South Africa: Safeguarding academic freedom

"What exactly is going on at the University of KwaZulu-Natal (UKZN)? Is academic freedom really under threat, as has been argued recently?" asks Jane Duncan from the Freedom of Expression Institute. She writes: "At the heart of the problems brewing at the university is a looming contradiction between the university as an organ of state and its stated objectives of being 'critically engaged with society' and '[supporting] social transformation and redress'. This contradiction has found concrete expression in conflict between an increasingly embattled eThekwini municipality and a number of radical-activist scholars located in the university's sociology department and the Centre for Civil Society (CCS)."