Towards deep transformation

On Friday, 12 August, Professor Jonathan Jansen presented a lecture on deep transformation to members of the University of Cape Town’s (UCT) Department of Anaesthesia and Perioperative Medicine to help further the department’s Transformation Advisory Group’s (TAG) transformation agenda.

The lecture, which took place at the Neuroscience Institute at Groote Schuur Hospital, focused on how UCT can move towards deep transformation by changing the social, cultural and epistemological foundations of its academic departments.

Professor Jansen, who is a distinguished professor in the Faculty of Education at Stellenbosch University and the president of the African Academy of Sciences, has an illustrious career as an educator and pedagogical philosopher.

“What really hamstrings transformation are things we don’t talk about often enough. One is the problem of knowledge. The other is the problem of culture.”

His work has focused on curriculum theory and the politics of knowledge and has seen him further transformation at various universities throughout South Africa. He has also produced numerous books on the topic of interracial intimacies at tertiary institutions.

Tackling transformation through knowledge and culture

Looking at the first two dimensions of transformation – staff and student equity – Jansen highlighted that achieving these reformations is relatively straightforward. “Demographics,” he said, “in terms of enrolments, graduations and appointments will resolve themselves over time.

“What really hamstrings transformation are things we don’t talk about often enough. One is the problem of knowledge. The other is the problem of culture.”

According to Jansen, the greatest difficulty with deep transformation comes in with changing the culture of an academic department. One of the most effective ways to encourage a shift in culture, he said, is with a top-down approach that seeks to transform the environment for academic staff first.

Here, leaders who seek to implement deep transformation must ask themselves specific questions about the environment in which they are operating.

How do staff experience the culture of an academic department?

How do staff experience the culture of an academic department in a former “white university”?

How do staff experience the culture of an academic medicine department (eg Cardiology) in a former “white university”?

“The problem gets more complicated as you go down the line. In a high-status discipline like medicine, there are particular kinds of problems and politics that make it very difficult to transform those spaces,” he pointed out.

This issue is often exacerbated by the ingrained customs and ideas at English-speaking institutions, like UCT. “One of the most consistent complaints I hear from highly accomplished black academics at UCT is the profound feeling of estrangement or alienation, to the point of physical and emotional illness and distress.

“This springs from a coldness, aloofness and arrogance in fraught interpersonal relationships that are part and parcel of English academic culture. There is also an argumentative tradition that is relentless in English academic culture that is unconscious of its effects on those from outside with its ‘ways of speaking’.

“Finally, there is a level of intellectual arrogance that is derived from mother country. English academic institutions really do believe that their concepts, theories and methods are superior to those from elsewhere – and this is at the root of the decolonial lament,” he explained.

These ingrained cultures, Jansen pointed out, have two serious consequences. “It can be and is devastating for those from outside of such traditions and behaviours – particularly those from disadvantaged cultures who lack … personal and intellectual confidence to speak back.

“This leads to generating a built-up, pent-up anger that – when expressed publicly – explodes in behaviours that are intense and personal, often performative and braggadocious, vitriolic, bizarre and, to the outsider, irrational.”

Work for the long term

While these biases and cultural quagmires are inherently difficult to overcome, there are measured ways in which change can be driven.

“The bad news for deep transformation is that this dynamic is extremely difficult to change because of the nested effects of such ingrained cultures on an individual, departmental, school, faculty, senate and university level. “The good news is that change can come through strong leadership at all levels,” he said.

The first step here, Jansen indicated, is to “start by acknowledging there is a problem”. Following from this, departments must make an effort to hire into leadership positions individuals who are committed and competent to begin transforming academic cultures.

In doing this, departments will bring new perspectives and approaches to doing things and will be able to work consciously on the demonstration of alternative academic practices and behaviour.

Jansen pointed out that by being open to exploring what deep transformation is and what it could mean for the Department of Medicine, the leadership is moving in the right direction. “What you’re doing now is, as they say in Afrikaans, ewigheidswerk (work for the very long term). So, I want to thank you and your team for your vision and taking the challenge seriously.”

Fostering an inclusive environment

The chairperson of the TAG, Cheryl Wyngaard, said that while the initial mission of the advisory group had centred around employment equity, it now hopes to promote transformation at all levels and in all departments.

“Our group, TAG, would like to inspire others through our ongoing transformation as an intentional, prioritised and rigorous part of our agendas. The TAG will develop and promote the department as a diverse, inclusive and transparent environment that invests in all its members of the department who work, interact and learn within the department.”

Adding to this, Vice-Chancellor Professor Mamokgheti Phakeng pointed out that transformation must be viewed within the framework of UCT’s Vision 2030. “Our Vision 2030 has three pillars: excellence, transformation and sustainability. So, every time we talk about transformation, we must see it as the centre of these three pillars.

“As a global university, we need diversity and we need to understand the power of diversity – that in our transformation, we must address the inequalities of the past.”

“One of the things that we want to see, which in my view is part of the transformation agenda, is that we’ve got to drive the same vision for all of us, irrespective of race, gender or religion or sexual orientation.

She echoed the sentiments of Jansen, highlighting that while UCT aims to achieve excellence, this cannot be done without making the changes necessary to foster an inclusive and transformed environment.

“Transformation is key to pursuing excellence; being able to understand excellence in its complexity and understanding that while excellence can be good, it can also damage. It can marginalise. It can silence. It can create invisible allies.

“So, for us to understand excellence in all of its complexity, we must also look at transformation, because it gives us a gaze into what could go wrong if we pursue excellence on its own and it will help us to understand how excellence is enabled,” she explained.

“If we pursue excellence without transformation, not only will we miss the complexity of excellence, but our excellence will also not be sustainable. As a global university, we need diversity and we need to understand the power of diversity – that in our transformation, we must address the inequalities of the past.”