Presentation by Cheryl Hendricks at a workshop at the University of Johannesburg on Decolonizing the Curriculum

2. OVERVIEW
• Role and Composition
• Deliberations/Reflections of Task Team
• Planned Engagements
• Highlights of and Thoughts on Activities
• Concluding Remarks

3. Role and Composition
• The Ad Hoc Senate Committee was formed in 2015 in
response to student protests. A key part of the student
demands revolves around the decolonization of the
universities – statues, aesthetics, symbols, language,
culture, knowledge, representation, etc.
• The Ad Hoc Senate Committee is divided into four task
teams (1) dealing with diversity, institutional culture and
tradition (2) with the decolonization of knowledge (3)
protest and academic freedom and the (4) with the
promotion of staff and student access.

4. • DTT consists of 19 members - 13 have been active participants.
• Our role is advisory in terms of generating a deeper understanding of,
and process for, decolonizing the curriculum, teaching and learning at
UJ; to facilitate space for critical conversation and to lead on agenda
setting on this issue.
• It is envisaged that the work of the 4 task teams will feed into a
comprehensive report to Senate in August this year.
• We are not going to decolonize the university or develop
toolkits/handbooks for how to decolonize the curriculum.
Departments, units, research centers and faculties have to debate
these issues and determine what it means in their context, i.e. the
specificities thereof and how it will be implemented. You have to do
the hard work of revisiting what you teach and how students learn in
our current context.
• We can only provide a platform for debate and discussion and come
up with a few guiding principles for the university. We are not experts
on decolonisation – we are all finding our way through practice.

5. Deliberations/Reflections of Task Team
 Determining our own understanding of what was meant by
decolonisation.
 Clear just from within the Task Team that the meaning of
“decolonization of knowledge” is contested and that it needed to be
debated at UJ. Needed more organic and deeper and broader
discussions on this issue across the university in conjunction with
more focused faculty and departmental revision of their teaching and
learning – hence the idea of the conversations.
 Recognised that the calls for decolonization are broader than that of
knowledge, i.e., symbols, aesthetics, language, culture,
representation, policies and practices. One cannot meaningfully
decolonise the curriculum without a serious renegotiation of the
other elements.
 Decolonization is not a once off, “add-on” technical exercise. It
requires that we fundamentally question and rethink the entire
curriculum, teaching and learning in departments and faculties
(inclusive of skills, attitudes, values, materials used, subjects taught,
assessments, learning experiences, etc ).

6.  Calls for decolonisation were is part asking us to critically reflect on
our courses: what we including and excluding, which forms of
knowledge and texts we were privileging and which we were
excluding and the reasons for this.
 Decolonization is not confined to the social sciences/humanities – all
faculties need to undertake this reflection. There should be no early
drawing of boundaries of what is considered as universal,
unchallenged principles and ways of knowing.
 Aware of the presumed tension between a focus on local vs global.
Not an either/or process – either Western or African/ universal or
local. And that what we were calling for was for a multiplicity of
epistemologies/pluriversality.

7. • If we deconstruct and decolonize we should, ideally, recenter around
the local and draw in previously marginalized knowledge, but not in
ways that merely seek to replace one with the other and/or are
equally exclusive. We must be inclusive, relevant and critically
engage with all forms of knowledge production. The goal of
curriculum transformation is to ensure the offering of academic
programmes that are by themselves transformative, innovative, and
globally competitive.
• We need broad stakeholder involvement in our engagement and
students need to be at the center of this endeavour.

8.  Decolonization of knowledge at UJ should not be separated from the
broader issues of transformation of the higher education system. It
should also include a meaningful discussion around combatting
inherent racism and the perpetuation of white privilege within the
education system as a whole and within UJ in particular.
 In our desire to see a paradigm shift at UJ, we must be cognizant of,
and participate in, the national and global conversation directed at
creating epistemic pluralism. Processes and theorization in the
Global South need to be a key part of our engagement.
 We need to produce research that is relevant, feeds into teaching
and, in significant part, is aimed at addressing theoretical and
practical African realities. Decolonization of knowledge also requires
that we interrogate the methodologies of teaching, learning and
research.
.

