With a direct line of accountability to the Council, Senate,
which is a statutory structure of the University that is required by legislation
to be constituted by a majority of Academic employees, is charged with the
responsibility for all the teaching, learning, research, community service, and
academic functions of the University.
The Oxford English Dictionary had designated the ‘Post-Fact’ as
Word of the Year for 2016. Associated with such populist renditions, has been
the election of a person to the US Presidency with an avowed ‘anti-science’
stance. Since him taking office, the USA has experienced massive decreases in
funding for science and technology, the non-appointment of key staff, and the
rise of ‘alternative facts’ as reasons for policy decisions.
Since the USA remains the world’s largest funder of scientific
enquiry and thereby contributes to the reduction of research funding globally,
Senate is extremely concerned about these dire changes. Restrictions on the
mobility of scientists through border controls also impact negatively on the
generation of new knowledge.
For South Africa, currently in an economic recession while at
the same time undergoing significant changes, the Senate resolution confirms the
University’s position in both the post-school education and training sector
whilst remaining a critical role-player in the country’s national system of
innovation.
In seeking to advance our orientation towards becoming a
People’s University, the Senate resolution also confirms the requirements for
remaining globally connected, ensuring local embeddedness with our local
communities through ensuring “universal access to TUT’s resources for research,
development, science and technology and constantly improving such capacities,
capabilities, and competencies for expanding the global knowledge commons.”
The full text of the TUT Senate resolution, as adopted on 5 June
2017, is as follows:
Resolution of the Senate of Tshwane University of Technology
against Emerging Threats to the Pursuit of Science and in support of the Global
Knowledge Commons
Recent global developments, particularly in the geo-political
sphere, raise concerns about the contribution, interference in, and
sustainability of science and technology for the global good of humanity. While
Science is about studying nature and accumulating knowledge for knowledge’s
sake, it also includes application – accessing and utilising knowledge for the
progress of the common good of humanity in consideration of the sustainability
of our future in alignment with the bio-physical boundaries of our planet. This
includes the role of the Academy (represented by the Senate of TUT) in ethically
and responsibly advocating, defending, and promoting knowledge production, and
ensuring the universal dissemination thereof both locally and globally. The
Academy has freedom, duties and responsibilities, and by its very nature, the
stature to speak on behalf of the common good when the future good and survival
of humanity and the positive contribution of knowledge production, science and
technology, is under threat.
Hence,
- Whereas the progress of science and reason is contingent upon
the progress of society and evolution of social relations; and
- Whereas science and technology has developed the capacities,
capabilities, and competences for humanity as a whole, and thereby expanded the
power of production, distribution, consumption and waste-treatment, society
remains trapped within the increasingly irrational capitalist mode of production
that merely seeks to advance the interests of private capitalist ownership
whilst destroying social and communal forms of organisation; and
- Whereas Science is an international human enterprise whereby
knowledge frontiers are consistently being expanded through global
collaboration; and
- Whereas the United States of America (USA) currently represents
the most advanced and mature capitalist economies on the planet, and therefore
the largest financier of research and science; and
- Whereas attacks on the scientific method and clear scientific
consensus has massively increased since the election of the 45th President of
the USA on 9th November 2016; and
- Whereas 400 scientists of the American Geophysical Union
meeting in San Francisco demonstrated against the immanent attacks on science on
13 December 2016; and
- Whereas since assuming office, the 45th President of the USA
has sought to debase the concepts of truth and evidence-based knowledge through
inducing ‘alternative-facts’ to counter scientific consensus, reducing funding
for scientific research, and attacking public education; and
- Whereas the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists1, in
escalating the probability of a global catastrophe (doomsday clock) acknowledged
that “In addition to the existential threats posed by nuclear weapons and
climate change, new global realities emerged, as trusted sources of information
came under attack, fake news was on the rise, and words were used in cavalier
and often reckless ways” (2017: 2); and
- Whereas the 45th President of the USA enacted an executive
order temporarily ban all refugees and citizens of seven ‘Muslim-majority’
countries from entering the USA on 27th January 2017; and
- Whereas a large proportion of the delegates to the 2017 Annual
Meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science constituted a
Rally to Stand Up for Science which warmed against the ‘muzzling of
scientists and government agencies, the immigration ban, the deletion of
scientific data, and the de-funding of public science, the erosion of [their]
institutions of science’ as a dangerous direction for the USA and further argued
that under such a regime, ‘real people and communities bear the brunt of these
actions’ on 19th February 2017; and
Noting that a March for Science was organised in 22nd April
2017 (traditionally recognised as ‘Earth Day’) which mobilised hundreds of
thousands of people into various demonstrative actions including approximately
580 protests world-wide (including in South Africa) and in more than 600 cities
in the USA. The March for Science represented a clear initial step taken by the
scientific community and supporters in taking mass action against the vicious
attacks on science perpetuated by the 45th President of the USA;
Therefore,
- Resolves to stand in solidarity with the knowledge workers of
the world and the researchers and scientists located in the USA to
collaboratively and cooperatively mobilise against:
12.1 Suppression,
limitation, and censorship of research and development;
12.2 Attacks on
access to public education and constraints on participation in the generation of
knowledge; and the
12.3 Subordination of science to the profit requirements
of the dominant global economic forces (namely, the ruling capitalist class) and
its political apparatuses.
- As a core component of the South African National System of
Innovation and a significant facility of the Post-School Education and Training
System, the Senate of TUT is further committed to redressing the scourge of
anti-science perspectives by:
13.1 Engaging with local communities to better
define and develop research challenges thereby ensuring its own relevance and
appropriateness as a higher education and training
institution;
13.2 Advancing universal access to TUT’s resources for research,
development, science and technology and constantly improving such capacities,
capabilities, and competencies for expanding the global knowledge commons;
13.3 Widening the remit of Faculty and University-wide engagements to ensure
participation of local communities in the ongoing transformation of TUT; and
13.4 Develop pilot projects identified by the Academy or by communities, and
mutually negotiated with and based on community needs, to resolve some or other
basic problem – sanitation, food sovereignty, environmental protection,
educational and social rights – in the local and global communities of the
university.
1 According to the Editor: “Founded in 1945 by University of Chicago
scientists who had helped develop the first atomic weapons in the Manhattan
Project, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists created the Doomsday Clock two
years later, using the imagery of apocalypse (midnight) and the contemporary
idiom of nuclear explosion (countdown to zero) to convey threats to humanity and
the planet. The decision to move (or to leave in place) the minute hand of the
Doomsday Clock is made every year by the Bulletin’s Science and Security Board
in consultation with its Board of Sponsors, which includes 15 Nobel laureates.
The Clock has become a universally recognized indicator of the world’s
vulnerability to catastrophe from nuclear weapons, climate change, and new
technologies emerging in other domains” (2017:
3).
For more information on the Tshwane University of Technology please contact
Willa de Ruyter on tel: 012 382 5352 or send an email to deruyterw@tut.ac.za.