The vice-chancellors (VCs) of SA’s 26 public universities are a rather timid lot. Since Adam Habib left Johannesburg’s Wits university and Saleem Badat moved on from Rhodes in Makhanda, higher education has been starved of public intellectual leadership at the top of the academic pyramid. Most of my colleagues keep their heads down out of fear of reprisals or not realising what a powerful platform they have on which to speak truth to power on behalf of the powerless.

So it came as a welcome surprise last week that the leader of the University of the Free State (UFS) said so eloquently what everyone else was thinking but too afraid to say publicly: that the now routinely violent student protests are “opportunistic criminality in the guise of legitimate protest” and that “by letting criminality go unpunished and not speaking out against these acts we are contributing towards a culture of entitlement”. I know some VCs sent private notes of appreciation...