education spaces speak of them, we are essentially threw them up with the idea of creating a great shock to the system and.
And so that's the type of work that I seek to do.
But my view on equalising education system speaks to understanding the fact that we need to remember that we live in Africa and we need to have an
education system that represents the masses of the majority of our people need to have a space of learning that represent the majority of our people.
And and that for me,
sort of translates to how you then become impactful in the economic activities of our states in general participation in the states.
And so I don't necessarily look at the private education system, an idea on putting the with an ideology then and in academia, I'm saying right,
but acknowledging the fact that we are on the African continent and having the different perspectives
on the different scenarios and the different teachings and pedagogy didn't speak to us as an African,
and that's one of them, the manner in which I'd like to look at it in.
For example, if you take the idea of the Fourth Industrial Revolution, the congregation of the Fourth Industrial Revolution,
there are many African roots in the prioritising prioritisation of that conversation in our country is jumping the gun.
It's it's it's pretty much true. However, when you look at the Embassy of Education for Sufi recipient,
how he unpacks the fact that we do find out what methods missing in the global system and move to find a way to relate to the teaching
of the academic preparation of the Fourth Industrial Revolution in a way that translates to us as South Africans living in South Africa.
And so for me, when we when we speak of decolonisation, the education system,
a big part of it speaks to making the education system relatable and effective for a young person living in South Africa.
That is how I relate to that conversation. I don't know if I'm out of touch.
It's very hard to tell, but I think you'll join us back in as the conversation continues.
Thank you for your brief introduction. I think for now, we would look then at the question of today's lecture, really,
and to then hear your own thesis on the issue of decolonising education and for you running.
I think where you could take us to, as you know, as having had experiences as an academic,
and this is then to look at what are the places to look for, you know, case studies about decolonisation.
So thinking of how much academia is codified and certain approaches?
You know, for decolonising education? And can we look at different sectors outside of academia for best practises?
But I guess where we are, you know, as a starting place for all of our panellists is to look at.
And while it's a question of saying, is Africa a dissimilar system and for you,
I ask that when you respond to this to then help us think of other approaches or other places to look for in terms of your own experiences with China,
should we start with this question of whether that's that's right. Yeah, for me.
So you, a younger person who was younger, says that the seas constituted of many rivers, some of which of course,
many fields, but the rivers and the constituent streams do not lose their individuality, streams and rivers.
The result is the vastness of the sea and the ocean. So I wanted to start on that to build on this beautiful analogy.
The current formalised Western knowledge production system through the power structure of universities as one source of power,
stuffs the flow of certain knowledge and this is quite literally drying up the ocean.
And that's why I really liked your focus on the way in which these isms have
really broken the connexion between us as human beings and nature in general.
And I say westernised and not western because as Professor Rahman goes, Hugo says,
thanks to hundreds of years of colonial expansion and epistemic side and epistemic side refers to the killing of knowledge systems,
the westernised university is a global structure of a global system in which we live and can be found found anywhere in the world,
not just in the global north.
Epistemic side is also the reason that as Professor AI driven, we correctly mentioned that the Haitian Revolution is not taught,
and the paradox of the exploitation of millions of colonial slaves was accepted by the
very thinkers who proclaimed freedom to be a human nature and an inalienable right.
The paradigms of political economy, even within the global south, sometimes lose sight of important structures of power for the global system.
And we know that one of them is the Westernised University.
This produces universalised elites from the global south who become professionals, but the pretension of universalism itself is troubling.
How do we go about embracing a plurality of thinking academically that is accepted and not undermined because of where it comes from?
For example, I studied economics as an undergrad,
and the way something like utility was described in my textbook is through rational thinking on what makes a person better.
Rational thinking was assumed through a Western lens in that acting rationally means acting in your own self-interest.
But this is not always the case. The idea of wanting, for example, teaches us that to act rationally does not mean acting in your own self-interest,
but in the self, in the interest of the collective and the community that you find yourself in.
And in that same textbook, government intervention was always seen as something negative in Islamic history.
Leaders of a particular community were put on trial because a member of that community had starved to death.
Interest was not allowed because making money off of money and speculation heedlessly can lead to what we saw in the 2008 financial crisis.
So history has many lessons for us about times when things were very different.
