Dr Seán Mfundza Muller will launch his new book, The Incentivised University at JIAS, with responses and comments from three discussants. The book brings together a critical philosophy of scientific progress and its consequences, with a critique of institutional dynamics of modern higher education. Significant public and philanthropic resources are directed towards various forms of research in the hope of addressing key societal problems. That view, and the associated allocation of resources, relies on the assumption that academic research will tend towards finding truth – or at least selecting the best approximations of it. The book builds on, and extends, contributions in philosophy and higher education to argue that this assumption is misplaced: with serious implications for modern higher education and its role in informing societal decisions and government policy.

RSVP on https://forms.gle/BHt493ZmGQjc635F7 to state whether you will attend in-person or online.

Seán Mfundza Muller, Senior Research Fellow, JIAS, University of Johannesburg

Ronald Barnett, Emeritus Professor, University College London, UK

Nomalanga Mkhize, Associate Professor, Nelson Mandela University, RSA

Peter Vickers, Professor, Durham University, UK