On 12 September 1977, Steve Biko was tortured to death by the apartheid police. Doctors employed by the state were complicit in his death, but when it was reported to the apartheid-era SA Medical and Dental Council, authorities covered up their unethical behaviour by suppressing any investigation.
As a result, a University of Cape Town (UCT) staff member, neurologist Frances Ames, joined five others in taking the SA Medical and Dental Council to court to force it to hold the relevant doctors accountable.
Ames did so at great personal risk. She was a single parent to three young boys and she mortgaged their house to raise funds for the court case. Her peers did not support her. In fact, one colleague warned her not to take the matter forward for fear the apartheid government would punish UCT by withdrawing the research funding UCT received from the South African Medical Research Council.
Ames ignored such craven advice. The case was won and disciplinary action finally taken against the “Biko Doctors”. Ames was subsequently awarded the Order of the Star of South Africa by former president Nelson Mandela in 1999, and has a seminar room at the Health Science Faculty at UCT named after her for her unwavering commitment to human rights and ethical principles.
I recount this case as a counterpoint to the current battle being waged at UCT where the threat of cutting off research funding is being used to beat down two university resolutions on Gaza. We have no idea how Professor Ames might have voted on the resolutions, had she been alive today.
But the two resolutions were passed after extensive debate and amendments made in the Senate in response to concerns raised in discussions, and were then adopted by the Council.
These have now been challenged in court partly on the basis that the Council did not respond to the potential threat of the withdrawal of research funding. (Full disclosure: I was a nominator of one of the resolutions currently at the centre of the court challenge.)
War unleashed on UCT
The war now unleashed on UCT is one reminiscent of the days of apartheid where universities were warned to know their place. Except now the hand that beats the universities is not the apartheid government, but the hand of wealthy donors who are willing to use their funding as an instrument of pro-Zionist pressure.
Should UCT back down on its decisions to assuage the ire of pro-Israel funders? I argue that such a step would signal the demise of the independence of our universities, a founding principle of democracy enshrined in our Constitution, and a capitulation to the wave of fascist thuggery sweeping policy-making in right-wing governments across the world since Donald Trump’s election victory emboldened the alt-right.
Firstly, the resolutions are an expression of the UCT Senate’s views on Gaza, on scholasticide, on the need to defend academic freedoms increasingly under threat from the narrow pro-Zionist interpretation of the definition of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance and to prohibit collaboration with Israeli military researchers.
These are not outlandish or antisemitic propositions, notwithstanding efforts to characterise them as such. They are actually relatively mild arguments defending the rights of Palestinians to schooling and education and committing UCT to assisting the rebuilding of the Gazan academe.
As for the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance, the proposers of the resolution responded to concerns expressed in UCT’s senate by removing reference to the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s “definition” of antisemitism and referring specifically to the unreasonable conflation by the alliance of anti-Zionist criticism as antisemitism in its examples.
We were not alone in this concern. In fact, in 2021, 210 global scholars in the fields of Holocaust history, Jewish studies, and Middle East studies (the number of signatories has now grown to 370) adopted the Jerusalem Declaration on Antisemitism (JDA) precisely because the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance “is unclear in key respects and widely open to different interpretations, and has caused confusion and generated controversy, hence weakening the fight against antisemitism”.
Indeed, the Jerusalem Declaration on Antisemitism explicitly presents itself as an alternative to the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance definition, arguing that the alliance’s definition “blurs the difference between antisemitic speech and legitimate criticism of Israel and Zionism. This causes confusion, while delegitimising the voices of Palestinians and others, including Jews, who hold views that are sharply critical of Israel and Zionism. None of this helps combat antisemitism.”
No logical explanation
Strangely, one of the first group of signatories to the Jerusalem Declaration on Antisemitism is the applicant in the case against UCT’s Council. There is no logical explanation why the UCT resolution on the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance should be deemed a threat to his academic freedom (as he claims in court papers) when the resolution reinforces the Jerusalem Declaration on Antisemitism approach, a document he signed and supported in 2021.
The second resolution precludes UCT academics from collaboration with Israeli researchers who cite their author affiliation as an Israeli military institution. Given the Israeli Defence Force’s (IDF’s) role in what is a plausible genocide before the International Court of Justice, there is no doubt that the resolution targets those who are working for, and choose to identify with, an instrument of state policy that is under examination for genocide.
When asked for comment, John Dugard, a professor of international law and eminent legal scholar, noted that “it is difficult to imagine a situation in which a university of any state, particularly of a state that has brought proceedings against a wrongdoing state, could continue to have relations with researchers that serve in the army of a state found to be plausibly committing genocide”. He described this as “a moral obligation which no self-respecting university can ignore”.
During apartheid, Wouter Basson ran a secret chemical and biological warfare programme for the South African Defence Force (SADF). Would we have considered it an unfair limitation of academic freedom to prohibit collaboration with his research entity? I do not think so, and the same applies here.
So, if these resolutions are what angered pro-Israeli funders to withdraw their support from UCT, it is clear they are not acting on the basis of the content of the resolutions, but on the temerity of UCT to adopt any kind of criticism of Israel.
The insatiable desire to ensure impunity for Israel has now given UCT (and any other universities that might dare to choose a similar course of action) the conundrum of recanting on an academic resolution to kowtow to a funder.
Why would this be a death knell for universities in South Africa?
Firstly, I argue that universities have an obligation to protect academic freedom from third-party threats. The right to choose what you research, what your scholarly views are on matters of public importance and how academics may organise and express themselves is not a matter to be determined by funders. Researcher independence is protected in our constitution.
There may well be legitimate limits on academic freedom, but the naked exercise of economic power and political bullying are not among the plausible grounds.
Secondly, in the current climate of presidential lawlessness emanating from Washington and infecting other right-wing countries, we should be pushing back against attempts to hand decision-making to rich oligarchs and those who want to use private wealth to determine public policy.
Thirdly, the actual quantum of funding loss in question at UCT is relatively small in comparison to UCT’s overall budget, less than 1% of UCT’s research income.
A far bigger threat to UCT and other South African research institutions is President Donald Trump’s attitude toward science and his willingness to use US money as an instrument of foreign policy.
The National Institutes for Health, a hitherto highly respected and non-partisan agency that is the biggest single institutional funder of health research in South Africa, providing about R1-billion alone in 2016/17 (almost as much as all local funders in total), has just been visited with massive cuts by the Trump administration.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gJdf67PwmS8
Imagine if the US government began to impose restrictions on who may receive US research funding based on whether they are “violating” Trump’s prohibition on diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI)? There is precedent with the global “gag” rule that prevents organisations receiving US financial support if they in any way encourage access to abortion services.
Would UCT then cease any transformation and inclusion work for fear of antagonising the White House and jeopardising our substantial research funding from the National Institutes for Health?
The world is heading into dark times, led by an alliance of billionaire fascists and popular demagogues who care nothing for the future of this planet, nor for justice among the people who inhabit it.
If we kowtow to threats to withhold funding, we are acquiescing to a new world order where democratic processes can be usurped by money and power. Universities have an obligation to say no to such a dystopian future.
Just as we had an obligation to say no to apartheid, as a crime against humanity, we must stand up now, independently, and say no to bullying based on the power of private wealth. DM
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