Volume 18, issue 1 p 3

• Date: 27 May 2019
• Published date: 27 May 2019

Editorial note / Redaksionele nota

Changes at the Stellenbosch Law Review

In 2007 there have been some major changes in the composition of the editorial

board of the Stellenbosch Law Review. After faithfully serving the journal over many

years (in fact he was its founding editor), Lourens du Plessis has decided it is time to

pass the baton to a new editor. On behalf of the editorial board, we would like to

thank Lourens for so ably and diligently guiding the growth of the journal from its

infancy to one of the most respected academic journals in the country.

There has also been a number of changes in the composition of the editorial board

due to sabbatical commitments. New faces are my colleagues Andre van der Walt and

Ockert Dupper (they take the place of Hanri Mostert and Christoph Garbers, who are

on leave), as well as Geo Quinot, who will be responsible for book reviews.

Challenges facing universities: a German perspective by Professor

Peter Ha¨berle of the University of Bayreuth

The South African tertiary education sector has recently been required to respond to

a variety of far-ranging challenges emanating from central government. These include

the wide-spread rationalisation of institutions, the adoption of new audit and

accreditation procedures, the expansion of the evaluation of researchers, and the

targeted use of funding to achieve certain research outcomes, as well as to influence

student profiles. But it is not only South Africa which is experiencing such major

changes in the field of higher education. We have received the following note from

Professor Dr. Dr. h.c. mult. Peter Ha

¨berle of the University of Bayreuth, Germany, on

the topic ‘‘The German University Must Not Die – A Paper from the Provinces’’. We

are grateful to our colleague Professor Henk Botha who translated the German

version, which first appeared in JuristenZeitung (4/2007, 183-184). The views are of

course those of the author, and do not necessarily reflect those of the Stellenbosch Law

Review.

‘‘The German university, or rather its great tradition since W von Humboldt, has survived

two World Wars, two dictatorships and even the 1968 Revolution (the last with the aid of the

Federal Constitutional Court and academic freedom). It is a centrepiece of the constitutional

law of the German provinces – an expression of their responsible, diversely perceived, cultural

autonomy. However, today it experiences, perhaps its greatest ever, self-made crisis, more so

than in any other European country. No number of soapbox addresses on the ‘identity’ of the

German university can hide this. The German university faces three challenges:

.europeanisation and internationalisation, even if these also provide opportunities,

particularly in the form of the jurisprudence developed by ‘European jurists’ within the

framework of an open educational and scientif‌ic society;

.the merciless advance of the economic Zeitgeist in almost all areas of life (ie a short-sighted

f‌ixation on eff‌iciency and utility rather than a self‌less search for truth);

.an over-emphasis on the natural sciences and engineering at the expense of the humanities,

despite the fact that they all share the obligation to promote a dignif‌ied human existence.

The so-called ‘excellence initiative’ of the federal government and the provinces since 2005 is

a particularly dangerous development. It promises to create so-called elite universities (1.9

milliard Euro distributed over four years). It is only the distance of this initiative from party

political influence which is praiseworthy. Its dangers lie in the overemphasis on the natural

sciences, the little value placed on the humanities and the displacement of so-called ‘orchid

subjects’ such as Byzantine Studies or Greek Law. Questionable are the project outlines which

have been lumped together on an ad hoc basis, the networks which have become ends in

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(2007) 18 Stell LR 3

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