Mindly Twists and Turns: A Philosopher’s Memoir

My familiarity with Professor Yusef Waghid's scholarship and our collaboration span more than two decades. Therefore, a few words cannot appropriately encompass my account of the magnitude of his academic profile coupled with his personal qualities and engagement. He is a global thinker who has made significant contributions to scholarship in South Africa, the broader African world in the continent and the Diaspora, and the international community. Professor Waghid is an exceptionally prolific writer with consistent academic excellence on topics of critical importance to education and other social institutions, and the struggle for justice and social transformation. He has developed critical insights articulating the importance and necessity of epistemic equality with particular reference to indigenous knowledge system, especially uBuntu. He is a creative scholar with significant and original contributions to knowledge and transformative curriculum and pedagogy. As a public intellectual, he emulates a dialectical relationship between theory and social realities with a consistent engagement for equality and quality educational opportunity, and social progress. He is one of the foremost intellectuals hailing from South Africa with a global stature. In addition to his prominence as a scholar, Professor Waghid has personal and enviable qualities as reflected in his collegiality, trustworthiness, responsiveness, reliability, and unfailing compassion. Professor N'Dri Assie-Lumumba, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York, President of Comparative and International Education Society