Anton van Niekerk

Anton Albert van Niekerk (born 4 December 1953) is a South African bioethicist and academic based at Stellenbosch University.

Van Niekerk was born in Brits, in what was then known as Transvaal, South Africa. After matriculating in 1971 from the Paul Roos Gymnasium School in Stellenbosch,^[1] he obtained a BA degree (1974), BA Honours in philosophy (1976), MA in philosophy (1980), BTh (1978) and a licentiate in theology (1979), all cum laude, from Stellenbosch University. He obtained his DPhil in 1983. The title of his MA thesis was The Limits of Critical Reason: a Critical Inquiry of the Rationality Model of Critical Rationalism. His doctoral dissertation was entitled Analogy and Theology: A Critical-Philosophical Investigation of Analogy Theories about the Meaning of Theological Language. Both were supervised by Prof Hennie Rossouw.

Van Niekerk was awarded the Chancellor's Medal for the best final year student from Stellenbosch University in 1980 for his MA.^[2] In 1980, he was appointed as lecturer in philosophy at the Stellenbosch University. He was promoted to senior lecturer in 1985 and awarded a professorship in 1989. He created the Centre for Applied Ethics, and the Unit for Bioethics within this centre, at the same university and has been director of both since their inception in 1990. He was chair of the Department of Philosophy at Stellenbosch University from 1990 to 2001 and again from 2006 to 2013. In 2014, he was appointed as one of a select group of distinguished professors^[3] at Stellenbosch University. In total, he has written 18 books, 140 journal articles and book chapters and approximately 180 popular articles. He has supervised 26 completed doctoral dissertations and 77 master's theses.

Work

His research fields include bioethics, philosophy of religion and philosophy of the social sciences (with an emphasis upon hermeneutic approaches). Van Niekerk is one of the pioneers of the establishment of bioethics as an academic discipline in South Africa.^[4] In 1996, he was largely responsible for the introduction of the MPhil degree in applied ethics at Stellenbosch University, a program which was the first and still is the best known of its kind in South Africa.^[5] As a young lecturer, he was at the forefront of political and intellectual debate and a vehement critic of the apartheid regime in South Africa.^[6] In 2011, he was assaulted in his office at the university by a member of a reactionary right wing movement as a result of an article of his that was published in a national newspaper. The individual in question had, by his own admission, never read the article and thus applied a sensationalised misinformed interpretation of van Niekerk's argument. The attacker was found guilty of assault and the sentencing provoked widespread national and international media interest.^[7]

In 1995, van Niekerk was awarded the Stals Prize for Philosophy by the South African Academy for Science and Art.^[8] From 1989 to 2000, he was editor of the internationally accredited South African Journal of Philosophy.^[9] From 2003 to 2007, he was Senate Representative on the Council of Stellenbosch University. During that time, he was also chairperson of the Language Committee - a position which brought about the necessity of him playing a prominent role in the Stellenbosch language debate which has raged since about 2004.^[10] From 2007 to 2012, he was a director of the International Association of Bioethics. He was one of the founding members of the Ethics Institute of South Africa (EthicsSA), initially on its board from 2000 and its chairman since 2003. From 2001 to 2013, van Niekerk was a member of the Ethics Committee of the South African Medical Research Council and has been the chairperson of the Stellenbosch University's Senate's Ethics Committee since 2009. In 2013, he was appointed by the South African Minister of Health as a member of the National Health Research Ethics Council (NHREC), the highest policy making body for research ethics in South Africa. He has a B2 rating ("undisputed international recognition") as a researcher with the National Research Foundation of South Africa and, in 2011 and 2012, was convener of the NRF panel research ratings in philosophy and political science.

Selected works

References

↑ Breuer, Rosemarie. "Anton van Niekerk". Stellenbosch Writers. Retrieved 27 October 2017.
↑ Yearbook of Stellenbosch University, 2014, p. 11
↑ "Distinguished professors appointed". Stellenbosch University. Archived from the original on 13 August 2014. Retrieved 13 August 2014.
↑ Van Niekerk, AA & Benatar, SR., "The social functions of bioethics in South Africa" (with SR Benatar) in Catherine Myser (ed.), Bioethics around the globe. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011: 134-151; Van Niekerk, AA., "South African Bioethics" in H ten Have & B Gordijn, Handbook of Global Bioethics, Amsterdam: Springer, 2013: 1475-1493.
↑ "Archived copy". Archived from the original on 14 August 2014. Retrieved 14 August 2014.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)
↑ For a publication in which his views were argued, see Landman, JP, Nel, PR & Van Niekerk, AA: Wat kom na Apartheid?, Johannesburg: Southern Books, 1988, pp. 1-22; 85-96 [What comes after apartheid?]
↑ Jan Gerber (15 July 2011). "Right-wingers praise attack on prof". News24. Retrieved 13 August 2014.
- "Attack on Prof Anton van Niekerk reprehensible – Rector". News from Stellenbosch University. 14 July 2011. Archived from the original on 13 August 2014. Retrieved 13 August 2014.
↑ List of Stals prize winners, SA Academy for Science and Art
↑ All editions of the South African Journal of Philosophy from 1989 to 2000, i.e. volumes 7-19.
↑ David Beresford (13 November 2009). "Afrikaans 'in retreat' on campus". The Guardian Weekly. Retrieved 13 August 2014.
- For the story of Van Niekerk’s involvement in the language debate, see Van Niekerk AA, "Op soek na identiteit – Die taaldebat op Stellenbosch", in: H Ester, CN van der Merwe en E Mulder (reds.): Woordeloos tot verhaal: Trauma en narratief in Nederlands en Afrikaans, Stellenbosch: Sun Press, 2012: 215-229. [In search of identity in the aftermath of the trauma of the Stellenbosch language debate]. See also Kapp, P: Maties en Afrikaans (Pretoria: Protea Boekhuis, 2013), pp. 74, 121, 133, 151, 159, 179 and 208.

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Anton van Niekerk

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