And for me, the main thing to think about when you talk about decolonisation is that for African studies particularly,
it's putting the African in African studies because global studies through a western lens given its legitimacy through epistemic epistemic side.
And because of this reality,
the scholarly enquiry that we find in these westernised universities doesn't speak to a more human and global knowledge production system.
And so it makes it incumbent on us as scholars of African studies to ensure that we don't fall into the same essentialism of Africa.
But we show how African knowledge and African knowledge production systems have actually always contributed.
And because of the lack of contribution, the world is in a dark place.
That for now is my thesis. I guess running. OK, I thought you just talk for a moment about the environmental justice movement,
the emergence of the environmental justice movement in the nineteen eighties,
early, very nineteen ninety nineteen nineties, nineteen ninety one or so.
And basically, this was a social movement that came from a place where from from places and from people who were not supposed to
know anything about the environment they were seen and the reception amongst government agencies to deal with the.
Environmental issues was very cold and very,
very reluctant to accept the fact that people who did not have these and people who had did not have profession
professional credentials of being involved with the environment knew anything about the environment whatsoever.
But as it turned out, over the years after some deep institutional conflict,
political conflicts that we accept, we were accepted as having knowledge about our communities.
In fact, of the motto of the environmental justice movement remains we speak for ourselves.
We know our lives better than anyone else knows our lives because we we live our lives.
And so Palfrey's educational approach, I think, can be seen in that very popular movement of environmental justice.
And so for me, as an environmental educator during that period,
I began to understand that the role of education in an environmental education in
creating a really truncated environmental movement which is basically understood,
has been criticised for a couple of decades now as being primarily white, primarily middle class and upper class.
And so I wondered,
how did this move has what happened with the environmental movement and why is there a a divergence between the indigenous knowledge of people,
African-Americans in the South and Native Americans, people in cities?
Why is there a divergence between their understanding and their knowledge of
the environment and institutions that are supposed to protect the environment,
and a non-profit environmental movement that is really culturally, you know, demographically limited?
But the other implication of this was in the setting of the environmental agenda for the country and the implications
for the entire world about the American version of what environmentalism is and what our priority priorities are.
That agenda is not formed with the full array of people who are impacted by environmental harms.
And so this is this leads to a truncated environmental agenda and one that is not really representative represents
more the class and economic interests of those who form that agenda than the people who are impacted the most.
And a central idea of environmental justice is, is that the people, the people who are least able,
least politically, have politically armed to protect themselves to mitigate the effects of environmental harms,
to set the direction of environmental policy are actually those who are impacted the most by environmental
harms and the lack of environmental or the mal distribution of environmental amenities such as parks,
for example, and environmental public health.
So, you know, in brief and in some, I think that with the organisation that I founded with my colleagues of cultural workers,
environmental educators and political activists, we began to see that knowledge production, so to speak,
was really at the centre of what we were doing because we were we were seeking to uncover the cultural assets.
The cultural knowledge is that people already had and how to make it through education,
make it more possible for them to mobilise what they knew for their own interests in the interests of their communities.
I also want to just say that we also, as we built the critique of environmental education and environmentalism,
we also cite disciplinary allies and we found them in critical social theory,
environmental sociology and the pedagogy of multicultural and social justice education.
So there was a role that we found wasn't that we were saying, you know, we can do this sort of on our own,
but there was a certain kind of theorising that was occurring that we understood could have a role in what we were trying to restructure and critique.
And we also understood that our role as environmental educators,
as community oriented as we were decolonising pedagogy of pedagogical project had to be
embedded in really thoroughly identified with a larger project of decolonial colonialism,
environmental discourse generally. And his story in allying itself,
aligning itself with historical struggles for civil and cultural rights of other marginalised and minority populations.
Thank you very much for that great fix.
I mean, now we're going to ask a question to to to build a very specific one.
I'm speaking of apartheid government and Winnie Mandela said, and I quote the years of imprisonment.
I didn't mean perhaps if you have been given a moment to hold back and wait for the next blow, your emotions would be blunted as they have been.
In my case, when it happens every day of your life, when that pain becomes a way of life.
There is no longer in. Thing I can see it, there is nothing the government has not done to me.
There isn't any pain. I have, you know, close quotes. There are two parts then to this quote.
