Academic Activism in Higher Education: A Living Philosophy for Social Justice [Paperback]

This book argues for renewed understandings of academic activism, understandings that conceive of the ideas, arguments and scholarship of the academe as embedded within the practices of what the academy does. It examines why and how a renewed notion of academic activism informs a philosophy of higher education specifically in relation to teaching and learning. The book focuses on the theories and practices of teaching and learning, in particular how such pedagogical actions are guided by social, political and cultural influences outside of the university as a higher education institution. The authors advocate for a living philosophy of higher education that is commensurate with real actions and imaginary fictions of what constitutes higher education and what remains in becoming for the discourse. With a focus on South African social justice education, the book imagines pathways for academic activism to manifest in revolutionised pedagogical actions or actions that bring into contestation what already exists with the possibility for the cultivation of renewal. 

Preface.- Chapter 1. Philosophy of Higher Education and Interpretivism.- Chapter 2. Criticality and Higher Education.- Chapter 3. Turning to the Subjectivity of the Individual.- Chapter 4. Deconstruction through Writing.- Chapter 5. The Pursuit of a Living Philosophy.- Chapter 6. Revolutionary Action.- Chapter 7. A Pedagogy of Courage.- Chapter 8. A Feminist Critique of University Education.- Chapter 9. Academic Activism and the Postmodern Condition Revisited.- Chapter 10. Through the Agency of the Muselmann.- Postscript: Constraints and impediments to academic activism.- Index.

Nuraan Davids is a Professor of Philosophy of Education in the Department of Education Policy Studies, Stellenbosch University. Her research interests include democratic citizenship education; Islamic philosophy of education; and philosophy in higher in education.  She is tlSv