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Paper short abstract:

Is decolonisation a threat to academic freedom and by extension a drawback to knowledge production in Africa? I argue that academic freedom itself is a contested concept and ought to go hand in hand with what Ndlovu-Gatsheni would call epistemic freedom.

Paper long abstract:

In pursuit of a cultural policy on education that rested on intellectual decolonisation and Africanisation, Kwame Nkrumah recognised the value of academic freedom as an enabler of knowledge production, but ironically, he sought to sidestep academic freedom to safeguard the ‘national interest’ of the ex-colony that he governed. Nkrumah’s approach necessarily brought him into direct conflict with the hegemonic forces of ‘universal knowledge’ both locally and internationally. His critics often argue that Nkrumah’s pursuit of decolonisation in Africa’s (Ghana’s) higher education is necessarily antithetical to academic freedom. But is this really the case? Is decolonisation a threat to academic freedom and by extension a drawback to knowledge production in Africa?

This paper attempts to make sense of and resolve what I call ‘Nkrumah’s dilemma’. It does so through a measured conceptual clarification of what it means to ‘decolonise’ in the context of Africa’s higher education. Why did Nkrumah find academic freedom, or a universal seeking conception of academic freedom problematic in the context of Africa’s higher education and knowledge production? The paper critically assesses the works of ‘anti-decolonisation’ writers who argue that decolonisation is only meaningful as political and economic self-direction, but otherwise, a hackneyed bad idea that in the main, only ‘mourns the past’, serving to upend Africa’s innovation and agency (Taiwo 2022, 2011; Teferra 2020). In all, I argue that academic freedom itself is a contested concept and ought to go hand in hand with what Ndlovu-Gatsheni would call epistemic freedom.

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This paper explores the upheavals that rocked the University of Ghana in 1964. The “battle for the university" saw calls for “academic freedom” clash with demands for “accountability” to the “people” and to the African Revolution. It was a watershed moment in the history of decolonization.

Paper long abstract:

Title: Academic Freedom vs. the African Revolution in the Black Star of Africa: Legon, 1964

One of Kwame Nkrumah’s greatest challenges was to transform a conservative colonial institution, the University College of the Gold Coast, into an independent national institution of higher learning, where colonial knowledge could be deconstructed and new knowledge, of direct relevance to the liberatory mission of Pan-Africanism, would flourish. Nkrumah understood, perhaps better than anyone at the time, the centrality of knowledge production to Pan-African liberation. Based on research conducted in Ghana, the U.S. and the U.K., this paper explores the intellectual and political battles that rocked the University of Ghana during the First Republic. Its particular focus is 1964, when the calm of university life was shattered by pro-Nkrumah demonstrators, who marched onto campus, bringing “the town to the gown,” by the government closure of the university, and by the deportation of six expatriate faculty members for “anti-government activity.” During these critical months, Nkrumah’s vision for the university came into direct and open conflict, not only with the old guard elite that dominated the university, but with more liberal and in some cases socialist faculty and administrators, whom Nkrumah himself had appointed. This “battle for the university” saw calls for “academic freedom” clash with demands for “accountability” to the “people” and to the broader goals of the “African Revolution.” It constituted a watershed moment in the history of decolonization and Pan-Africanism, one whose core precepts still animate debates from Cape Town to Makerere.

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La présente contribution vise à présenter l'une des manifestations du militantisme associatif religieux sur des campus universitaires à Bamako. Il s’agit de la co-délivrance de savoirs théoriques et pratiques par des groupes religieux estudiantins que nous qualifions de « curriculum social ».

Paper long abstract:

La co-délivrance de savoirs « dés-académisés » au sens de (F. Sarr, 2016) par les groupes religieux estudiantins sur des campus universitaires à Bamako au Mali, en tant que manifestation du militantisme associatif religieux se décline en offres de formations confessionnelles mais aussi laïques allant dans le sens du développement personnel, de l’économie familiale et dans le sens des domaines plus pratiques en lien avec l’entrepreneuriat dans des secteurs du développement rural. Ces formations dés-académisées mais qui impliquent des acteurs d’un milieu académique, viennent satisfaire des besoins de formations non prises en charge par l’institution universitaire étatique, du moins dans des structures où elles sont délivrées, d’où l’expression de co-délivrance (J.-P. Olivier de Sardan, 2009).

Les savoirs ainsi délivrés sont qualifiés de modules d’un « curriculum social » (A. Sounaye, 2020) en complément des programmes académiques. Ce projet éducatif porté par les groupes religieux estudiantins s’inscrit en droite ligne de l’appel historique à la décolonisation de l’université prôné par les syndicats estudiantins dès les premières heures de l’université en Afrique occidentale. Le militantisme associatif religieux estudiantin, se démarquerait ainsi du militantisme syndical par ces efforts concrets de décolonisation et d’africanisation de l’université, si l’on entend par décolonisation de l’université, l’enseignement de programmes adaptés aux besoins de formations des bénéficiaires. Vu sous cet angle, la co-délivrance de savoirs dés-académisés par les groupes religieux estudiantins n’évoque-t-elle pas une certaine liberté universitaire ?

