Although my passion for education and love for our students and colleagues continues, it would be disingenuous to not share how heartbreaking a time it has been to work in education at this moment in the world. The world has for all intents and purposes gotten more dark, heartbreaking and dystopian. In multiple parts of the world we are seeing genocides being livestreamed to us on social media. Economies in many parts of the world are failing and formal education is no longer a guarantee to a life of access to well-being. Rising costs of living and economies are not able to meet the needs of the world’s majority. The rise of the radical far right movements daily threaten to eclipse the hard earned rights of women, LGBTQ+ communities, indigenous populations and other groups. Artificial Intelligence and the post-truth world of conspiracy theories has been a disrupter in education, sometimes eclipsing the joy from independent and collective thinking, teaching and learning. All these and many others increasingly makes it a very tough climate to remain hopeful in teaching as “the hopeful profession” as bell hooks once wrote. It is sometimes hard to believe that this is truly where we are in the world in 2025 and the climate of hopelessness that permeates so many spheres of our personal and pedagogical lives. However, despite this impending dystopia, I have refused to let despair and despondency overwhelm me. I have maintained my deep love for education and its transformative potential. As Gary Zukav writes in his book, “The Seat of the Soul”, every experience that we have on Earth is intended to align our personalities with our souls. Through testing moments as these times in the world, we get to figure out who we are, what our values are, and what we are willing to stand for deep in our souls. For me, it is a desire to not be made unloving and detached by the world. It is to keep loving people, my work and education. In her book, “Salvation: Black People and Love”, bell hooks continues that we need to urgently return to love. hooks argues that we cannot have collective recovery and healing without love, because love is political action and undergirds our efforts to transform our societies. As she argues: “love is profoundly political. Our deepest revolution will come when we understand this truth.” Picture: Gcobani, with former and present students of the department at a send-away gathering for two students heading to Palacký University as part of our department’s Erasmus exchange. It is Naledi and Thulani’s first international flight and trip - where they will spend five months (September 2025 - January 2026). In a recent interview on the radio station Power FM, a former student who I encouraged to apply for a Fulbright scholarship, which he ultimately earned, reflected on how that one moment profoundly changed the trajectory of his life for the better. He, now Dr Esihle Lupindo, recently graduated with a PhD in Sociology at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln in the USA - becoming the first African in the history of the institution to achieve that feat since 1889. Dr Maya Angelou reminds us that our legacy is not one thing. It’s not a collection of titles, names on buildings, or how many academic articles and books we have published. Our legacy is in the everyday - in every single life we have touched. I am glad to be able to say with certainty that since the VC award, I have continued to positively change the lives of hundreds of students at our institution, the University of Johannesburg, and in many parts of the world I will never even know. I am grateful to know this for sure. 96 A Journey of Innovation
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