9.  In order to ensure continuity, despite changing leadership,
decolonization of the curriculum, teaching and learning must be
embedded in an institutional strategic plan with clearly defined and
measurable indicators over time.
 The process of decolonization has to be adequately resourced by
the university in terms of both human and financial resources.
 The Task Team should not try to do everything and/or duplicate the
work of other committees. We need to draw on the work already
produced by these committees and harvest from the discussions
that are ongoing nationally and globally.

10. Planned Engagements
• We set ourselves the following key tasks:
(1) To develop a set of principles/guidelines that will facilitate the
process of decolonization of knowledge at the university (today part of
that process).
(2) To develop a Charter on Decolonizing the University (July/August).
(3) Host a series of panel discussions that address the meaning of,
and methodology for, decolonizing knowledge, teaching and learning at
UJ. We planned for 5: What do we mean by decolonization of
knowledge; Is knowledge universal; Best Practices for Decolonisation
of knowledge; The relationship between and social justice and
decolonization and; The thorny issue of language usage at universities.
The intention was to have as wide a debate as possible on these
issues at the university (at all the campuses). But, primarily been
attended by students and so they remain the ones who are engaged on
the topic, yet it is academics that have to be at the forefront of changing
their curricula. This disjuncture between student demands and a largely
disinterested staff does not bode well for the university. We all need to
be on the same page.

11. (4) Various departments also have seminars and workshops on
decolonization and where we can – we work together to amplify these.
(5) We recommend that Faculties and departments, and units have
their own discussions on what decolonization means for them and how
they will implement this. Deans should report on these discussions.
(6) A workshop for academics on pedagogical and epistemological
concerns linked to the curriculum. We would like to share experiences,
understand challenges and concerns and develop a set of guiding
principles and values to underpin our academic endeavor
(7) There should also be a review of academic programmes and
modules offered at the University to ensure curriculum transformation:
Focused programme/module reviews/revisions by faculties in
collaboration with Institutional Planning and Academic Dev.
(8) Task Team noted the short-term possibilities of creating online
generic grounding courses for all students. While the task team
recognizes that restructuring of the curricula takes time, we need to
have some short-term gains – not sure where we are in this process.

12. (8) Engage with other committees and structures at UJ around
conceptual and process issues.
(9) Develop a Blog/ Facebook Page/ Platform for Engagement
(10)Feed into a comprehensive report that draws on the emerging
literature and national debates on this topic, outlines the conceptual
issues and provides concrete ways in which the university can proceed.
(11) Appropriate knowledge creation: The appropriate structures should
also review research centers within the University to facilitate more
African centered research projects. UJ should also establish
meaningful partnerships with counterparts on the African continent
and/or Global South and encourage more exchange visits for staff and
students.

13. THOUGHTS ON ACTIVITIES
Panel Discussions:
 Panelists emphasised the need to examine the power that certain
knowledge has acquired and that what we are aspiring to is more
about getting students to think critically and to explore different
forms of knowledge.
 For Torres “the de colonial turn is about making visible the invisible
and about analyzing the mechanisms that produce such invisibility
or distorted visibility in light of a large stock of ideas that must
necessarily include the critical reflections of the invisible people
themselves. Indeed one must recognize their intellectual production
as thinking – not only as culture or ideology”
 He maintains that decolonializing generates anxiety because it
unsettles one's sense of wellbeing and belonging. It calls identities
into question, it calls the enlightenment project into question.

14. • And for us here in South Africa we are at a place of discomfort for
we have not come here voluntarily – we have been pushed by
students to critically reflect on our teaching and learning – and we
do not feel equipped to do so – operating from a position of fear of
the unknown.
• It manifests in several ways. Many students and staff simply refuse
to engage with the debates at all. Some staff ridicule students'
demands for a multiplicity of knowledge systems by denying that
these systems exist or debunking them as inferior to western
theories and systems. Many academics have responded to calls for
an African-centered curriculum by saying this would render South
Africa's universities parochial.
• But, as Desiree Lewis reminded us in her intervention - that it's not
enough to simply replace one body of content with another and keep
the power relations and teaching and learning processes as they
have been. Equally important - decolonisation of knowledge is not
about “replacing all existing canons with new Afrocentric canons, if
these should be equally exclusive, elitist or authoritarian.”