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Paper short abstract:

I propose a reflection on the differential agendas and practices that interrelated dependency and decolonialism in the light of the reception in Europe, trying to show the invisibilisation processes and their impact in academic freedom.

Paper long abstract:

Among the currents of thought with a strong Latin American component that have had the greatest global circulation are the theories of dependency in the 1960s and 1970s and, a few decades later, the current "decolonial" critique. Both currents of thought had and still have an impact in Europe, although little is known about the practices and ideas they promoted. In the 1970s, dependency focused on south-north structural asymmetries in global capitalism and came directly to Europe from Latin America (especially Chile), accompanying the narrative of Third World, solidarity and anti-imperialist movements. Currently, the "decolonial/postcolonial" critique is received through some institutionally grounded voices in the US and England and has focused on an agenda that includes the question of subaltern voices, positionality, intertwined gender, ethnic and religious asymmetries. Nevertheless, voices from Latin America (and other regions of the so-called global South) are mostly invisible in the current European academic reception of decolonial/ poscolonial debates. I propose a reflection on the differential agendas and practices that interrelated dependency and decolonialism in the light of the reception in Europe, trying to show the invisibilisation processes and their impact in academic freedom.

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This paper contributes to discussions on academic freedom by bringing in Afro-Asia conversations that stem from efforts to address issues of imperial knowledge system structuring the sense that ‘Asia’ and ‘Africa’ are separate regions/categories/units and distant from one another.

Paper long abstract:

This paper contributes to discussions on academic freedom in Africa and African studies by bringing in Afro-Asia conversations that stem from efforts to address issues of imperial knowledge system structuring the sense that ‘Asia’ and ‘Africa’ are separate regions/categories/units and distant from one another. Afro-Asian conversations help reframe the questions posed by the panel convenors in explicitly political terms, i.e. as questions of suppressed liberation and right to self-determination. Drawing from two recent Afro-Asia conversations I have been part of, one with a group of feminist Asian and Asian American studies scholars on the question of deimperialising knowledge system, and the other in the UN human rights space for Asia-Pacific as part of the UN International Decade for People of African Descent, I argue Afro-Asia conversations help make visible how deadly domination (that justifies or sustains power asymmetries) is thoroughly naturalised. I ask, what does it take to exercise freedom, to think, to learn sovereignly and to act as a critical voice in societies when academic practices, language and structure are themselves what compose the western imperial knowledge system that is a condition both in Asia and the Pacific as well as in Africa? What does it mean when we say independent thought is imperative when this independence is already a lost memory for each generation of new university entrants even prior to their entry when their genealogies of birth are tied to out- and in-group oppressions due to their status as ‘the weak’?

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How does the materiality of intellectual labour trouble the discourse of academic freedom in Africa? I situate current academic unfreedom in Nigerian public universities within the history of precarisation of intellectual elite by the political class through the weaponisation of poverty.

Paper long abstract:

How does the materiality of intellectual labour, socio-economic lack and precarity trouble the discourse of academic freedom in Africa? This contribution adopts an autoethnographic approach to amplify conversations around the materiality and precariousness of intellectual labour and academic un/freedom in Africa. Based on my experience as an early career academic in Nigeria, I situate current academic unfreedom within the history of precarisation of intellectual elite by the political class through the weaponisation of poverty. This history reveals the intention of the political class to dispossess and prevent academics from thriving economically and socially. Consequently, Nigerian academics desire and search for more freedom through knowledge migration with younger academics under more pressure to japa – an ongoing country-wide and intense need to abandon Nigeria/Nigerian higher institutions of learning for the metaphoric “greener pastures” in Europe and North America. Further, I claim that academic japa is not reducible to brain drain as such conceptualisation submits the struggles driving the precarisation of Nigeria’s intellectual class to push and pull framework. I argue instead that the japa wave, among early career especially, is a form of “brain force-away” as the state intensifies precarity and entrench poverty to transform public universities into “captured institution.” I call attention to the entrenched alienation and unfreedom that shape academic life, which, in turn, force out early-career academics from African universities. In conclusion, I argue that the bread and butter of intellectual life must take centre stage to appreciate the intricacy of unfreedom in African higher institutions of learning.

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This paper explores the question of academic freedom by following a historical trail and dwelling in moments of significant thinkers' biographies: Spinoza and the University of Heidelberg; C. A Diop and the Sorbonne; W. Rodney and the jamaican establishment; Oumar Sankhare and public opinion.

Paper long abstract:

This paper explores the question of academic freedom in African studies. It does so by following a historical trail and dwelling in moments of significant thinkers' biographies: the Dutch Republic of the late 17th century with Spinoza and the University of Heidelberg; the Paris of 1951 with Cheikh Anta Diop and the Sorbonne; the Jamaica of 1968 with Walter Rodney and the local establishment; as well as the Dakar of 2014 with Oumar Sankhare and public opinion. These moments reveal some of the tensions inherent in the concept of academic, i.e. disciplined, freedom.

