Saleem Badat

Badat was eighteen years old when the 1976 Soweto Uprising occurred, which shaped his political consciousness and eventually his student activism. Badat served on the student wages commission and the Release Mandela Committee. He was initially aligned to the Black Consciousness Movement, and later joined the charterist United Democratic Front (UDF) following its founding in 1983. Badat was the editor of the Western Cape community newspaper, Grassroots.

Badat started his professional career as researcher into higher education policy at the University of the Western Cape under the tutelage of Harold Wolpe. Upon Wolpe's untimely death, Badat took over as the Director of the Education Policy Unit. In 1999, he became the founding CEO of the South African Council on Higher Education, a position which he held until 2006. In his role as CEO, he built the Council up to serve as statutory advisory and national accreditation body for higher education in South Africa. From June 2006 until July 2014, Badat served as the first black vice-chancellor of Rhodes University in Grahamstown, South Africa.

As a critical sociologist, Badat's core research and writings deal with the politics of transition from an apartheid society to a socially just, democratic society, typically but not exclusively with special reference to the education sector. Based on his PhD, Badat published in 2002 Black Student Politics, Higher Education and Apartheid from SASO to SANSCO, 1968-1990 (HSRC Press, republished in 2016 by Taylor & Francis). In 2009 he published Black Man, You are on Your Own (Steve Biko Foundation / STE Publishers 2010), and 2012/2013, The Forgotten People: Political Banishment under Apartheid (Jacana Press and Brill). In addition to his book publications, Badat published over 50 scholarly articles and numerous policy briefs and recommendations.

Badat has received several honorary degrees during his career. In 2004, the University of the Free State awarded him an honorary doctorate for his contributions to higher education policy, followed in 2008 by an honorary doctorate from his alma mater, the University of York, and eventually in 2015, he received an honorary doctorate from Rhodes University.

Saleem Badat is a South African sociologist, higher education policy specialist, and researcher. Since August 2014, he is the Program Director of the International Higher Education and Strategic Projects program at the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

Since 1 August 2014 he has been Program Director at the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. His portfolio encompasses grant making in the arts and humanities to research universities in South Africa, Uganda, Ghana, Egypt, and Lebanon and to pan-African and pan-Arab institutions working in higher education.