First is how women specifically and unequally yoked into the project of the project to decolonise implication.
And also do we see a different movement of women in anti oppression struggles?
And secondly, how do we extend the community working on this project to decolonise?
And so this includes marginalised bodies, women and LGBTI communities as well as the disabled.
So if you could, you know, respond to this question also based on your own experience,
having been part of the student activism in some of the struggles that we've seen on our campuses that today, I think interest all of us.
Thank you for giving me the space.
A lot of space is a very aggressive towards woman for marginalised bodies, the physical society and not intersectional rights.
I had this little change we you want to see so much in the out of FeesMustFall,
a public demand of the university, which at some points put together in permanently, I don't like they have.
I mean, I I would in 2016's. I've been out of the campus for quite a while, but if they have created a committee that is made just their hate,
the idea of equalising the institution and the learning experience,
I would imagine that the committee would ultimately let the institution move into a one as one who left by the time I was reading something that we,
the committee that spearheaded the change that we want to see our Male-Dominated,
which means that the way in which the change of the approach to the change comes about it becomes very masculine, becomes very.
OK. It seems that we are having challenges of getting through, but at this point,
if she if she gets back on as a viewer, we will try to see if she can join us.
But but I think for now we are going to open to our audience to engage with the panel and
to try to direct some questions or comments to the professor at the barn on his lecture.
And if we could. And if you raise your hand and just shoot straight into your question or your observation,
and I think our panel would be delighted to give some feedback on today's any hence.
So I'm going to start over with the lady at the back and the gentleman here and in that chair,
which is she's going to be about being marginalised from descending into the new centre.
I wonder how much the politics of funding in the academy plays into that,
and I wonder if you could just talk a little bit more about the politics of funding and the academy.
You know that some of the.
I would take the second, and yes, sir. Thank you.
Thank you. This is a question for Hyde. I wanted to ask what your stance was on academics teaching African studies who are
not black and also what your view is on British education in terms of university,
but in terms of decolonising the curriculum and in comparison to America and your experiences in America and to the teaching methods.
So give you a chance or what?
The first question, thank you for a question.
I do not read a book on the political economy of knowledge production, which is entirely part of that is at play here.
But I think it's essentially about attitudes. Part of it has to do with religious, you know, religion in terms of the ways in which,
you know, Sudan for a long time before display wanted to identify itself with the,
you know, military force with North Africa and then eventually with the Middle East and the Muslim world.
So that's part of it. But it's also about how external forces, you know, manipulating differentiation within the continent.
So there are all sorts of factors. For instance, I mean, if I can raise money and have it in Sudan, studies in Africa, studies I can do.
I mean, we go South Sudan, you know, in Africa is sorry saying that.
And it probably would move over. So that's the political economy of it.
But I think the essential thing is the attitude to think that, of course,
you also have to recognise that this is not just about do, it's also about reality.
You know, the reality that some North African countries like to play Africa when it's convenient and friendly to Israel?
So all of that is there. Sudan also so factors.
But if we have the right attitude to do this in terms of understanding the point about studying global Africa,
if we have a problem before studying countries that are within the territory of Africa in African studies, then imagine those who are not even within.
I mean, Africans who I know within our continent, Africa. So I think doses of factors are affected.
But I think the most important probably is the attitude that people have those who are in charge of determining this, these dynamics.
And second question about my experience, I do think I understand very well in terms of the first part of it.
I understand it as a people and North Africa in Africa. I personally have absolutely no problem with anybody touching anything.
If I have enough knowledge, I can go and teach China. You know, teaching China teach about everything.
So that's not the problem. What I was identifying was this attitude in North America at your point, when,
you know, like watching the story and who, by the way, who was behind the story,
who was uncomfortable with the fact that Africans were teaching Africa,
which has something to do with the issue that we because our only production, we think that Africa do not have legitimacy to teach about Africa.
And it was, you know, it's a different behaviour, was thinking it or talking about it.
I mean, you actually wrote the piece the Chronicle of Higher Education saying that Africans teach in Africa is ghettoisation of African history,
which, you know, which is a different matter entirely. So that is that's a different way to your second question.
If I understood very well with my the differences in terms of my experiences in
teaching in the United States and here in the UK at that at the university level,
you mean? Yeah, like any challenges that you, you know of any similarities and some challenges or different, you know,
the British education system more receptive to African studies and actually study in Africa more broadly.
