The lecture will focus on the political and higher educational context that has led to the call for decolonization of the curriculum at universities in South Africa, and the contested and varying ideas of curriculum decolonization. Dr. Badat will argue (i) that liberation of the curriculum and curricula is urgent and long overdue, and that there is a historic opportunity for liberating the curriculum from old and pernicious orthodoxies that impede knowledge making, arbitrarily value certain modes of knowledge making and certain knowledges, and constrain the construction, teaching, and assessment of courses and syllabi; (ii) that liberating the curriculum is inextricably connected to transforming institutional cultures, and to clarifying the purposes, goals, and roles of universities in South Africa, a society that must simultaneously ensure environmentally sustainable economic development, advance social equity, and consolidate and deepen democracy.

Dr. Saleem Badat is the program director of International Higher Education
and Strategic Projects at the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. His portfolio includes the South Africa program and international grantmaking in higher education.

Dr. Badat has served as the director of the Education Policy Unit at the University of the Western Cape, as the first head of the Council on Higher Education, which advises the South African Minister of Higher Education and Training, and as vice-chancellor (the equivalent of the president in the US system) of Rhodes University in South Africa. He has been chairperson of Higher Education South Africa, and of the Association of African Universities Scientific Committee on Higher Education. He is a board member of the Centre for Higher Education Transformation, a member of the Carnegie 3 Study on Poverty and Inequality in South Africa Think Tank, and a trustee of the Harold Wolpe Memorial Trust.