Stellenbosch University (SU) hosted a conference, entitled, “Controversies in the use of race and other human categorisations in the South African higher education sector” on 12 and 13 June 2024. This conference was held at the Stellenbosch Institute for Advanced Study (STIAS) and was organised by the university’s Committee for the Institutional Response to the [Khampepe] Commission (CIRCoRe)’s workstream that deals with matters relating to race, human categorisation and science (RHCS).
Phila Msimang, Senior Lecturer in the Department of Philosophy, based in the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, heads the RHCS workstream.
Msimang, who teaches and researches the philosophy of race and its attendant issues, among other topics, chaired proceedings at the conference.
“I look at how group descriptors such as race and ethnicity are used in different contexts,” Msimang said of his research. “I am primarily interested in their use in the sciences and how those uses relate to social problems. As such, some of the topics I address are scientific racism and its legacies in present-day disciplines, the use of racial classifications in health and how they relate to disparity research, the use of racial classifications in policy, and so on.”
The conference was delivered through plenary sessions that included presentations and panel discussions. The conference’s keynote speakers were Professor Crain Soudien, Emeritus Professor of Education and African Studies at the University of Cape Town, who delivered his address on 12 June, and Prof Jonathan Jansen, Distinguished Professor in the Faculty of Education at SU, who delivered the keynote address on 13 June.
The conference audience was quite diverse. Most of the audience was made up of people in higher education such as staff and students, but there was also community representation from activists and other interested parties. The delegates of the conference were academics, student leaders, staff, and members of the broader higher education community.
Msimang observed that there is a great demand for a conference that interrogated the issues on the table. “The conference brought people together who are working in different spaces on similar problems in a way that helps them find areas where they can work together on tackling the issues of their interest,” he added.
“It is in platforms and engagement of this nature that we learn that there are many great research initiatives happening in the Higher Education sector and at SU in particular whose aim is to tackle racial inequities,” said Msimang. “These initiatives operate from the perspective of various disciplines from sociology to clinical anatomy or engineering. The offering of the conference was, in this way, multidisciplinary. The challenge that remains for us is to establish truly transdisciplinary work that is problem-driven and that can draw on expertise across disciplines rather than only in so far as specific disciplinary constraints allow.”
However, this is not the end of the road as far as the conference themes and focus areas are concerned. There are smaller engagement being planned at SU for different environments that continue the discussions that began during the conference. There is also an international conference being planned on similar themes to happen in 2025.
Mr Phila Msimang is the Head of the CIRCoRe Workstream on Race, Human Categorisation and Science (RHCS) and a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Philosophy. He was a co-organiser of the conference as well as the conference host.