15. • Walter Mignolia (not part of the panel discussions)– “There is no one
Chief or Executive Committee that determines and controls what
can be said in the name of modernity/coloniality/decoloniality.”…
“The decolonial is not a universal project that pretends to put to rest
in the past everything that is not decolonial, so we would emerge as
the Savior Gods, who had the solution of the almost eight billion
people in the planet. And so, a new planetary fascism will march like
the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. If you formulate the question
with that very modern and universalistic presupposition, it is obvious
that we have not made clear yet what we mean by pluriversality”
• For Vineet Thakur (post-doc) we must not fall into the trap of
romanticising the past and he noted that "decolonialisation involves
continuous critique, a dialectical engagement".
• For many of the students participating on the panels – it is about
wanting to see themselves and their experiences in the degrees that
they are taught.

16. • Prof Yunus Ballim indicated that knowledge is not universal – the
human condition is - and that we should be thinking of the kind of
graduate or kind of citizen we want to produce in our academy.
• In an excellent inaugural address by Brenda Leibowitz noted that the
“consequences of the global hegemonisation of knowledge include:
denigration of people’s dignity, violence linked to genocide,
complacency and ignorance, the disqualification of people from
groups or institutions and the alienation of learners and scholars
from their own learning.” And the call was for both social justice and
cognitive justice.

17. Relationship between social justice and decolonisation seminar

18. • (excerpt from the
bloghttp://sotlforsocialjustice.blogspot.co.za/2016/05/decolonizing-
curriculum-and-social.html)
• The student on the panel said that he refused to accept that
decolonization was only about race or colour. But at the same time
felt indoctrinated as he knows all about Nietzsche but nothing about
his own people, their law systems and histories. In his law studies,
mainly American cases were used. Where are the African scholars?
What are the African traditions?
• For Professor Sakhela Buhlungu - South Africa has had centuries of
slavery and colonization but today we see no traces of either. Yet
coloniality permeates every aspect of our lives and is reinforced
through power and inequality and privilege.

19. • He expressed an uneasiness about what would happen once the
student campaigns dissipate. “Will the project ever go into the
deeper recesses of academia?” For example will it affect the way
courses are planned, or which textbooks are prescribed and journals
are subscribed to or whose knowledge/voice is relevant. He was
also deeply concerned by the fact that any move to decolonize the
African university is seen as a move to dumb down the quality or
standard of our university sector.
• Mary Metcalf - Decolonization is about excellence and those who try
to relate decolonization to a ‘drop in standards’ should never be
listened to – excellence and transformation are indivisible. How
things like globalisation are thrown into arguments to muddy the
waters. She concluded by reminding us that, “no one owned the
debate on decolonization and everyone has a role to play.”
• On the panel dealing with languages one of the central questions
was why English has become hegemonic?

20. Other engagements
1. Charter (statement of core principles/aims/framework document) –
Our initial thinking is that we have to set aside a week in which we
(representatives of all four task teams, executive, students and
support staff) spend a ½ day at each campus explaining what we
have been doing to date, the need for a charter and obtaining views
on what should go into a charter. We can also create a channel for
others who have not spoken at the engagements to submit their
ideas. There will be rapporteurs at each of the engagements. We
could also break into 4 commissions (either on the lines of the 4
task teams -or another set of broad questions) to discuss issues in
more detail.
3. Deans and HoD’s have to take the lead in their faculties and their
departments to get to the specifics of reviewing their curriculum, the
implications of decolonization, the tensions they for see and the
targets they will set for themselves.

21. CONCLUDING REMARKS
1. The task team cannot decolonize the university – this has to be a
collective exercise.
2. Need to bring everyone on board – there is still a great deal of
resistance out there. We need to ensure that the majority see this
objective as something worthwhile and non threatening to pursue.
3. The university must create the support structures that will make this
a viable exercise.
4. In the end decolonization is about critical reflection, diversity and
restoring humanity and dignity to all, not about exclusion and
reversed oppression.

22. Questions to reflect on
• What values underpin teaching and learning in our faculty or our
respective disciplines?
• What kinds of knowledge do we value? What has become
hegemonic knowledge and who has determined this?
• How do we make choices about what should go into the curriculum?
How do we address questions of relevance? (relevance of texts to
contexts).
• What kinds of students do we wish to graduate? How can we affirm
the knowledge, attitudes and skills that they bring into the discipline?
• What are some of the principles that should be guiding us and what
process should we put in place for recurriculation?

23. • THANK YOU!