Professor Rosaan Krüger of Rhodes University, South Africa, to Speak as Part of “Human Rights in Africa” Seminar
Rosaan Krüger, dean of the faculty of law at Rhodes University in Grahamstown, South Africa, will deliver a lecture at Washington and Lee University on Nov. 9 at 5 p.m. in Northen Auditorium, Leyburn Library.
Krüger will speak on “Commemoration and the Fractured South African Past: Free Expression and Hate Speech.” The talk is free and open to the public.
In her talk, Krüger will focus on the return in the public sphere of apartheid-era language and speech which could be interpreted as a call for vengeance and retaliation. She questions how far people can go in recalling the hurt of the past and in doing so potentially incite continued hatred against those who caused the hurt in the past. A specific focus will be on the South African parliament which has taken the opposite view and has enacted relatively restrictive legislation prohibiting speech.
Krüger’s lecture is one of several in a year-long seminar titled Human Rights in Africa: A Transdisciplinary Approach. The seminar has been made possible by the Center for International Educational with funds from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. Other events include public lectures, book colloquia, a winter term film series and a workshop for high school students.
Krüger is also a senior lecturer at Rhodes University and attorney at the High Court of South Africa. She holds a B.A., an honours degree in political science and an L.L.B. from Potchefstroom University. She obtained her postgraduate diploma in higher education and her Ph.D. from Rhodes University.
She continues her work from her Ph.D. dissertation on discrimination law and its impact on social change. Other research interests include constitutional law theory and constitutional litigation.
Recent publications include “The (In)significance of the Common Law: Constitutional Interpretation and the Mansingh Judgments” (2014), in “South African Law Journal;” “Small Steps to Equal Dignity: the Work of the South African Equality Courts” (2011), in “Equal Rights Review;” and “The South African Constitutional Court and the Rule of Law: the Masethla Judgment, a Cause for Concern?” (2010), in “Potchefstroom Electronic Law Journal.”