OK. Well, you know, I was training the British teacher and I was in Nigeria and he had Cambridge.
So I mean, my education is in the British tradition,
which I value and what one thing that I see generally and this is not absolutely true, but just my personal observation.
British education emphasises that there, whereas American education is about race, that's a general, might not be true for some people.
But that's my observation, which is why, as I said earlier, you will find engineering students in my classroom.
Africa is nowhere near united. They will find his way here, the way before you go home at night.
You can't even see that even come here. So it's about so they stop.
For me. I mean, having that kind of education, I really value that.
That, of course, I must confess, of course, that exposure to the breath of, you know,
the emphasis on breath and I really can't talk about wait times of our, you know, Africa study.
I think there is also the issue of the economy. I mean, of course, Europe is where Africa used to be studied before.
You know, as I mentioned, you know that African Americans, that age study of Africa.
But the two said it would be the financial power that the United States has in terms of.
You can see that's way more or less the North America as overtaking Europe in terms of study in Africa,
because there's huge resources that are available to be able to study Africa in different measures.
The example I give a. But Columbia is very interesting the way in which, you know,
architecture is going up in North America and that is really to study Africa globally, you know, and that,
I think is the way we should go that challenges here because you don't have as much resources in British universities as you know,
you have the American British. So that means that a limitation, for instance.
I mean, there are areas in which we think who would like to have to recruit people to teach here.
You, you. I mean, you can't just wake up and do that, whereas in the American university.
Well, I must also say there is so much diversity in America. I don't think there is that white university.
So there may be a backlash from those who are educated. You know, some of that level also in the Ivory Coast.
If you can go to your and, you know, talk Yardeni into giving you two places to hire two new people because of the sheer,
you know, financial power that you know, big institutions have in the United States, you know?
So I mean, if I wake up and go, talk to my dear about that night, you probably just laugh at,
you know, so you don't have that kind of risk to the and the resources to be able to,
you know, perhaps I mean, do things that you that in my experience, I must always add that because it would just be a peculiar way.
I was thinking of what can be done, you know, so it maybe something we have to have maybe different,
you know, the Russell Group universities or elsewhere in the UK, but that's me to share my experience.
So we take two more hands. If we are, oh yes. Could we take you first then?
Well, I thank you for the talk. It was really informative and I learnt a lot.
I felt I needed quite a bit of the literature, but really introduced me to some new texts.
I'm going to pursue and I just want to pick up on the issue of following those two questions.
Actually, I had one on funding because I think one and one on who should teach African studies.
I agree with you fully right that anyone should be able to teach Africa.
And also Africans should teach about the rest of the world, which is always something that people are very hesitant for us to do.
Why don't you focus in on your country rather than, you know, I want to study America or Europe and so on?
That's it. That's an issue.
But in the US changes, and I'm really pleased that you mentioned actually that African studies started in that historically black colleges.
But the change to mainstream African studies didn't really occur until black African American
and Africans from the Diaspora started to get jobs in art centres for African studies.
So there was a critical mass and people could and that could push for a change.
And I think that's the difference in Britain is that there are hardly any black, young,
black or black scholars of African descent Weber, British or from Africa in teach in centres for African studies in Britain.
And that's in Europe generally. And that's a major problem. And that that is limiting the shifts that we would like to see.
And until we and I think, you know, if anything,
what we should be pushing for is for more black scholars and more BME or whatever they want to call us in teaching in African studies,
more PhDs, Black British African students for African students more generally so that they can.
That can happen because without that mass right, you know, we're not going to get the change that we might want to see.
Now the issue also about funding, you're right about funding and there is money available within the British system,
but it's not necessarily targeted at all prior other priorities that we want to see if we are thinking about a different kind of future for Africa.
Right. I'm the one that is is pursued by, you know, so we would want to say mainstream or or I don't know what to call it.
Yeah, you know, that's the norm anyway. And the funding, for example, in Britain at the moment is directly through GCR.
Those of you who don't know it's global Challenge Research Fund is British government has taken how many billions two billion of the aid money,
so that nought point seven percent they say they're putting towards eight two billion is taken off to fund research in universities.