The paper starts with the offer extended to Spinoza in 1673 by the University of Heidelberg, which he declined. Here, we face modern scholarship asserting its autonomy from theology and carving its own sphere of legitimacy. We also contend with Spinoza’s peculiar and unsettling theoretical position on freedom and his intransigent and maximalist praxis of liberty. Moving on to Senegalese polymath Cheikh Anta Diop and Guyanese historian Walter Rodney, we are facing critical scholars who, to bring about Black freedom, produced narratives of the past subversive to the present they were immersed in – colonial and postcolonial presents that, qua dissertation committee and comprador bourgeois state defended themselves. The paper concludes with reflections on the late Senegalese scholar Oumar Sankhare, who, many centuries after Spinoza, faced vigorous backlash in Senegal for applying critical historical hermeneutics to the reading of scripture. Tensions between organized dogmas, state ideologies, and public opinions with the academic's freedom are thereby explored.

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Paper short abstract:

African Studies saw a rapid expansion after the world war, gathering a community of experts, paired by the circulation of objects and people. This paper observes the constitution of African Studies as platform of political dispute, international solidarity and autonomy in the 1950-60s

Paper long abstract:

In the 1950-60s, saw the institutionalization of African Studies across the world, joining a large epistemic community of experts, paired by the circulation of objects (books, artefacts and art), and people (from African students and scholars, to politicians and missionaries).

For some newly independent African Countries, inaugurating centers and Afro-centered curricula of African Studies was a major achievement for consolidating political autonomy. Elsewhere, among Non-Aligned countries like India, Brazil, Slovakia or Mexico, the foundation of center of African(and Asian) Studies related to the promotion solidarity within the Third World.

This paper analysis this process, connecting trajectories of people in their search for liberation, ancestry and identity and histories of institutions and new nations motivated by agendas of political autonomy and solidarity. This proposal, part of an ongoing research, observes the role played by African Studies to the constitution of political identities of developing countries.

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This contribution wants to discuss the relevance that the text The University without Condition (2002) by Jacques Derrida still offers to the deconstruction of academia. It also wants to propose more recent deconstructive practices coming, especially, from the radical philosophies of 'black study'.

Paper long abstract:

I would like to enjoy the chance offered by the panel to share – and possibly, move beyond – the deconstruction of the academia offered by J. Derrida in his 2001 text, L'université sans condition, that he describes as a 'declarative engagement', a credo, a proposition to be discussed in res publica. Under scrutiny might be his advocation of the profession of faith in the Humanities, that reads as 'we all know that the university is conditioned but we should behave 'as if' it were unconditional'. In my experience, the deconstructive 'as if' has always proved foundational to a pedagogy of teaching that opens itself to creativity and artivism (see Derrida's insistence on the academic production of oeuvres), allowing the freedom and the invention of the independent and resistant questioning of the conditions and constrains experienced nowadays in the state of global, neo-liberal, western modern model of the academia. Time, however, is exposing this Derridean interpretation to the challenge of new visions and practices, coming especially from the de-colonial and postcolonial theories, at the time offered by Gayatri C. Spivak, in Death of a Discipline (2002), and more recently, and with great strength, by Stefano Harney and Fred Moten, in The Undercommons: Fugitive Planning and Black Study (2013) and All incomplete ( 2021). My contribution would like to assess the legacy of the Derridean text, also for the African contest, by opening it up to the provocations of black radical thinking.

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This paper discusses the autonomy of Senegalese researchers participating in research projects with European universities and donors. It explores their ability to challenge “territorial colonization” and “conceptual colonization”, and maps their rupture with academic colonization patterns.

Paper long abstract:

Universities and research groups, all based on a national status, always move towards an international continuum in their search for recognition and scientific legitimacy. This openness is justified by the need for scientific communities to create the interconnection mechanisms necessary to produce knowledge from both a local and global perspective. Collaborations carried out in this spirit have allowed researchers to enrich their experience, publish in international editions and journals and address local issues in forums that provide some visibility on a broad horizon. Despite these advances, the launch of research groups based on a collaborative and integrative approach remains a distant ideal. In this context, hierarchical relationships are often personalistic and have great difficulty breaking with Eurocentric assumptions. The relationships between African researchers and European researchers in international research teams, both in terms of institutional support and program content, therefore deserve to be questioned. Until now, this aspect has barely been taken into consideration in the formation of international research teams.This paper presents findings based on a qualitative study on Senegalese university professors' autonomy in research projects with European universities and donors. It explores these researchers capacity to challenge “territorial colonization” (the consideration of Africa as a place to investigate and not as places where research is also produced) and “conceptual colonization” (the use of Western frameworks and concepts by African social scientists), and maps their attempts at rupturing academic colonisation.