Jonathan Jansen is Distinguished Professor of Education at the University of Stellenbosch and President of the Academy of Science of South Africa as well as the President of the South African Institute of Race Relations.
He was recently Fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University before serving as Vice-Chancellor and Rector of the University of the Free State for seven years.
His research concerns the politics of knowledge in schools and universities as reflected in book-length publications from Knowledge in the blood (2009, Stanford) to, more recently, Inequality in South African schools (2019, Springer) and The politics of decolonisation (2019, Wits). Knowledge in the blood won the largest book-award from the British Academy for the Social Sciences and Humanities. Jansen won the Africa Lifetime Achiever Award in New York and the Spendlove Award from the University of California for his contribution to tolerance, democracy and human rights.