Mendelsohn cleared, but UCT drags out reinstatement

Professor Adam Mendelsohn has been cleared of any wrongdoing after being suspended as head of the Department of Historical Studies at the University of Cape Town (UCT) last year. This is after nine department colleagues complained about his leadership, saying that it was compromised by his legal application against UCT that called for the university to rescind its anti-Israel resolutions.

However, almost six months after being cleared, the university still hasn’t reinstated him.

Furthermore, UCT commissioned an investigation into the matter, conducted by law firm Mcaciso Stansfield Incorporated. It showed that some history department colleagues wanted Mendelsohn to be suspended because they disagreed with his views on Gaza and his legal application. In addition, Mendelsohn alleges that UCT attempted to interfere with the investigation.

A UCT stakeholder, speaking anonymously because of a potential conflict of interest, said this week, “It’s clear from the independent investigation that the removal of Professor Mendelsohn as head of department [HOD] was ideologically driven by certain members of the history department who opposed his stance against UCT’s academic boycott of Israel. The report makes plain that there was no reason to remove him from his post.”

In addition, the stakeholder said that the investigation exposed a series of questionable actions by UCT. “The Dean of Humanities, Professor Shose Kessi, was first interviewed as a witness, and she later pressed for changes to the report, some of which the investigator refused, others which he accepted,” he said. “More troubling, when the investigator prepared an affidavit in the Mendelsohn litigation explaining what had occurred, UCT attempted to prevent him from filing it. Instead, the university’s attorneys drafted a substitute affidavit on his behalf and sought to have him use that in place of his own.”

However, “The investigator refused, insisting on his independence. That such coercive attempts were made to conceal evidence is a matter that must be denounced in the strongest possible terms.”

Mendelsohn, who is director of the Kaplan Centre for Jewish Studies at UCT, has been calling for anti-Israel resolutions adopted by the university in June 2024 to be reviewed or set aside. He says the Council – the university’s highest decision-making body – didn’t follow its own processes when adopting them, and they have a negative impact on research, academic freedom, and fundraising.

Department colleagues complained that this case compromised both Mendelsohn’s leadership and the department. However, a thorough investigation done by Zola Mcaciso, a lawyer at the firm, found that Mendelsohn did nothing wrong. The firm recommended that the suspension be lifted, and that mediation be conducted in the department to repair ties. Neither action has been taken.

UCT refused to share the full investigation with Mendelsohn, who therefore launched a Rule 35 interlocutory application, filed on 5 August, seeking to compel the university to produce the full report. In this application, Mendelsohn says, “The excuse proffered [for UCT’s stalling in reinstating him and mediation] by UCT is that it ‘considers it prudent to allow the mediation process first to be conducted before reintegration’.”

However, he said, “My suspension should have come to an end and I should therefore immediately again have become HOD when I was cleared of all charges. Any mediation process can take place thereafter. The current situation is unlawful.”

The investigation found that “there was a clear ideological dimension to the dispute”. The investigator ruled that political disagreement “isn’t a justifiable basis to establish grounds of distrust in an employment relationship unless such views are unlawful or in breach of employment obligations”.

The investigation further found that “there is no case made out by any of the complainants that the views and arguments advanced by the HOD in his court case are either unlawful or in breach of any policies of the university”.

Mendelsohn says that Kessi told him in March that she had received the investigator’s final report, but had asked for its language to be “softened” to be less critical of the complainants and to ensure they were unidentifiable. “The request by UCT to reword the report was an improper attempt to interfere with the contents of the findings of an independent investigator,” he says.

His Rule 35 application also describes UCT as allegedly misleading the court by saying Kessi believed the final report was just a draft, and that the investigation was still ongoing, which was why UCT hadn’t reinstated Mendelsohn.

Furthermore, Mcaciso filed two affidavits on the matter, with the second saying that he refused to make one of the changes requested by Kessi, as he felt it would amount to interference. This change isn’t recorded in court papers.

Sara Gon, the director of the Free Speech Union of South Africa, says, “It appears that UCT punished Professor Mendelsohn for exercising his legal right to review the June 2024 adoption of resolutions by the UCT Council. What’s clear from Mendelsohn’s version is that the outcome [of the investigation] was known by Kessi in March. At this point, UCT’s position becomes untenable, and the implication that Mendelsohn was being punished for challenging the UCT Council becomes unavoidable.

“If UCT had a genuine commitment to freedom of expression and academic freedom, its management would have supported Mendelsohn and made it clear to the disgruntled staff that the process and their ideological intensity had to be separated,” Gon says.

Cape South African Jewish Board of Deputies Executive Director Daniel Bloch says Mendelsohn being cleared is a positive development not just for him, “but for the cause of academic freedom and future of UCT”.

However, the investigator’s findings “highlight how divisive political agendas are being allowed to interfere with academic life, and how these actions risk damaging UCT’s reputation, harming research collaboration, and limiting opportunities for staff and students”.

David Benatar, emeritus professor of philosophy at UCT, who has written extensively about the deterioration of the university, says, “While these shenanigans themselves are unsurprising given how UCT has been operating for the past decade, it’s pleasantly surprising that Professor Mendelsohn has been publicly vindicated to the extent that he has, thus far.

“It remains to be seen whether appropriate action will be taken against the bad actors, but I wouldn’t recommend that anybody hold their breath.”

UCT spokesperson Elijah Moholola says, “UCT has noted affidavits filed by various parties in the Western Cape High Court case around the university’s Gaza resolutions. This matter is currently before the courts. UCT is therefore not in a position to comment further on a pending legal matter.”