After the 'Boston Tour' (see previous post) I travelled with Dineo by train from Boston to New York City for a series of engagements at New York University (NYU) with Prof Teboho Moja and her students, and to meet with research funders at Carnegie and Mellon Foundations.
We started on Saturday, 8 April with a wonderful brief time meeting up with Claudia Frittelli from Carnegie, discussing our ongoing work, and all that while walking through the amazing art on display at the metropolitan museum (the Met), walking through Central Park, and eventually going for Pizza. We ate a lot of pizza in the US.
On Sunday, 9 April, I had a first meeting with Prof. Teboho Moja, New York University (NYC), the host of the book launch on Monday and the HSRC-Univen exhibition at NYU. On Sunday, Prof Moja and I participated early in the morning in an eNCA segment #Today with Rofhiwa Madzena which was the first media engagement on the exhibition and book launch at NYU. It was aired live on eNCA.
On Easter Sunday afternoon, Prof. Moja invited Dineo and I to a Sunday Easter lunch at the house of Dr Lenora Magubane in Harlem (one of the South African makoti in New York, wife of famous SA photographer Peter Magubane) alongside several SA expatriates and friends of the host.
On Monday, 10 April, Dineo and I set up the exhibition "Aftermath: Violence and Wellbeing in the Context of the Student Movement" at Steinhardt College, NYU, in Washington Square. Before that on Monday morning (5.30 am EST, 11.30 am SAST), Prof Moja, Dr Keamo Morwe and I also participated in a interview (via Zoom) on SAfm Radio for #SAfmTalkingPoint.
Mr Sherwin Brice-Pease, UN correspondent journalist of SABC News and his film crew Aaron came to cover the exhibition opening and book launch of #FeesMustFall and its Aftermath (published by the HSRC Press).
Brice-Pease interviewed Prof Moja and I and produced a fantastic segment that was aired on SABC News throughout Tuesday 10 April. What a professionalism at work! The clip can be found here. Dr Keamo Morwe of Univen (my co-PI) again joined the launch online via Zoom.
On Tuesday the exhibition continued from 10am to 4pm at NYU. In the afternoon (4pm EST, 10pm SAST), Dr Morwe and I participated in a live SABC News TV interview (Peter Ndoro’s segment - part of the Full View). In between I went to the Mellon Foundation offices and brought them three of the rich publications that have come from the Student Movement Project so far: the books Reflections of South African Student Leaders, 1994-2017 (Council on Higher Education & African Minds, 2020), Restoring Wellbeing after Protests: Lessons from #FeesMustFall (HSRC, 2022), and the book we launched in NY, #FeesMustFall and its Aftermath: Violence, Wellbeing and the Student Movement in South Africa (HSRC Press, 2022).
On Wednesday, the exhibition continued from 10 am to 4pm at NYU. In the later From 5 pm – 6.30 pm I gave a seminar in the Prof Teboho Moja’s Student Affairs Master’s class at NYU entitled “International Comparative Student Affairs”. We removed the exhibition and stored for travelling back to SA.
It was a beautiful farewell dinner with Prof Moja on Wednesday after the seminar. We discussed the future collaborative work related to the Journal of Student Affairs in Africa and the establishment and operation of a Community of Practice (COP) for research on student affairs in Africa.
