# TB Davie Memorial Lecture

The annual TB Davie Memorial Lecture on academic freedom was established by University of Cape Town to commemorate the work of Thomas Benjamin Davie, vice-chancellor of the university from 1948 to 1955 and a defender of the principles of academic freedom.

## Past speakers

| Year | Speaker | Subject |
| 1959 | A van de Sandt Centlivres | Thomas Benjamin Davie |
| 1960 | Cornelis de Kiewiet | Academic freedom |
| 1961 | Z. K. Matthews | African awakening and the universities |
| 1962 | Harry Oppenheimer | The conditions for progress in Africa |
| 1963 | Sir Robert Tredgold | Ideas, ideologies & idolatries |
| 1964 | Robert H. Thouless | Rationality & prejudice |
| 1965 | Sir Robert Birley | The shaking off of burdens |
| 1966 | A van Selms Nisibis | The oldest university |
| 1968 | Erik Erikson | Insight and freedom |
| 1969 | Barbara Ward, Lady Jackson | A new history |
| 1971 | W A Visser T’Hooft | A responsible university in a responsible society |
| 1972 | Alpheus H Zulu | The dilemma of a black South African |
| 1972 | John, Lord Redcliffe Maud | National progress and the university |
| 1973 | René Dumont | University autonomy and rural development in Africa |
| 1974 | R Coles | Children and political authority |
| 1975 | Juliet Mitchell | Women and equality |
| 1976 | A H Halsey | Academic freedom & the idea of a university |
| 1977 | Lord Goodman | The university's special role |
| 1978 | Geoff Budlender | Looking forward |
| 1979 | Martin Legassick | Academic Struggle and The Worker's Struggle (published not delivered) |
| 1980 | Ivan Illich | Shadow work, industrial division of toil (published not delivered) |
| 1981 | Terrence Ranger | Toward a radical practice of academic freedom: the experience |
| 1982 | Howard Zinn | Academic freedom: collaboration & resistance |
| 1982 | Julius Tomin | Academic freedom in a repressive society |
| 1983 | Helen Joseph | The doors of learning & culture shall be open |
| 1984 | Raymond Suttner | The freedom charter - the people's charter in the 1980s |
| 1986 | Albert Nolan | Academic freedom: a service to the people |
| 1986 | Hoosen Coovadia | From ivory tower to a people's university |
| 1990 | E R Wolf | Freedom and freedoms: An anthropological perspective |
| 1990 | Walter Sisulu | The road to liberation |
| 1991 | E W Said | Identity, authority & freedom: the potentate & the traveller |
| 1992 | G C Spivak | Thinking academic freedom in gendered post-coloniality |
| 1993 | C H Long | The gift of speech and the travail of language |
| 1994 | E Foner | The story of American freedom |
| 1996 | O Patterson | The paradoxes of freedom in America |
| 1997 | Noam Chomsky | Market democracy in a neoliberal order: Doctrines and reality |
| 1999 | Alan Ryan | Academic freedom: Human right or professorial privilege? |
| 2001? | Wole Soyinka | Arms and the arts: a continent's unequal dialogue |
| 2002 | Kader Asmal | Breaking with the past, planning for the future |
| 2003 | Frederik van Zyl Slabbert | Is academic freedom still an issue in the new South Africa? |
| 2004 | Jonathan D. Jansen | Accounting for Autonomy: How Higher Education lost its Innocence |
| 2006 | Alan Charles Kors | The Essential Relationship of Academic Freedom to Human Liberty |
| 2007 | Achille Mbembe | Race and Freedom in Black Thought |
| 2009 | Nithaya Chetty | Universities in a Time of Change |
| 2010 | Robin Briggs | The Knowledge Economy and Academic Freedom |
| 2011 | Nadine Strossen | Some Reflections on the British and French Cases: Post-9/11 Threats to Academic Freedom |
| 2012 | Ferial Haffajee | Creeping Censorship and the Spearing of Freedom |
| 2013 | Jonathan Glover | Universities, the Market and Academic Freedom |
| 2014 | Max du Preez | The mediocrity of intellectual discourse: misrepresenting South Africa in the academy and beyond |
| 2015 | Kenan Malik | Free Speech in an Age of Identity Politics |
| 2017 | Mahmood Mamdani | Decolonising the postcolonial university |
| 2018 | Pumla Dineo Gqola | Between Academic Inheritance and the Urgency of Definitions |
| 2019 | Steven Salaita | The inhumanity of academic freedom |
| 2020 | Ravi Kanbur | Economic inequality begets academic inequality |
| 2021 | Yunus Ballim | Ours is to educate, not to captivate |
| 2022 | Fran Baum | Corporatising universities threatens academic freedom |
| 2023 | Sakhela Buhlungu | University of Fort Hare – a tale of academic freedom and institutional autonomy |
| 2024 | Dire Tladi | The Narrative as the Enemy of Freedom of Thought |