How do we understand academic freedom today? Does it still have relevance in the face of the managerial and ideological pressures which are reconfiguring higher education institutions? And what about the humanities? In an increasingly instrumentalised and instrumentalising world, what do the humanities have to offer society? These two sets of questions provide the guiding threads of related enquiries that make up this hard- hitting and controversial study.

Academic Freedom in a Democratic South Africa argues that the principle of supporting and extending open intellectual enquiry is essential to realising the full public value of higher education, and that in this task, the humanities and the forms of argument and analysis that they embody have a crucial role to play.

The book examines the troubled history of academic freedom in South Africa from the key debates around the O’Brien Affair in 198? through to post-apartheid government policy where it figures as an inconvenient ideal, always to be supported in theory, but neglected in practice; questions received ideas of institutional culture and managerial authority; and argues for a better understanding of the social force of the advanced forms of literacy made available by the humanities, but rendered invisible by both local and global policy templates.

Discussion of these core controversies and the place of the humanities in furthering democracy is deepened and extended in a series of interviews with three key figures from the critical humanities. In these, Terry Eagleton talks about the deforming effects of managerial policies in British universities, Edward W. Said argues for the democratising potential of the humanities, and Jakes Gerwel discusses the importance of the humanities in both the anti-apartheid struggle, and for contemporary South Africa. The volume as a whole ends with a consideration of the most recent challenges facing academic freedom and the humanities.