This is a discussion-based interactive seminar on the two major issues that affect Sub-Saharan Africa: HIV/AIDS and Poverty. AIDS and Poverty, seemingly different concepts, are more inter-related to each other in Africa than in any other continent. As MIT students, we feel it is important to engage ourselves in a dynamic discussion on the relation between the two - how to fight one and how to solve the other.

This course introduces students to the spatial, legal, economic, social and political structures that created apartheid in South Africa, and to the factors that led to the collapse of the racist order. We will examine the many forms of Black oppression and, also, the various forms of resistance to apartheid. Some of the themes we will explore include industrialization and the formation of the Black working classes; the constructions of race, ethnicities, and sexualities; land alienation and rural struggles; township poverty and violence; Black education; the African National Congress; and the Black Consciousness Movement.

The shift from apartheid to a constitutional democracy in South Africa brought with it a plethora of questions concerning ideas of nationhood, citizenship, and organisational transformation. Integrally caught up in the revolution, the South African Police Service (SAPS) faces transformative challenges on scales far larger than most other organisations in the country. From being the strong arm of the oppressive elite, it has had to restructure and rearticulate its function, while simultaneously attempting to maintain law and order. Like many other corporations and organisations, the SAPS has engaged in interventions aimed at aiding the fluidity of this process. This report is an analysis of one such intervention. It attempts to ascertain the extent to which members are changing as a result of particular diversity workshops conducted in a region of the Western Cape. The analysis focuses on members at one particular station.

This resource is a video abstract of a research paper created by Research Square on behalf of its authors. It provides a synopsis that's easy to understand, and can be used to introduce the topics it covers to students, researchers, and the general public. The video's transcript is also provided in full, with a portion provided below for preview:

"New research suggests that a low-calorie diet might help reverse symptoms of type 2 diabetes in men with obesity. The findings of the study add to a growing body of evidence indicating that diabetes is a reversible condition. Authors of the study looked at 18 men in South Africa who were over the age of 35, had class III obesity, and were on insulin treatment for diabetes. The participants were randomized to one of two groups: one followed a commercially available low-fat, low-calorie diet consisting of vegetables and a vegetable-soup-based meal plan; while the control group received a calorie-restricted meal plan. All participants were encouraged to engage in physical activity according to their abilities and to visit a counseling psychologist at least once a month. Over the course of 6 months, the team tracked the men’s levels of blood glucose and glycated hemoglobin, or HbA1c—using those measures to establish diabetes status..."

The rest of the transcript, along with a link to the research itself, is available on the resource itself.

This book covers original research on the implementation of open educational practices through the use of open educational resources at the university level. The emphasis on open education in this book is on contextualising resources, supporting student agency and fostering self-directed learning specifically within a South African milieu. The envisaged chapters cover conceptual and review research and empirical work focussing on open educational practices and the use of renewable assessments. The work starts off with an overview of an institutional-wide open education project that prompted the research followed by research on open education in terms of various modules in the health science, music education, law, philosophy, dietetics, anthropology, French language learning, journalism and political science. There is a clear gap in the literature on open education in terms of open educational practices, specifically in terms of contextualising resources, supporting student agency and fostering self-directed learning in a South African context. Despite the existence of some general works on open education in terms of policy, social justice and open textbooks, this book will be unique in exploring the intersections of openness, specifically with contextualisation, student agency and self-directedness.

Host Harry Kreisler welcomes Ambassador Princeton N. Lyman, former U.S. Ambassador to South Africa and Nigeria for a discussion of U.S. Africa Relations. He talks about AfricaŐs strategic importance to the United States focusing on issues such as energy, health, terrorism, and human rights. He describes the role of China in African affairs and analyzes the U.S. capacity to engage Africa in the new strategic environment of the post 911 world. (52 min)

South African Supreme Court Justice Albie Sachs in a conversation with UC BerkeleyŐs Harry Kreisler talks about personal survival in the context of the transformation of South Africa. (52 min)

Conversations host Harry Kreisler welcomes Israeli political scientist and peace activist Galia Golan for a discussion of the peace movement in Israel. She reflects on the Israeli domestic situation, compares Israeli occupation policies to South Africa's apartheid, and analyzes Israel"s geopolitical constraints. She also compares the stability of superpower conflict in the Middle East during the Cold War with today's regional geopolitical situation, especially Israel's conflict with Iran. (58 min)

This kit provides the materials and background information needed to engage students in a dynamic and constructive process of learning how global media perspectives differ based on country of production, media source, target audience, and political and social context. There are five lessons representing important issues and media documents from: Africa (news and documentary film clips about the food crisis), Latin America (editorial cartoons about immigration), Europe (news and documentary film clips about Islam and cultural identity), India (magazine covers about India's rise in the global economy), and Southeast Asia (websites concerning Islamic majorities and minorities).

Students will be able to assess the development of the ancient civilizations in South/ Central Africa, and their political and trading importance on the region. Students will demonstrate their understanding by creating an online postcard.

Students read the story Journey to Jo'burg: A South African Story and learn about effects of apartheid in South Africa. They also learn about the relationship between investment in human capital and income by examining several careers and the skills required for those careers. Using math skills, students compare the number of people in various occupations and interpret and analyze educational attainment data from graphs and tables.

