tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5687347459208158501.post5448508421955037459..comments2024-03-28T12:50:25.792-04:00Comments on The Philosopher's Stone: MEMOIR VOLUME THREE CHAPTER THREE FIRST INSTALMENTRobert Paul Wolffhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11970360952872431856noreply@blogger.comBlogger12125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5687347459208158501.post-65480846718063864032010-06-22T07:01:08.133-04:002010-06-22T07:01:08.133-04:00Well, I can live with cavalier, but let me remind ...Well, I can live with cavalier, but let me remind everyone that this is a Memoir, not a work of scholarship, so it reports the world as I found it. Aleph, I am happy to accept your correction, inasmuch as it is your world I am talking about, and you are therefore much better situated than I to make generalizations. I will say, however, that what I have said arose out of my own direct observations at a certain moment in time. As for the possibility that academics can be deluded about their own circumstances, I would just cite as an example the fact that many academics at Harvard are under the impression that they are at a quite progressive institution, whereas to someone looking at them from the outside, it does not appear that way at all.Robert Paul Wolffhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11970360952872431856noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5687347459208158501.post-57920164216412430672010-06-22T04:01:48.812-04:002010-06-22T04:01:48.812-04:00Naturally I can't speak for every department i...Naturally I can't speak for every department in every SA university, and I know nothing about engineering at UP. But Prof Wolff has made a very bold claim, whose scope covers a variety of universities. Thus, I think that the fact that it doesn't resonate with me at all - with my experience in an area of one SA university - does make it dubious.<br /><br />Also, Wolff's beliefs about SA universities seem to be in tension with each other. It is odd to hold that (a) some SA universities are at the decent standard of second-tier US state universities, but (b) at all SA universities there is fervent acceptance of a clearly absurd belief.<br /><br />The remark I quoted from Wolff is striking and entertaining, but a less sweeping claim would have a great chance at plausibility. In its current form, it strikes me as cavalier. I'm quite happy to work at an unspectacular but decent institution, but am disconcerted to read that I might be deluded about its quality.Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11646839641314388045noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5687347459208158501.post-22831760251487738012010-06-22T01:50:12.849-04:002010-06-22T01:50:12.849-04:00I have to say that my experience as a student at a...I have to say that my experience as a student at an SA university (the University of Pretoria) bears Prof. Wolff out. Everybody is aware of the gulf in prestige between, say, Wits and Stanford. But in UP's engineering faculty a lot was made of the academic relationship they had recently established with M.I.T. (this is in the early 2000s) and it was taken as a badge of courage that the folk at M.I.T. had apparently recommended that they tone down some of their evaluations (in order to get higher passing rates, I suspect). In private, lecturers would tell us about this as a vindication of the university's standards.Marinushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13492009758043047531noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5687347459208158501.post-44968119050125053362010-06-21T04:29:43.503-04:002010-06-21T04:29:43.503-04:00Thank you for posting your engaging memoir on the ...Thank you for posting your engaging memoir on the web. As a South African academic, I was particularly interested to read your comments about SA universities.<br /><br />You write: 'There is considerable competition among them to determine which is the academically best campus, with all of them fervently and mistakenly believing that they are the equivalents of Oxford and Cambridge, or Harvard and Berkeley.'<br /><br />This hasn't been my experience. In fact, I've never heard an academic or student at the University of Cape Town, where I work, claiming that the university is equivalent to these great institutions. When our best students are admitted for postgraduate study to Berkeley, Oxford, etc., they are thrilled, as they should be, and as they would not be if they believed (absurdly!) that they were merely transferring to an equivalently good university in another country.<br /><br />If the belief that South African universities were in the global top rank of universities were as widely and intensely held as you imply, then it would be surprising that universities comparable (as you put it) 'with second tier State Universities in the United States -- UMass, UConn, maybe Ohio State' could contain so many ignorant and deluded people.Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11646839641314388045noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5687347459208158501.post-88425001445501213072010-06-20T03:26:52.761-04:002010-06-20T03:26:52.761-04:00This is what I love about posting my Memoirs on li...This is what I love about posting my Memoirs on line. I talk about Harvard, and up pop folks from my Harvard days. I talk about UMass, same thing. Then I talk about the University of Zululand, and lo and behold, there is someone who grew up in Empangeni!! I mean, how cool is that?Robert Paul Wolffhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11970360952872431856noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5687347459208158501.post-82141411932794438102010-06-19T20:49:45.477-04:002010-06-19T20:49:45.477-04:00Empangeni, yes, that's the town I grew up in. ...Empangeni, yes, that's the town I grew up in. Of course, the old South Africa being what it was, Empangeni (and Richards Bay, and Mtunzini) were white areas, and the campus was in the small town of KwaDlangezwa, a few kilometers south, across that ludicrous border and in the bantustan of KwaZulu.