Introducing a new book by Karim Hirji
Hirji is a distinguished Tanzanian mathematician and statistician. But as an undergraduate at the University of Dar es Salaam in the 1970s, he edited the student magazines Cheche and Majimaji, which published Issa Shivji’s pioneering Tanzania: The Silent Class Struggle. He has continued writing on Tanzanian politics and education, and in the last 5 years published six books. This one brings together his writing on education from the 1970s to now.
This event will launch this book. It will also assess Hirji’s work, in the context of the outpouring of creativity at the University of Dar es Salaam in the 1970s.
It will be introduced by Andrew Coulson who has written extensively about Tanzanian political economy. There will be short comments by Colin Leys (better known for his critical work on private capital in the UK NHS), Abdul Paliwala, Emeritus Professor of Law at the University of Warwick, and George Hadjivayanis, all of whom were in Dar at that time. Followed by discussion. The event will be chaired by Ida Hadjivayanis, a lecturer at SOAS and family friend.
This will interest all who care about education in Africa, especially at the tertiary level. But also those who are revisiting what happened in Dar es Salaam in the 1960s and 1970s, and how education and ideology played their parts in the dramas that unfolded.
This event is promoted by SOAS and the Britain Tanzania Society.