Sunday Independent, 16 April 2000, Alan Lipman:
This is a view from the top, from the uppermost levels of the administrative hierarchy at a South African university in the latter apartheid years and shortly after. It is also an insider’s perspective; one that opens usually hidden vistas of academic politics.
Most significantly, the book draws attention to issues that must, and should, impinge crucially on intellectual life in our country – the shifting, socially diffuse limits of responsibility and freedom in tertiary education.
Saunders – former vice-chancellor at the University of Cape Town – writes with a practised research worker’s sharpness on issues that will surely interest people whether or not they are closely involved with academia. His book reads, almost, like a rollicking yarn of embattled territories defended and breached, of forces repeatedly regrouped to counter further, newly formulated manoeuvres.