<br /><br />There were genuine academics there, some even drawing students from the white universities for postgraduate work (though this must be after apartheid got abolished, and even then I imagine being one of those students must have been an amazingly weird experience). Not any more: I see UniZul has lost full university accreditation.Marinushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13492009758043047531noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5687347459208158501.post-82221199846721302772010-06-19T16:02:56.597-04:002010-06-19T16:02:56.597-04:00JP, that is quite correct. I was struck by the fa...JP, that is quite correct. I was struck by the fact that many English South Africans had dual passports, the clear implication being that they could always leave, whereas the Afrikaners thought of themselves [legitimately] as Africans. It was also the fact that many Afrikaners speak Zulu [perhaps from their time s farmers with Zulu farm workers], ant think of themselves as really understanding the Blacks, as they would say.Robert Paul Wolffhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11970360952872431856noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5687347459208158501.post-11963685645323067432010-06-19T13:25:12.528-04:002010-06-19T13:25:12.528-04:00Oh, OK. If you take 'settler' to imply tha...Oh, OK. If you take 'settler' to imply that the land was terra nullius then you are correct. <br /><br />The Afrikaner liking for the term comes from the association of intending to stay (making it home), as opposed to intending to run it as a satellite of a foreign power to which you are still loyal. This is seen as a point of pride against English whites, and the derogatory term for an English white comes from this contrast.Unknownhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13068383050573818153noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5687347459208158501.post-18541280012953389102010-06-19T13:11:42.389-04:002010-06-19T13:11:42.389-04:00I think the English language universities are orie...I think the English language universities are oriented toward England [and latterly, at America]. They talk about themselves in a way that makes it clear they conceive of themselves as world class, but if you look at the various departments,and compare their scholarly accomplishments with those of corresponding American departments, it is clear that they are good, solid universities not in the first rank.<br /><br />I am well aware that the Afrikaners view themselves as settlers. So did the colonizers who came from England to push the Native Americans out of their ancestral homes. Indeed, they fostered the illusion that they had found an empty land. There is a lot of that going around. The Israelis imagine that no one was living in Palestine before they arrived, or so a guide told me when I visited Israel.Robert Paul Wolffhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11970360952872431856noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5687347459208158501.post-55990745738794649482010-06-19T13:01:03.725-04:002010-06-19T13:01:03.725-04:00Care to say a bit more about our universities thin...Care to say a bit more about our universities thinking themselves the equivalent of Harvard/Oxford? I have not ever really picked that up, though my experience is mostly of the historically Afrikaans universities.<br /><br />(Oh, and quibbles. You left out the Malay heritage of the 'coloured' people, the Afrikaners are a Dutch/German/French mix (with roughly 6% non-european blood thrown in, apparently), and the Afrikaners view themselves as settlers, not colonisers, though I won't argue the point.)Unknownhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13068383050573818153noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5687347459208158501.post-87007384194630417932010-06-19T07:06:57.836-04:002010-06-19T07:06:57.836-04:00Marinus, Your description is fascinating, and not...Marinus, Your description is fascinating, and not surprising. The HBUs were a very ill-assorted lot. UDW and UWC were genuine university campuses, and Fort Hare had a great tradition, although it had fallen on hard times when I visited, but places like UniZulu and Venda and the University of the North were another matter entirely. I did visit the campus once, as part of a group who drove up from UDW. This was at the main Empangeni campus. The thing that impressed me most was that the Rector had somehow managed to acquire three or four doctorates [let us not discuss their value!]. At that time, fifteen years ago, I was having very bad back trouble, and actually visited the campus in a wheelchair.<br /><br />Despite sll of that, I look back on those years with very great fondness. The people I met were wonderful, and the students were as well. It made me very proud to be able t help some of them.Robert Paul Wolffhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11970360952872431856noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5687347459208158501.post-44416707814235640542010-06-19T05:56:25.586-04:002010-06-19T05:56:25.586-04:00My mother was for many years an academic at the Un...My mother was for many years an academic at the University of Zululand, and up until late in high school I spent a lot of time on that campus. It was a strange place, I don't know if you've visited it. It has a rather impressive auditorium, the site of many political rallies and a favourite haunt of Mangosuthu Buthelezi, and library which compares favourably with that of other universities its size (far larger than what is to be found here where I am now, at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology). But the music department (where my mother taught) was a series of pre-fab buildings during all of her time there, well over a decade, despite the fact that it was supposed to be a temporary structure. Instead the department and all the musical instruments got housed in this row of plywood boxes -- as a violist, I'm sure you can appreciate how thrilled the musicians were with that. The music department wasn't the only one that suffered like that. There was a really uneven expenditure at that university, and I suspect that there were certain talismanic structures that were put up as a political statement, and, except for special favour, everything else (and the people inside those structures) had to do with what they were given.<br /><br />When my mother was appointed there, she only had her honours degree, an higher education diploma and a few years of teaching experience (and no political links -- at least none that my parents have ever deigned to inform me about). I of course believe her to be an extremely bright and capable individual, but in the rest of the world those are the qualifications of a teaching assistant, not someone setting up curriculums at tertiary level. But it was a suitable level of qualification of the role she was expected to play: giving the introductory courses to students who had no, or very spotty, formal training. She never did a lick of research in her capacity as academic, except for the MA she completed part-time (through UNISA) in her time there with a resulting publication or two. And, from what I can gather, a great number of the academics at that university played very, very similar roles.Marinushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13492009758043047531noreply@blogger.com