The Harare teacher who was sacked after he came out as gay is off to Harvard. Neal Hovelmeier, a former St John’s College deputy headmaste...
The Harare teacher who was sacked after he came out as gay
is off to Harvard. Neal Hovelmeier, a former St John’s College deputy
headmaster in Harare, has been nominated as one of the 2019-2020 Radcliffe
Institute for Advanced Study Fellows at Harvard University.
Hovelmeier will pursue an individual project in a community
dedicated to exploration and inquiry at Harvard’s institute for advanced study.
The Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study is regarded one
of the foremost academic institutions in the world. Started in 1999, the
institute has hosted about 900 fellows.
After the announcement was made that he would be going to
the US as part of the fellowship, some parents bemoaned his departure as a loss
to the school.
“There is still a large group of people who are trying to
convince St John’s to re-employ this man simply on the grounds that this
country desperately needs to have excellent teachers working in our schools,
not sidelined or forced to find work elsewhere because of the prejudice which
exists in society (one I am deeply respectful of as a Shona myself, but one
which I also feel needs to be taken into careful context when we consider how
devastating discrimination can be of any kind),” said one parent, Francis
Mpofu.
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