Saleem Badat

Saleem Badat is a South African university leader, critical sociologist, higher education policy specialist and researcher. He is Research Professor in the Department of History at the University of the Free State.

Early politics Badat was eighteen years old when the 1976 Soweto Uprising occurred, which shaped his political consciousness and eventually his student activism. He was chair of the student Wages Commission at Natal University and a member of the Release Mandela Committee. He was involved in and led various student organizations at Natal and the University of Cape Town. In 1983, Badat became the coordinator of the Western Cape community newspaper, Grassroots.

Career Badat started his professional career as researcher into higher education policy in the United Kingdom and then 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.

Badat holds Bachelors and Honours degrees in the Social Sciences from the University of KwaZulu-Natal, a Certificate in Higher Education and Science Policy from Boston University, and a Doctor of Philosophy in Sociology from the University of York.

Between August 2014 and December 2018, he was the Program Director of the International Higher Education and Strategic Projects program at the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. His portfolio encompassed 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.

Over the course of his career, Badat has served on numerous boards, commissions, and committees, including as chairperson of Higher Education South Africa (now: Universities South Africa) and the Association of African Universities Scientific Committee on Higher Education.