‘Reality check for Maties’
Controversial article on SA women, urges a rethink on human research approach
STELLENBOSCH University (SU) rector and vice-chancellor Wim de Villiers, said the institution “will need to work very hard to rebuild trust” with all stakeholders on the back of a recent controversial article on race and cognition published by five academics based at the university.
In a message to participants at a conference on “restructuring science and research at SU on the basis of justice, inclusion and ethical integrity”, De Villiers said, “what happened here was wrong and I will not defend the indefensible”.
He said the “single piece of research in no way reflects the ethics, quality and values” of SU’s research programme.
De Villiers, who is overseas, sent a voice note which was played at the symposium. Attendees included students and academics from SU and other South African universities.
He said the controversial research article, “Age and education-related effects on cognitive functioning in coloured South African women”, and was published in an international scientific journal; was “a reality check” for the institution.
The symposium, which was organised by three university senate members of the SU council, Aslam Fataar, Amanda Gouws and Usuf Chikte and supported by colleagues, was an opportunity for the university to rethink how it will approach issues of human research in the future.
Speakers at the conference included Jonathan Jansen, a former vice-chancellor of the University of the Free State (UFS) who is now a professor in the Faculty of Education at SU; Amanda Gouws (Political Science, SU), Barbara Boswell (Department of English, UCT) Gubela Mji (Centre for Rehabilitation Studies, SU), Melany Hendricks (Psychiatry, SU),
Nadine Bowers-Du Toit (Religion and Development Research, SU) and Anita van der Merwe (Nursing).
Jansen said racism in research was not restricted to Afrikaans universities such as SU, but was present at institutions such as UFS and UCT. He said race and ethnicity are social constructs.
Other speakers decried “colonial and apartheid research thinking” that makes connections between race/ ethnicity and “particular attributes or aptitudes of a group of people.”
Mji said SU had for too long avoided being classified as an “African university” and insisted on drawing its inspiration from the colonial period.
Fataar, Gouws and Chikte said, “the racial essentialism… in the article is not only an assault on the dignity of research subjects, it insults black people and communities classified as coloured generally and women ”.
They said the incident “shows how far we still have to travel across all levels of the university to engage our institutional past”.
Participants supported a suggestion that a campus-wide mechanism was needed to transform and decolonise research and science.
They said the university should develop a critique of race in science and research.