Arabic Studies Events
[PAST EVENT] African-Arab Exchange: Salim Vally "South Africa, Palestine and the Anti-Apartheid Struggle"
Location
Boswell Hall (formerly Morton Hall), Room 139100 Ukrop Way
Williamsburg, VA 23185Map this location
Access & Features
- Registration/RSVP
African-Arab Exchange Speaker Series:
Salim Vally is the DHET-NRF SARChI Chair in Community, Adult and Workers’ Education (CAWE) and a Professor at the University of Johannesburg’s (UJ) Education Faculty. He is an elected member of the Academy of Science in SA (ASSAf) and a visiting professor at Nelson Mandela University.
Vally was a leading member of the Black Consciousness aligned South African Students Movement in 1976/1977 and left the country after its banning by the erstwhile apartheid regime and after severe repression. He returned to South Africa in 1982, taught at a secondary school and worked for progressive literacy organisations. From 1985 to 1994 he was the education officer of an independent trade union, CCAWUSA before joining the Education Policy Unit at Wits University in 1995 where he worked until 2008. Vally joined UJ in 2009. He studied at the universities of York, Witwatersrand and KwaZulu-Natal and was a visiting lecturer at Columbia and York universities.
His scholarly interests include education and social policy as these relate to social class, antiracism, social justice, human rights and democracy; critical and liberatory pedagogies; and extensive involvement in participatory action research and transdisciplinary and comparative approaches to critically examining education policy and practice. Vally serves on the boards of various local professional and non-governmental organisations and is active in various social movements and solidarity organisations. He tries to live by the Freirian leitmotif of the Centre for Education Rights and Transformation which he directed for ten years: “Reading the Word and the World, Changing the Text and the Context”
Two recent co-edited books are: The University and Social Justice Across the Globe (2020) and Against Racial Capitalism: The Selected Writings of Neville Alexander (2023) - while agreeing with Howard Zinn that “most academics publish while others perish” and therefore continues with his abiding interest in linking academic scholarship with societal concerns, community participation and global solidarity.
Sponsored by: Arabic Program
Contact
Limited space, contact Stephen Sheehi