Leadership and Ethics in Higher Education 153and the society it seeks to serve. In other words, then, for me higher
education leadership places at the centre of its consciousness the idea of
the human – in the service of being and becoming human.
The world in which we live in and universities to no less an extent,
in the pursuit of serving humankind, has to balance the dialectical pulls
of both particularity and universality. It means that universities must
recognize the uniqueness of students as well as staff, and at the same
time draw them to a higher calling and a common future. In some
respects approaches to this differ. At one level how does race and
culture specificity find a place in an environment where common life
should be the rule. How does the university provide a language and
culture that affirms the humanity of all, without degenerating into a
religious, linguistic or ethnic essentiality. I suggest that if one takes the
view of Ubuntu that I have just expressed, then one recognizes that
within each and everyone of us is a kernel of truth that we can never
exist in isolation. We exist in community and are bonded by
relationships that are a part of our human nature.
In a recent TB Davie Academic Freedom Speech at the University of
Cape Town (2015), Kenan Malik drew attention to the dangers of
identity politics that seemed to be presenting a new suspicion about the
universality of values, and the essentialisation of the particular, e.g.
identity, race, tribe, language, or nation or religion. He also seeks to
defend the universal values that serve both to give a common or shared
vision to the world, and to restrain those propensities that seek to elevate
selfish or national, or group interests above all others. Universal norms
and standards are necessary, he believes, as a restraint to a propensity
for the use of naked power in world affairs. Malik observes,
sardonically, that people have come to understand values less in terms of
ideals than in terms of identity. One has to watch against the trap of
identity, he believes. It may well be true that this suspicion about