Being at Home

While there are many reasons to be despondent about the current state of affairs in the South African tertiary sector, this collection is intended as an invitation for the reader to see these problems as opportunities for rethinking the very idea of what it is to be a university in contemporary South Africa. Being at ‘Home’ stimulates careful conversation about some of the most pressing issues facing higher education institutions in South Africa today – race, transformation and institutional culture. While there are many reasons to be despondent about the current state of affairs in the South African tertiary sector, this collection is intended as an invitation for the reader to see these problems as opportunities for rethinking the very idea of what it is to be a university in contemporary South Africa. It is also, more generally, an invitation for us to think about what it is that the intellectual project should ultimately be about, and to question certain prevalent trends that affect – or, perhaps, infect – the current global academic system. This book will be of interest to all those who are concerned about the state of the contemporary university, both in South Africa and beyond.