On Monday, 21 July 2025, the Department of Historical and Heritage Studies (DHHS) hosted a delegation of postgraduate students led by the Dean of Rutgers University-New Brunswick's Graduate School of Education (GSE), Dr Christopher Span and the Senior Director: Strategic Alliances & Online Education for the Graduate School, Dr Darren Clarke. The delegation of 11 postgraduate students included Master's and Doctoral students interested in South Africa's education history, in particular, but also South African contemporary history in general.

DHHS's Edwin Smith provided the delegation with an overview of South Africa's education history, as well as aspects of South Africa's contemporary history, with a special focus on the history of the struggle against apartheid.

Many of the students were visiting South Africa for the first time. Consequently, the delegation also shared their immediate and significant impressions of South Africa, of which the persistent and continuing racial disparities were a common feature for the group.

The students were simultaneously also impressed by South Africa's success with reconciliation and development, given the burden of the inheritance of apartheid and colonialism bequeathed to contemporary society.

The delegation also extrapolated and compared the South African experience with challenges in the US into contemporary times. The expressed view was that such international exchanges and experiences help to equip emerging scholars to better understand and appreciate the differences and similarities between their societies and to develop common and collaborative efforts to address the myriad of challenges confronting their respective societies.

The GSE's visit to the University of Pretoria continues a long tradition of UP annually hosting different delegations of Rutgers University staff and students for over two decades now