Haupt fails to identify the real villain

I trust your readers did not miss the funny (both comic and pathetic) side to the University of Cape Town’s invitation to Flemming Rose, the cultural editor of Danish publication Jyllands-Posten, to deliver the TB Davie Memorial Lecture, which is invariably delivered on the subject of academic freedom.

As Professor Adam Haupt correctly argues (“UCT was right about racist speaker”, July 29), this was less than an inspired choice, given that in 2005 Jyllands-Posten published the very controversial cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad.

Haupt explores the rise of new forms of racism, following a number of cultural theorists, under the headings “cultural racism” and “liquid racism”, a rather invidious subspecies of what is termed “liquid modernity”.

I am unfamiliar with these arguments, but I am sympathetic to his argument and his rather depressing conclusions.

Yet it strikes me that Haupt does not comment on two things that stand out for me — and are perhaps not unconnected. First, UCT seems here to have really lost the plot.

I write this not only as an alumnus of the university but also as one who is conscious of the cultural and intellectual debt I owe this institution in shaping my thinking.

Thus, it strikes me (issues of sensitivity aside) as completely underwhelming that the editor of a publication whose claim to fame rests on controversial cartoons should have been asked to give this lecture.

The list of better choices seems very large indeed. Haupt and I could no doubt come up with 50 or so, just chatting over coffee.

This brings me to my second thought about Haupt’s piece.

Would his list have included any- one who, in delivering this lecture, would be likely to challenge the elephant in the room?

In his piece he speaks about racism but not about neoliberalism or corporate capitalism, which are the true enemies of academic freedom. They have already taken most of it — and I am tempted to believe that the management of UCT would prefer that Rose ruffled religious and cultural feathers rather than their own complicity (for that is certainly what it is) in neoliberalism being put under a spotlight.

It is unkind to think this, but might not the choice of Rose be in itself a revelation of lack in those who made it? Sadly, the things lacking seem to be all the positive intellectual and cultural values and ideas that, through my years as a student there, have always led me to believe that UCT was a natural home for them. —