The Politics of Reconciliation: 13 years after the Truth & Reconciliation Commission (TRC)

Dr. Jansen's lecture is part of the "Race Forward" initiative sponsored by the Program in African & African American Studies. This year's lecture series will explore the significance of examining race in education to fully understand the ways educators and researchers address the educational inequalities that persist.  His  lecture will focus on his research published in his new book Knowledge in the Blood: How white students remember and enact the past (2009) and Diversity High: Class, Color, Character and Culture in a South African High School.

Jansen offers an intimate look at the effects of social and political change after Apartheid as white students first experience learning and living alongside black students. He reveals the novel role pedagogical interventions played in confronting the past, as well as critical theory’s limits in dealing with conflict in a world where formerly clear-cut notions of victims and perpetrators are blurred.