The recent 2016 meeting of the University of Cape Town’s (UCT) Convocation – the annual gathering of its alumni – has been described as having descended “into chaos”. But in fact the meeting was a microcosm of South African higher education in 2015 and 2016. It revealed how hard universities must work in the coming years to encourage dissent and debate; how important it is for academics and other members of university communities to step out of their comfort zones and listen to views with which they bitterly disagree. Now, more than ever, universities must engage the chaos that has become their new reality. Since the 1990s higher education globally has experienced a new wave of student protests – in the UK, Hong Kong, Chile, Turkey and the US to name a few. Though each has its national character, scholars of protest have identified a number of common themes: this generation of students is profoundly disillusioned with current democratic processes. They are angry with neo-liberalism’...
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