So it's actually, you know, the government really is not that money is the aid money.
It's money for research. So you need to calculate what percentage is then going to.
But that research money is tied to Sustainable Development Goals, it's tied to development,
the priorities of the Department for International Development and the FCO and other British institute, you know, governmental bodies.
So that money so it's really difficult. You try to put forward a proposal right to do the sort of research that you.
Going to do about, I don't know, but I can say, and you're not going to get it funded.
Laugh you down. They say, Oh, this is not the future that we want. We want money which is going to make.
We will fund research that is supposed to make a difference on the ground.
Even though we know after decades of AIDS, you know, not different.
The real difference is that be made have been have come through the end of African people.
Right. So what I I mean, one of the things I was trying to do and I have tried to do is to find out how much is much money
actually black scholars in Britain get from these funding bodies that they don't show the data.
They supposed to collect the data, but they don't present. So we don't know how many black scholars or African scholars get even SLC funding.
Sorry, I'm going on a bet or any funding from other funding agencies. We don't know.
We don't know. I mean, you'd have to scroll through the projects, and if they do, they're normally a cool applicant.
Right? So the issue of our priorities, our research priorities are not going to get funded in the in the current system.
And in some sense, how then do we change that language? I mean, that might have happened in South Africa.
I don't know. But we need to engage these funding bodies.
We and the British Academy,
you know and know that members there one or two black members of the British Academy stopped talking to them about how we can change the funding
priorities and look at some of the things that are of interest to black people in Britain and or of African descent and also on the continent.
So sorry, I'm going to go on a bit more because I'm a geographer and I did the PSC emphasise in geology and geography,
but I couldn't see a future for myself as a geologist and my my my geography background was more ecology, so I'm not.
I became a social scientist because I studied a master's in African studies, but I was actually this, you know, you could call the sciences.
But Black people in British, I grew up in London and we were I mean, we're not cool there, but anyway, everything we do is urban.
So we weren't seeing we're not expected to be in the British countryside.
We're not expected to be looking at rocks or anything like that. Right. So I was like strange because I wanted to be able to go out and do things.
So my discipline at the moment is in crisis, especially here in the university, because we don't have enough BME or black students.
And we are supposed to be posh, according to the newspapers, because most of our students are from the higher socio economic group.
So how do we engage black students or black young black people to consider studying some
of the critical issues that you've mentioned because we do teach them on the course,
but we can't attract them to come here? Yeah, OK. So, yeah.
All right. Thank you. And in response to to your question, I'm sorry, not want my take, but I think we can engage the panel as we all go out.
But in the close, as we are now coming to that, we could respond to the question and also give us your closing remarks and the same for you.
And run. That would be wonderful. Yeah, thank you.
Also to this as to the number of questions that we've received, I know there could have been more, but I expect that as we walk out,
we could engage with the panel even further and follow them on their various platforms where we can get some more information over the OK.
Let me just say that I endorse this analysis of the challenges in terms of funding.
The only part of it I want to add is what I have tried to do since I came here is also to challenge, you know,
our folks back in the continent that you know, the politics of the political economy, of knowledge production.
If you don't put your money in it, you can also raise questions.
Do you have money? I know people who have too much money that anybody needs for one lifetime, you know,
because I study lead and I was forced out of my life, so I know that my I have been having conversations.
Can you put some money down for the I mean, I watch this with this project.
I would say you cannot contribute to any debate about, you know, on equal terms of of production because you're not for any sort.
One way in which we could do this. It's actually also to get people who have loads of money on our side to also fund this thing.
I mean, somebody before for says, you know, we are working towards, you know,
let somebody bring that billion dollars and say, I want the Roadster to gauge Taubenberger University is going to to an end.
But I mean, the language of money is one of the most valuable languages that you might be, right?
You know, so this is the other side of it. I endorse your side.
But then we've got to encourage people to also phone the decades of, look, nobody is going to fund knowledge to subvert their power.
Yeah, sometimes they do to be able to know what you are doing, but you've got to also fund so that that's one challenge we have in.
This struggle when I meet folks who have loads of money for the contingency, you've got to come.
Yeah, some of them have also, excuse me, I should have put my money in Oxford.
So where you put it in Africa, if you have put your hands on your investor day, you guys okay, this is where I'm on the point.