This resource is a video abstract of a research paper created by Research Square on behalf of its authors. It provides a synopsis that's easy to understand, and can be used to introduce the topics it covers to students, researchers, and the general public. The video's transcript is also provided in full, with a portion provided below for preview:

"Despite a large reduction in AIDS-related deaths as a result of HIV antiretroviral programs, the global incidence of HIV has only decreased by 16% in the past 10 years. One hotspot is in South Africa, where young women in particular face high rates of HIV infection. In a recent study, researchers followed up on their previous observation that female genital tract (FGT) inflammation increases HIV risk by evaluating the relationship between FGT inflammation and microbial function in 113 young South African women at high risk of HIV infection. Using metaproteomics to characterize a total of 3,186 microbial and human proteins from vaginal wall swabs, they found that women with elevated FGT inflammation had increased non-optimal bacteria and decreased lactobacilli. Reduced cell wall organization and peptidoglycan biosynthesis were also associated with high FGT inflammation levels..."

The rest of the transcript, along with a link to the research itself, is available on the resource itself.

This course surveys the history of 19th and 20th century Africa. It focuses on the European conquest of Africa and the dynamics of colonial rule, especially its socioeconomic and cultural consequences. It looks at how the rising tide of African nationalism, in the form of labor strikes and guerrilla wars, ushered out colonialism. It also examines the postcolonial states, focusing on the politics of development, recent civil wars in countries like Rwanda and Liberia, the AIDS epidemic, and the history of apartheid in South Africa up to 1994. Finally, it surveys the entrepreneurship in the post-colonial period and China’s recent involvement in Africa.

Nelson Mandela was the first black President of South Africa. He spent 27 years in prison for trying to overthrow the pro-apartheid government. After he left prison, he worked to achieve human rights and a better future for everyone in South Africa.

This lesson focuses on the leadership qualities of Nelson Mandela, South African civil rights leader and the country's first democratically elected president.

In Part One of this lesson, students are introduced to apartheid in South Africa. They watch clips from Steven Van Zandt and Arthur Baker's Sun City documentary to learn about apartheid, and attempt to experience what life might have been like during apartheid through a classroom activity. Then, students consider ways in which apartheid could be fought, and whether elements of apartheid in South Africa also existed in the history of the United States.

This resource is a video abstract of a research paper created by Research Square on behalf of its authors. It provides a synopsis that's easy to understand, and can be used to introduce the topics it covers to students, researchers, and the general public. The video's transcript is also provided in full, with a portion provided below for preview:

"The human microbiome is now known to play important roles in health and disease, but while microbiome research on European and North American populations has increased exponentially, African populations may be underrepresented. The relative lack of data could impair medical progress for Africans and obscure important treatment targets. To characterize the knowledge gaps, researchers recently searched the literature for next-generation sequencing studies published through April 1, 2020, that included African samples. Thirty-three out of 54 African countries were represented in the 168 studies found, primarily South Africa, Kenya, and Uganda. Only 26.8% of studies focused on diseases of significant public health concern in Africa. Among studies with intercontinental collaboration, the USA was the most common collaborator, and the first and last authors of most studies were not affiliated with African institutions. In addition, the primary funders were American or European institutions..."

The rest of the transcript, along with a link to the research itself, is available on the resource itself.

This course examines the problem of mass violence and oppression in the contemporary world, and the concept of human rights as a defense against such abuse. It explores questions of cultural relativism, race, gender and ethnicity. It examines case studies from war crimes tribunals, truth commissions, anti-terrorist policies and other judicial attempts to redress state-sponsored wrongs. It also considers whether the human rights framework effectively promotes the rule of law in modern societies. Students debate moral positions and address ideas of moral relativism.

During this unit, there will be several opportunities for students to address their experiences as well as take a closer look at the experiences of those written about in the unit. Students will take a journey into the time periods of Apartheid in South Africa and the Jim Crow Era/Civil Rights Movement in America. Students will be exposed to practices that would be described as “man’s inhumanity to man,” but are often left out of Social Studies textbooks and glossed over-- if ever addressed in middle school classrooms.

This semester, we will read writing about travel and place from Columbus’s Diario through the present. Travel writing has some special features that will shape both the content and the work for this subject: reflecting the point of view, narrative choices, and style of individuals, it also responds to the pressures of a real world only marginally under their control. Whether the traveler is a curious tourist, the leader of a national expedition, or a starving, half-naked survivor, the encounter with place shapes what travel writing can be. Accordingly, we will pay attention not only to narrative texts but to maps, objects, archives, and facts of various kinds.
Our materials are organized around three regions: North America, Africa and the Atlantic world, the Arctic and Antarctic. The historical scope of these readings will allow us to know something not only about the experiences and writing strategies of individual travelers, but about the progressive integration of these regions into global economic, political, and knowledge systems. Whether we are looking at the production of an Inuit film for global audiences, or the mapping of a route across the North American continent by water, these materials do more than simply record or narrate experiences and territories: they also participate in shaping the world and what it means to us.
Authors will include Olaudah Equiano, Caryl Philips, Claude Lévi-Strauss, Joseph Conrad, Jamaica Kincaid, William Least Heat Moon, Louise Erdrich, Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca.
Expeditions will include those of Lewis and Clark (North America), Henry Morton Stanley (Africa), Ernest Shackleton and Robert F. Scott (Antarctica).