Education in Africa 
bibliographic database
| Previous page | New search |
The free AfricaBib App for Android is available here
 Periodical article |
 Leiden University catalogue |
 WorldCat |
| Title: | The jurisprudence of the Dar es Salaam Declaration on Academic Freedom |
| Author: | Shivji, Issa G. |
| Year: | 1991 |
| Periodical: | Journal of African Law |
| Volume: | 35 |
| Issue: | 1-2 |
| Pages: | 128-141 |
| Language: | English |
| Geographic term: | Tanzania |
| Subjects: | higher education academic freedom |
| Abstract: | On 19 April 1990 twelve delegates from autonomous staff associations of six institutions of higher education in Tanzania adopted the Dar es Salaam Declaration on Academic Freedom and Social Responsibility of Academics. The full text of the Declaration follows the present article, which examines the influences and inspiration behind the Declaration, and discusses some underlying jurisprudential aspects. Four major political principles inform the provisions of the Declaration. Firstly, education is seen as a part of the broader political process of human emancipation rather than simply as an instrument of development or as a supplier of manpower. Secondly, the Declaration rejects a statist orientation and reasserts the right of the academic community, as part of the civil society, to generate its own conception of national interests and societal needs. Thirdly, the conception of autonomy of the institutions of higher education is at the same time coupled with social responsibility. Finally, the Declaration advances an alternative mode of politics which is anti-statist and community-based. From a legal perspective, the most interesting aspect of the Dar Declaration is the way it uses, and at the same time departs from, the jural opposites 'right-duty'. Thus it stipulates certain responsibilities (of members of the academic community and institutions of higher education) and obligations (of the community) without there being corresponding 'rights' vested in the State. Notes, ref. |