Dr. Upenyu Majee - Global South/South Relations

About the Lecture:
The lecture draws on the case of post-apartheid South Africa to highlight the tensions, contradictions and complexities attending efforts to integrate higher education internationalization goals with national reform agendas that emphasize locally-driven racial justice and equity concerns. It discusses the limitations of the nation-state framework and the local-global binary in analyzing and engaging with regionally interconnected structures and relationships. The goal of the lecture is to provide a critical lens for thinking about how higher education internationalization endeavors can better meet social, epistemic, economic, relational, and racial justice demands in formerly colonized regions with long histories of deeply racist colonial relations.
About the Speaker:
Upenyu Majee is Project Manager for Ubuntu Dialogues and Faculty Lead for the Reeves Scholars Programat Michigan State University, and the co-founder of Decoloniality Dialogues. He served as Academic Coordinator for the Mandela Washington Fellowship and Academic Lead with the PEOPLE Program at the University of Wisconsin-Madison (UW-Madison); and as a High School Teacher and Principal in Mutare, Zimbabwe. He holds a joint PhD in Educational Policy Studies and Development Studies, and master’s degrees in Educational Leadership and Policy Analysis and African Languages and Literature from UW-Madison, and a bachelor’s degree in English Literature and Linguistics from the University of Zimbabwe. Upenyu's research interests include higher education internationalization, indigenous knowledge systems, and institutional and knowledge decolonization.
Suggested Readings:
To engage further with this topic, Dr. Majee suggests the following readings:
1.- Majee, U. S. (2020). Beyond the Local-Global Binaries of Higher Education Internationalization in Post-apartheid South Africa. Journal of Studies in International Education, 24(1), 131-147.
2.- Majee, U.S. & Ress, S. (2018). Colonial Legacies in Internationalisation of Higher Education: Racial Justice and Geopolitical Redress in South Africa and Brazil. Compare: A Journal of Comparative and International Education, 50(4), 463-481.
3.- Ress, S. (2018). Race as a Political Issue in Brazilian South-South Cooperation in Higher Education. Comparative Education Review, 62(3), 409-428.
4.- Maringe, F. (2017). Creating Opportunities for a Socially Just Pedagogy: The Imperatives of Transformation in Post-Colonial HE Spaces. In Transforming Teaching and Learning in Higher Education, edited by R. Osman and D. J. Hornsby, 59-78. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan.
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This masterclass is completely free. However, if you appreciate this resource and have the means to give back, then we encourage you to contribute to an emergency fund that will go toward supporting some of the many Indigenous communities featured in the second series of videos. These communities take a very different approach to international education than many of us are used to, and in doing so they raise questions that are extremely important for the sake of everybody’s future. You can also join and support the Last Warning campaign, of which many Indigenous communities featured in the second series of videos are a part. This campaign seeks to educate people about the importance of centering Indigenous peoples’ rights in the struggle for climate justice. This campaign takes a very different approach to international education than many of us are used to, but it raises questions that are extremely important for the sake of everybody’s future.
Emergency Fund: www.gofundme.c...
Last Warning Campaign: lastwarning.org/
Critical Internationalization Studies Network: criticalintern...
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[@BobKendrickWolf]

This was a very dense and fascinating lecture. I learned so much and I took notes, so I hope to continue to learn about this and discuss with colleagues. I feel fortunate to have the opportunity to hear it. Thank you.