The other thing is that sometimes, yes, you need to feel like I'm.
I don't pursue money for undergrad education in Africa.
Yeah, I mean, the for what I pursue is postgraduate. You know what you need even masters this major just one year of education in Oxford.
You can go back home is transforming. I mean, the I mean, there are also challenges with that.
But so I think that side of it is also very important in terms of people who are teaching.
Yes. We've got to bring more people. I mean, we are having some of this competition because some of us that, you know, fortunate to be here.
So we've got to populate these centres. That's the theme in the United States, which of course,
raised some of the backlash that mention some of it will also mean that we've got to encourage people to come out volunteer positions here because,
you know, here, you know, it's difficult to talk to anybody about new positions unless they someone come from somewhere.
So it's important to pursue these.
And I think by talking about things like this with you, I mean, nowadays your sensitivity to these issues because of the efforts of,
you know, FeesMustFall, RhodesMustFall, these two, sometimes people think this needs to have consequences.
They do have consequences, you know, for reasons,
I was involved in some discussions about some positions that I hold in some place that I need to be place and everyone was always there British way.
They're talking about how can we find an African to replace me?
So this means that if you think you know you guys have made some impact, you might not see it.
But you know, people actually have been very sensitive now to some of these issues.
Yeah. I wonder if you could. Yes, I would say my last remarks about this would be if you get a couple of points.
One is that it had to do with the question of what are sort of next steps or what or what else is needed.
And I would say, first of all, let's not limited to classroom change and pedagogy and curriculum.
Secondly, academia does not need to do this on its own and may be unable really enough or unprepared to do this kind of work alone.
There's a role for colleges and universities basically serve the needs of communities.
That's the bottom line. Create space for communities to co-create educational programmes.
Both the curriculums and the pedagogy cultivate multicultural youth leadership and
create spaces to build communities and community and coalitions across difference.
And then finally protect the cultural rights, the cultural resources, the traditional knowledge and the land rights of indigenous peoples everywhere.
Because they are the brain trust of humanity.
Interaction with the land and the landscape is the genesis of and a repository of humanity's deepest knowledge.
Loss of land loss of experience with the land means the loss of knowledge and then changing.
Give us your closing remarks. Two things before I do that just to contribute to your your input.
I managed to sneak my way into a course at the Oxford Internet Institute, doing the master's in African studies.
You can choose an option, of course, and I decided I wanted to do one outside of African studies.
And in that, I realised that there was a project going on that's seen as a collaboration between the
University of the Western Cape and South Africa and the University of Cape Town South Africa,
with the University of Manchester in the UK and Oxford University.
And this collaboration is around Fair Work and Fair Work Foundation, which is what the collaborative effort is called,
is around rating platform businesses that are kind of digital labour platforms.
So if I want to order an Uber in the same way, if I want to hire a domestic worker to clean my home in the same way that I call an Uber,
you know, that's an easy way to kind of describe to you what this digital labour platforms are.
But what I found when I interviewed some of the people at the University of Cape Town when I was doing my fieldwork because it's also in this area,
I realised that the norms and the standards that are used, the literature that is chosen in these projects is actually dictated by Oxford University.
And the funding that they get for these projects is exactly from that.
Jeff. See, I'm not sure if I've got the acronym GCR F, so it's from that funding.
But what's even more interesting is because I'm interested in the funding of universities given my background in the FeesMustFall protests.
This is the. The funding for public universities and for universities in general in the UK, the subsidies for funding have actually decreased a lot,
and some of the justification that is being used for that decrease is the aid money that has come in.
But I think there's a lot of room for African academics to really challenge the way in which this process is unfolding.
Both academics from the UK, as well as academics from South Africa and other countries where these partnerships are quite prevalent.
The second thing is in your point about the organic knowledge or the indigenous knowledge, rather of communities.
There's a documentary on National Geographic about the Okavango Delta,
and in that there's there are many scientists and biologists, whites and one African woman that are included in the documentary.
And the project is basically focussed on finding the source of the The Crystal River and they go to Angola and go on this expedition.
And obviously there's a lot of funding that's gone into this.
But what I found really interesting is that although the guides are interviewed in the documentary, they're not seen as experts, you know.
