I’m working up a long-ish post about Grok and the UK’s response to the recent scandal around sexualized images, but in the meantime, the NYT has an inspiring obituary about a South African anti-Apartheid activist that I felt was worth sharing here (click here for the paywall-free link via Archive.is):
Renfrew Christie Dies at 76; Sabotaged Racist Regime’s Nuclear Program
…Many of his family members fought with the Allied forces against the Germans in World War II, and “I learned from them very early that what one does with Nazis is kill them,” he said at a 2023 conference on antinuclear activism in Johannesburg. “I am not a pacifist.”
At 17, he was drafted into the South African Army. A stint of guard duty at the Lenz ammunition dump south of Johannesburg confirmed his suspicions that the government was building nuclear weapons. “From the age of 17, I was hunting the South African bomb,” he said at the conference.
After attending the University of the Witwatersrand, he received a scholarship to Oxford, which enabled him to further his quest. For his doctoral dissertation, he chose to study South Africa’s history of electrification, “so I could get into the electricity supply commission’s library and archives, and work out how much electricity they were using to enrich uranium,” he told the BBC.
“His role in disrupting and exposing the apartheid state’s clandestine nuclear weapons programme was an act of profound revolutionary significance. By helping to undermine this dangerous project, Comrade Christie struck at the heart of a regime that sought to preserve white supremacy through weapons of mass destruction and terror. . . [L]ike many patriots before him, he emerged from prison unbroken in spirit and unwavering in his commitment to justice, equality and freedom.”
“He was a thinker far ahead of his time. Many scholars will recall him cautioning Senate in the early 2000s that our greatest future challenge would be how universities use technology wisely, without turning higher education into what he memorably described as the pursuit of “Google degrees”. His words now feel profoundly prophetic, reminding us that the integrity of knowledge, the discipline of scholarship, and the intellectual formation of our students must remain central—even as digital tools continue to reshape how we teach, learn, and research.”
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