Major South African universities began looking into their own ties with Israeli universities within hours of the University of Johannesburg's (UJ) decision on Wednesday night to terminate its links with Ben-Gurion University unless it fulfils, within six months, two conditions UJ has specified.
After the Mail & Guardian's report last week that Unisa vice-chancellor Barney Pityana had signed a petition calling on UJ to sever all ties with Ben-Gurion, three more varsity heads added their names: Saleem Badat (Rhodes), Derrick Swartz (Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University) and Dan Ncayiyana (former vice-chancellor of what is now the Durban University of Technology).
They joined about 250 signatories to the petition, launched last month, including Archbishop Desmond Tutu, poet Antjie Krog, law professor John Dugard, writer Breyten Breytenbach and sociologist Ran Greenstein.
'No formal links'
Wits University vice-chancellor Loyiso Nongxa told the M&G he was not aware of "any formal links -- a memorandum of understanding [MoU] -- between Wits and Israeli universities".
And "the issue -- whether or not we should enter into such agreements -- hasn't come up over the past 10 years that I’ve been at Wits”, he said.
Three hours later, Wits spokesperson Shirona Patel said she had searched the university's database and could confirm that it "has no formal ties with any Israeli university, according to our database".
The University of Cape Town followed suit shortly afterwards: "There are no institution-level partnerships with Israeli universities," said spokesperson Mologadi Makwela.
He added that "Professor Milton Shain of the UCT Kaplan Centre for Jewish Studies and Research has indicated that there are no formal links with any Israeli universities."
All 23 vice-chancellors will receive the UJ senate's resolution, said Duma Malaza, the chief executive officer of the varsity heads' representative body, Higher Education South Africa (Hesa). "It is likely that the next meetings of Hesa's executive committee on October 7 and board on October 27 will ... reflect on this issue," he added.
No comments:
Post a Comment