Engaging with higher education back home: Experiences of African academic diaspora in the US (original) (raw)
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This article examines assumptions concerning the extent to which being in exile influences academics’ possibilities to exercise academic freedom, particularly when articulating views on African political and social issues that might be inconvenient to the established political authorities. Two main questions are addressed. First, do African academics need to be in diaspora to exercise their academic freedom, including freedom of expression and free speech, particularly beyond the walls of the university and its consecrated freedom of teaching and research? Second, do factors such as disciplinary background, country of origin, reasons for migrating from Africa and period of living in exile influence the propensity of academics in diaspora to publicly express their views on political and social issues in their home countries? The article begins by conceptualising the African diaspora, African academic diaspora, academic freedom and ‘extramural’ academic freedom.
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In this study, I argue that there is an interplay between migration and development. Countries of origin can use a variety of methods to attract and engage diaspora citizens in their development projects. Hence, using semi-structured interviews, observation, and secondary document analysis, I explored the engagement of Eritrean diaspora academics in the higher education institutions (HEIs) of their country of origin. The study found that the HEIs are developing a working relationship with Eritrean diaspora academics located in different parts of the world. Besides, the diaspora academics have been engaging in different fields to support the HEIs in general and faculty and student development in particular. However, the findings further showed that the HEIs had less control over the linkage program. In addition, socio-economic and political factors negatively affected the diaspora academics engagement in the HEIs. The study helps readers to understand ‘why’ and‘how’ diaspora academics engage in their country of origin. In doing so, it significantly advances the knowledge about migration-development nexus. It also contributes to improving the methods in practice regarding diaspora engagement in their country of origin.
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At the dusk of the twentieth and the dawn of the twenty-first centuries transnational mobility is increasingly becoming an important space through which many of our human activities are defined. Virtually all aspects of our modern world–our jobs, culture, educational systems, ideologies, identities and even our relationships with one another are highly negotiated and inadvertently transformed by the profound forces of mobility. Through indepth interviews conducted with transnational academics of African origin in the Faculty of Humanities, Development and Social Sciences (FHDSS) at the University of KwaZulu-Natal (UKZN) this paper posits to critically provide an understanding on the role that transnational mobility has played in challenging the current thinking of foreign African academics pertaining to the issue of African scholarship. Given that UKZN is branded the ‘Premier University of African Scholarship’ the paper demonstrates how foreign African migrants are taking advantage ...