The annual TB Davie Memorial Lecture on academic freedom was established by University of Cape Town to commemorate the work of Thomas Benjamin Davie, vice-chancellor of the university from 1948 to 1955 and a defender of the principles of academic freedom.[1]
| Year | Speaker | Subject | |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1959 | A van de Sandt Centlivres | Thomas Benjamin Davie | |
| 1960 | Cornelis de Kiewiet | Academic freedom | |
| 1961 | Z. K. Matthews | African awakening and the universities | |
| 1962 | Harry Oppenheimer | The conditions for progress in Africa | |
| 1963 | Sir Robert Tredgold | Ideas, ideologies & idolatries | |
| 1964 | Robert H. Thouless | Rationality & prejudice | |
| 1965 | Sir Robert Birley | The shaking off of burdens | |
| 1966 | A van Selms Nisibis | The oldest university | |
| 1968 | Erik Erikson | Insight and freedom | |
| 1969 | Barbara Ward, Lady Jackson | A new history | |
| 1971 | W A Visser T’Hooft | A responsible university in a responsible society | |
| 1972 | Alpheus H Zulu | The dilemma of a black South African | |
| 1972 | John, Lord Redcliffe Maud | National progress and the university | |
| 1973 | René Dumont | University autonomy and rural development in Africa | |
| 1974 | R Coles | Children and political authority | |
| 1975 | Juliet Mitchell | Women and equality | |
| 1976 | A H Halsey | Academic freedom & the idea of a university | |
| 1977 | Lord Goodman | The university's special role | |
| 1978 | Geoff Budlender | Looking forward | |
| 1979 | Martin Legassick | Academic Struggle and The Worker's Struggle (published not delivered) | |
| 1980 | Ivan Illich | Shadow work, industrial division of toil (published not delivered) | |
| 1981 | Terrence Ranger | Toward a radical practice of academic freedom: the experience | |
| 1982 | Howard Zinn | Academic freedom: collaboration & resistance | |
| 1982 | Julius Tomin | Academic freedom in a repressive society | |
| 1983 | Helen Joseph | The doors of learning & culture shall be open | |
| 1984 | Raymond Suttner | The freedom charter - the people's charter in the 1980s | |
| 1986 | Albert Nolan | Academic freedom: a service to the people | |
| 1986 | Hoosen Coovadia | From ivory tower to a people's university | |
| 1990 | E R Wolf | Freedom and freedoms: An anthropological perspective | |
| 1990 | Walter Sisulu | The road to liberation | |
| 1991 | E W Said | Identity, authority & freedom: the potentate & the traveller | |
| 1992 | G C Spivak | Thinking academic freedom in gendered post-coloniality | |
| 1993 | C H Long | The gift of speech and the travail of language | |
| 1994 | E Foner | The story of American freedom | |
| 1996 | O Patterson | The paradoxes of freedom in America | |
| 1997 | Noam Chomsky | Market democracy in a neoliberal order: Doctrines and reality | |
| 1999 | Alan Ryan | Academic freedom: Human right or professorial privilege? | |
| 2001? | Wole Soyinka | Arms and the arts: a continent's unequal dialogue | |
| 2002 | Kader Asmal | Breaking with the past, planning for the future | |
| 2003 | Frederik van Zyl Slabbert | Is academic freedom still an issue in the new South Africa? | |
| 2004 | Jonathan D. Jansen | Accounting for Autonomy: How Higher Education lost its Innocence | |
| 2006 | Alan Charles Kors | The Essential Relationship of Academic Freedom to Human Liberty | |
| 2007 | Achille Mbembe | Race and Freedom in Black Thought | |
| 2009 | Nithaya Chetty | Universities in a Time of Change[2] | |
| 2010 | Robin Briggs | The Knowledge Economy and Academic Freedom | |
| 2011 | Nadine Strossen | Some Reflections on the British and French Cases: Post-9/11 Threats to Academic Freedom | |
| 2012 | Ferial Haffajee | Creeping Censorship and the Spearing of Freedom | |
| 2013 | Jonathan Glover | Universities, the Market and Academic Freedom[3] | |
| 2014 | Max du Preez | The mediocrity of intellectual discourse: misrepresenting South Africa in the academy and beyond[4] | |
| 2015 | Kenan Malik | Free Speech in an Age of Identity Politics[5] | |
| 2017 | Mahmood Mamdani | Decolonising the postcolonial university[6] | |
| 2018 | Pumla Dineo Gqola | Between Academic Inheritance and the Urgency of Definitions[7] | |
| 2019 | Steven Salaita | The inhumanity of academic freedom[8] | |
| 2020 | Ravi Kanbur | Economic inequality begets academic inequality[9] | |
| 2021 | Yunus Ballim | Ours is to educate, not to captivate[10] | |
| 2022 | Fran Baum | Corporatising universities threatens academic freedom[11] | |
| 2023 | Sakhela Buhlungu | University of Fort Hare – a tale of academic freedom and institutional autonomy[12] |