This past week I was in Durban, South Africa presenting at the Innovations in the Science of the Teaching and Learning (ISOTL) Conference 2024: Bridging Ethics, Equity, and Innovation in Higher Education, organized by the University of KwaZulu-Natal. It was a pretty hectic trip, flying out Monday night and getting back Saturday afternoon. That said, I had a wonderful time at the conference, meeting up with old friends and making new ones. A special shout out to Dr. Nyna Amin, whom I have known for over 20 years, when she spent a year at Michigan State University as a visiting scholar. Nyna was one of the lead organizers of the conference, and it was an absolute pleasure to meet her again and catch up after over 2 decades.
I had two sessions at the conference, a keynote titled: Education in an Age of Generative AI: Learning from the Past to Design the Future. In my talk, I discussed the rise of (what else) Generative AI and its implications for education. I emphasized the importance of educators adopting creative, proactive, and informed approaches to ensure AI enhances learning.
I was also invited to serve on a panel for a discussion on The Future of Higher Education, with Professor Langa Khumalo, Executive Director of the South African Centre for Digital Language Resources, and Mrs. Sukaina Walji, Director of the Center for Innovation in Learning and Teaching at the University of Cape Town. The panel was chaired by Dr Vusi Msiza, School of Education, University of KwaZulu-Natal. We were each asked to kick things off with a few thoughts (~15 mins). For my part I gave a mini-talk on From Campfire to ChatGPT: Rethinking Education in the Ever-Shifting Knowledge Landscape. I discussed the historical evolution of communication technologies and their influence on how knowledge is created and shared. I discussed the long-term implications these shifts have on society and how AI could redefine the way we value knowledge, and each other in the future.
While the conference was intellectually stimulating, my experiences in South Africa extended beyond discussions about the future of education. It was also an opportunity to look to the past, a form of time-travel as it were. This has been true of every trip I have made to South Africa—each rewarding in its own way. On my first visit, back in 2018, I spent time in Kruger National Park and also visited the Apartheid Museum. These experiences affected me deeply – one filled with joy, revealing the beauty of the natural world; the other, painfully sad, exposing the intentional, systemic cruelty and violence humans can inflict upon each other. This visit was no different.
On my last day in Durban, Dr. Chatradari (Chats) Devroop, musician and professor of music drove me around Durban, giving me a short quick history of the city, and the people who live there. The stories he shared with me, about his life journey, and of his family and the troubled history of his nation will stay with me a long time.
What was clear was that the remnants of apartheid’s systemic discrimination were still palpable, even in spaces now open to all. For instance, I learned that the hotel that I was staying at, and where the conference was held, was off limits to colored people till as recently as 1994. Chats told me of how even though he was invited to these spaces to perform he was not permitted to use the bathrooms since they were “white only.”
The systematic, intentional design of laws, systems and culture to minimize and degrade people who look different from oneself was breathtaking in its audacity, scale and implementation. That a system like this formally survived till almost the 21st century is difficult to comprehend. That its legacy of pain and hurt lives on is not surprising. As William Faulkner wrote “The past is never dead. It’s not even past.” (Obama borrowed it though he paraphrased it as “The past isn’t dead and buried. In fact, it isn’t even past.”)
We also visited the 1860 Heritage Centre: Indenture to Democracy: A South African story of struggle, heritage and achievement and learn more about Indians who came to these shores in the 1860s and the terrible deprivations they had to face as they became part of the South African story. As the museum website says, “This history comes with pain and suffering of people who gave up the known, for the unknown in their search for a better life.”
The visit to the Heritage Centre was particularly poignant for me, a person of Indian origin. Growing up in India, as a privileged, upper-caste man I found myself confronted with the harsh realities people like me faced in South Africa for over two centuries. The stark contrast between my life and the struggles of those who came before me, just because they were suckered by colonial powers to take a boat to another country for a better life, was jarring. In some strange way it wasn’t just history I was learning about—it was my history, or maybe a possible history that could easily have been mine. The discrimination, the hardships, the resilience—all of it felt deeply personal. This connection sharpened the pain of these stories, making them more than just facts in a museum. It was a sobering reminder of how circumstance and time separate those who suffer from those who thrive, and how easily the roles could have been reversed.
View from my hotel window in Durban, looking over the Indian Ocean.
Somewhere across these waters lies India. I could not help but think of the generations
of indentured servants brought forcibly to these shores, who must have stood here,
staring in the same direction, toward a homeland they would never see again.
I have been in a somewhat pessimistic mood lately, as my most recent blog post (Digital Shadows: AI Scripts a Different Curriculum) demonstrates. In large part it is because we have, as a species, not demonstrated much capacity for good. In fact, our history is littered with stories of the violence we can bring on each other when it benefits us, as individuals or groups, and I think it is naïve of us to think that we have left such tendencies behind.
Yet, amidst these heavy reflections, a moment of unexpected beauty emerged. At the conference dinner, Chats performed a version of “Mera Joota Hai Japani,” an old Bollywood song from the 1955 film “Shree 420” and dedicated it to me. The song’s lyrics, celebrating the strange mish-mash of global influences that make us who we are took on new meaning. The next day, as he showed me around Durban, this musical connection deepened. Here we were, two men, born within a couple of years of each other, with different paths to this moment: Chats, whose grandfather was brought to South Africa due to circumstances beyond his control, and me, who chose to leave India for the US to build an academic career. Both immigrants, we found ourselves connected in Durban by a song, written in the 50’s, that, in its lyrics, captured the reality we live in. It was a reminder of the intricate ways our histories intertwine, of how “home” can be found in the most unexpected places, and the role of music and art in maintaining identity. In that moment, the weight of our shared history was balanced by the lightness of our shared humanity
Some photos from my trip. The set on the left from the conference and the rest from my half-day trip with Chats.
P.S. On a completely unrelated note, I found it amusing that in South Africa, SARS stands, not for the deadly virus, but rather for the South African Revenue Service. Virus or tax collector – both equally likely to keep you up at night? This useless tidbit has been living rent-free in my head ever since. Go figure.
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