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17 July 2024 | Story Prof Danie Brand

The University of the Free State, through its Free State Centre for Human Rights, is pleased to present an online panel discussion titled, The Gaza crisis: How should South African universities engage with ‘pressing and urgent injustices’?   


Click to view document Join the Panel Discussion

Following the killing of 1 143 people and the taking of 247 hostages by Hamas during an armed incursion in Israel on 7 October 2023, Israel mounted an invasion of the Gaza Strip. In the ensuing bombardment and ground offensive – which is continuing ten months after the Hamas attack – Israel armed forces have killed more than 38 000 people. Hamas’ killing and continued holding of hostages and Israel’s sustained offensive – described as an ‘unfolding genocide’ and a ‘massacre’ – confront universities with an enduring question: how to engage as institutions ‘with pressing and urgent injustices’?


Join us for an online panel discussion where pertinent questions emerging from the current crisis will be discussed. Should a university such as the University of the Free State formulate an institutional response to the Gaza crisis? If so, what form should it take? Is a statement, as has already emanated from several other South African universities, appropriate and sufficient? How to deal with current ties with Israeli universities, businesses, and individual academics? Can the UFS remain silent?

Event details
Date: Monday 22 July 2024
Time: 15:00-17:00
Venue: Ms Teams
Click to view documentClick here to RSVP before 22 July 2024. 
A Microsoft Teams link will be shared for the online event.

For South African universities, the Gaza crisis is a particularly apt lens through which to consider this question. Firstly, because Israel’s invasion of Gaza also manifested as a ‘scholasticide’: a large-scale destruction of schools, universities, and other places of learning in Gaza and the killing of Palestinian teachers and academics. Secondly, because of the strong historical and current links between South Africa, Palestine, and Israel: Israel’s past collaboration with the South African apartheid regime; the South African liberation movement’s enduring relationship with Palestinian liberation; and the many uncomfortable congruences between South Africa’s history of racially determined injustice and the current ethno-/racial social, political, and geographical segregation in Israel/Palestine.

Moderator

Prof Francis Petersen: Vice-Chancellor and Principal, UFS. 

 

Speakers
Prof Kistner has held teaching positions in Comparative Literature at Wits University, Modern European Languages at Unisa, and Philosophy at the University of Pretoria and is an extraordinary professor in the University of the Free State Department of Public Law. She is currently working on intersections between political philosophy, social theory, jurisprudence, and psychoanalytic theory.

Prof Nieftagodien is the NRF South African Research Chair in Local Histories and Present Realities and is the Head of the History Workshop at the University of the Witwatersrand, where he also lectures in the Department of History. He is the co-author – with Phil Bonner – of books on the history of Alexandra, Ekurhuleni, and Kathorus, and has also published books on the history of Orlando West and the Soweto uprising, and co-edited a book on the history of the ANC.

Prof Gillespie is a political and legal anthropologist with a research focus on abolition in South Africa, particularly concerned with the ways in which criminal legal processes become vectors for the continuation of apartheid relations. She joined the Department of Anthropology/Sociology at the University of the Western Cape in 2018, prior to which she worked for a decade at the University of the Witwatersrand (Wits). In 2008, she co-founded the Johannesburg Workshop in Theory and Criticism (JWTC), an experimental project tasked with recrafting the work of critical theory beyond the Global North. She writes and teaches about urbanism, violence, sexualities, race, and the praxis of social justice. 

News Archive

UFS lecturer serves on National Forensic Oversight and Ethics Board
2015-02-13

Dr Karin Ehlers

Dr Karin Ehlers, lecturer in the Department of Genetics at the University of the Free State, was elected by the Minister of Police, Mr Nkosinathi Nhleko, to serve on the National Forensic Oversight and Ethics Board which will, among others, monitor the implementation of the provisions of the DNA Act.

Previously, when DNA evidence was collected at a crime scene, it was analysed only when requested by the prosecutor or investigator when they had found a suspect and needed confirmation. With the new DNA Act, all samples collected from violent crimes must be analysed. The profiles will be compared with a convicted offender database to see if some of the unsolved cases can be linked to these perpetrators. The reason for this is that many of these offenders are repeat offenders, and this process will increase the chances of solving cases successfully.

Serving on the Board, Dr Ehlers will also have the opportunity to contribute to proposals on:
- the improvement of practices regarding the overall operations of the National Forensic DNA Database (NFDD),
- the ethical, legal, and social implications of the use of forensic DNA profiles, and
- the training and the development of criteria for the use of familial searches.

Board members will also receive and assess complaints about alleged violations relating to the abuse of DNA samples and forensic DNA profiles and/or security breaches, and will report to complainants in respect thereof.

In 2014, when all citizens in South Africa were invited to apply for a position on the National Forensic Oversight and Ethics Board, Dr Ehlers submitted her application with a motivation on how she could contribute to the function of the Board. She is one of ten persons who were appointed to serve on the Board. “The reason I was successful was due to my involvement in the development of the UFS Forensic Sciences Programme,” Dr Ehlers said.

The capacity of the country was one of the challenges that had to be overcome for this Act to take effect. ”The UFS was able to address this problem, implementing degrees in Forensic Genetics and Forensic Sciences. With these programmes we made a real difference in the fight against crime. It is a real privilege to form part of this project,” said Dr Ehlers.

Dr Karin Ehlers serves on National Forensic Oversight and Ethics Board (read the full story)

 

For more information or enquiries contact news@ufs.ac.za

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