And I think that professional title that we give people needs to extend the university and we need to figure
out how we can do that through conversations and discourse around decolonising education more broadly,
because people's indigenous knowledge and people's organic knowledge is really fundamentally important.
And this goes to my concluding remarks as well that African Studies is a field
of scholarly enquiry to constantly interrogate epistemological methodology,
theological, logical and theoretical approaches to the study of Africa in setting Africa and
its people at the centre of that interrogation as subjects rather than objects.
Because even in this documentary,
where you can see the contributions of these local people who are experts of the Okavango Delta because they live in the occupied Delta,
the theoretical and methodological frameworks don't don't see them as experts in
the same way that a biologist from South Africa who's a white Ph.D. graduate,
is seen as an expert. But beyond that as well, I think that decolonisation is not just about representation in an oppressive system,
but about reimagining and creating a different system. So I agree with you and me that we need to seek out money,
but we also need to figure out how we're going to disrupt the systems that make it so difficult for us to do,
to create and to produce the knowledge that is needed, fundamentally needed in this really, really sick world.
And it's much more about organic and structural change.
It's about equalising the playing field, not just for the sake of equalising the playing field,
not just for the sake of having black academics on the playing field, but for social justice and in the fight for social justice.
There are no single issue struggles.
So in the same way that FeesMustFall and movements that have managed to really put these issues on the international agenda,
there's also an equal need to protect these these movements and the legacy of these movements because they're very easy to destroy.
And when you hear politicians or academics at Oxford speak about RhodesMustFall, for example,
and how Oxford has a fundamental space as the prime knowledge production system in the world, we also need to remind them of those that came before.
So when we're doing tours for first years at Oxford, it can't be that they think that Oxford is one of the first universities in the world.
We need to show that Africa has always played a huge part.
Why do we, for example, where the robes that we do? Where does Starbucks come from, for example?
These questions, I think, are also important because it speaks to the cultural capital that Oxford has created,
which is not due to its own efforts, but is due to the efforts globally and also of African countries and African people.
So as a student from the continent coming in, it's been very weird how so much is kind of taken for granted about the cultural capital.
And to be quite honest with you, I didn't come here because of Oxford's brand value.
I came here because I was escaping a very toxic political space at home,
but also because I wanted to be in a class full of African students from all over the continent.
And I wanted to meet people from all over the world. How do we create these spaces in Africa?
How do we ensure that we bridge the gaps?
And I guess from a South African perspective, this historically white universities and these historically black universities,
how do we ensure that some of the collaborative efforts that the African Studies Centre,
for example, embarks on are not just with the historically white universities in South Africa, but are also with historically black universities.
I mean, Wits University, my alma mater. They claim Nelson Mandela as an alumni.
But Nelson Mandela was actually financially and academically excluded from the university,
and he was told when they appeal the exclusion that this is not for black people and for women.
And so today, even though we've made quite a few significant wins through these movements, the struggle continues.
And I definitely think there's a lot of room for collaboration that disrupts not just collaboration that finds representation in an unjust system.
So that's my thinking of.
I wish that we could stay at home, right? I really do.
I want to the next year just by extending our heartfelt thanks to all of you for coming and for sticking it through
with us and tell us how I hope this will be a little bit of time to engage more directly with the panellists.
But Vernon, guys, thank you so much for coming out from the West Coast of the U.S. We appreciate your being here.
Thank you. I thank you so much for everything that you do and continue to do,
especially considering the barriers that you have to overcome to keep doing the work that you do.
Cesar, I hope you'll have a chance to speak with.
Cesar Caesar's educational experience is especially dynamic, but I think his is also even emphasised by how humble he's been in this conversation.
Cesar has completely revolutionised the trajectory between primary education at Oxford.
I let him talk some of me if you if you're willing to speak with him about that.
And of course, if I'm missing you so much for responding to the call to do this lecture for the second time, we promise we'll try.
We'll try not to bang on your girlfriend. Everyone, everyone just looks forward to hearing your remarks.
And of course, to our guests who came this evening. Professor Bailey, Associate Professor Mary Pinochet to go Maxine.
Thank you so much for coming. I really encourage all of you to try and register for the Oxford African Conference,
which begins on Friday and ends on Saturday with a game at Exeter College.
Otherwise, this concludes that that and your return. Thank you so much for coming. He was one of.