Leadership and Epistemological Responsibility 17710.5.5 Rethinking Some Tenets of Academic Disciplines
For starters, for the human and social sciences, there is the issue of
how to begin to take down Africa from the double cross upon which it
has been haplessly hung (i.e. the Hobbesian picture of pre-European
Africa milling with brutal savages AND the Rousseaurean picture of
perpetual infantile people). For anthropology, some soul searching as to
how the “savage” is to become an active knowing participant (Mudimbe
1988). For history, a scrutiny of the semantic shift that turned the
illiterate from one ignorant of the alphabet, to a complete ignorant
(Hountodji 1997). In education, questions of values, value education,
history, the nature and manifestation of science, mathematics education,
and the overall cultural orientation in curricula etc. would need
transformative work.
10.5.6 Taking in the International Bill of Rights
In doing this, we are reminded of International Customary Law and
the International Bill of Rights (Human Rights Convention) which spells
out to us the fact that the appropriation of knowledge of indigenous
communities and people by industrialized firms and scientists both
locally and internationally without fair compensation or reward or
explicit recognition contravenes fundamental moral, ethical, and legal
norms that protect people from any form of ecological, political, and
social abuse. We, as local institutions, often through inertia, have been
proxies in this abuse, and middlemen in this untrammelled exploitation.
We must take a stand accordingly.
10.5.7 Taking in the Tenets of the Budapest Science Agenda
In this document is found strong injunctions and guidelines that are
invaluable as we rummage our environs for creative ways around the
impasse we find ourselves in. it states that what the world most needs is:
- a more inclusive, a more responsive, and a more dialogical
science