In this collection of case studies and stories from the field, South African scholars come together to trade stories on how to decolonise the university Shortly after the giant bronze statue of Cecil John Rhodes came down at the University of Cape Town, student protestors called for the decolonisation of universities. It was a word hardly heard in South Africa’s struggle lexicon and many asked: What exactly is decolonisation? This edited volume brings together the best minds in curriculum theory to address this important question. In the process, several critical questions are raised: Is decolonisation simply a slogan for addressing other pressing concerns on campuses and in society? What is the colonial legacy with respect to curriculum and can it be undone? How is the project of curriculum decolonisation similar to or different from the quest for postcolonial knowledge, indigenous knowledge or a critical theory of knowledge? What does decolonisation mean in a digital age where relationships between knowledge and power are shifting? The book combines strong conceptual analyses with novel case studies of attempts to ‘do decolonisation’ in settings as diverse as South Africa, Uganda, Tanzania and Mauritius. Such a comparative perspective enables reasonable judgements to be made about the prospects for institutional take-up within the curriculum of century-old universities.

"A must-read for anyone interested in enhancing a historical understanding of our present through a consideration of what it means to decolonize."--Priyamvada Gopal, University of Cambridge In 2015, students at the University of Cape Town demanded the removal of a statue of Cecil Rhodes, the imperialist, racist business magnate, from their campus. Their battle cry, #RhodesMustFall, sparked an international movement calling for the decolonization of universities all over the world. Today, as the movement develops beyond the picket line, how might it go on to radically transform the terms upon which universities exist? In this book, students, activists, and scholars discuss the possibilities and the pitfalls of doing decolonial work in the heart of the establishment. Subverting curricula, demanding diversity, and destroying old boundaries, this is a radical call for a new era of education. Chapters include: *Rhodes Must Fall: Oxford and Movements for Change (Dalia Febrial) *Race and the Neoliberal University ((John Holmwood) *Black/Academia (Robbie Shilliam) *The Challenge for Black Studies in the Neoliberal University (Kehinde Andrews) *Open Initiatives for Decolonising the Curriculum (Pat Lockley) *Decolonising Education: A Pedagogic Intervention (Carol Azumah Dennis) *Understanding Eurocentrism as a Structural Problem of Undone Science (William Jamal Richardson) As the book's insightful Introduction states, "Taking colonialism as a global project as a starting point, it becomes difficult to turn away from the Western university as a key site through which colonialism--and colonial knowledge in particular--is produced, consecrated, institutionalized and naturalized." Offering resources for students and academics to challenge and resist colonialism inside and outside the classroom, Decolonizing the University provides the tools for radical change in educational disciplines, pedagogies, and institutions.

An underlying assumption undergirding institutions of higher education is that they serve as a means to upward socioeconomic mobility and, in turn, a way to address poverty that is tied to certain racialized/sexualized bodies. Although the education crisis is not an American or European problem in the geographic sense, but instead a global problem that plays itself out differentially across space and time, this volume focuses on the westernized university, in the US and abroad. It asks questions about what is westernized about the university, what its aims are, and how those who work in, through and outside these sites of knowledge production—with local or global social movements—can participate in the slow, careful process of decolonizing the westernized university. Decolonizing the Westernized University: Interventions in Philosophy of Education from Within and Without provides a sharper understanding of the crisis and the responses to the westernized university at multiple sites around the world. As an intervention in the philosophy of education discourse, which tends to assume the university is a neutral space, this collection will be of particular value to students and scholars working in philosophy of education, Latina/o philosophy, Africana philosophy, social epistemology, education, cultural studies, and ethnic studies, as well as to intellectual activists in the United States, south of the border, and around the world.

This book explores the world of Nigerian universities to offer an innovative perspective on the history of development and decolonisation from the 1930s to the 1960s. Using political, cultural and spatial approaches, the book shows that Nigerians and foreign donors alike saw the nation’s new universities as vital institutions: a means to educate future national leaders, drive economic growth, and make a modern Nigeria. Universities were vibrant places, centres of nightlife, dance, and the construction of spectacular buildings, as well as teaching and research. At universities, students, scholars, visionaries, and rebels considered and contested colonialism, the global Cold War, and the future of Nigeria. University life was shaped by, and formative to, experiences of development and decolonisation. The book will be of interest to historians of Africa, empire, education, architecture, and the Cold War.

Drawing on treaties, international law, the work of other Indigenous scholars, and especially personal experiences, Marie Battiste documents the nature of Eurocentric models of education, and their devastating impacts on Indigenous knowledge. Chronicling the negative consequences of forced assimilation, racism inherent to colonial systems of education, and the failure of current educational policies for Aboriginal populations, Battiste proposes a new model of education, arguing the preservation of Aboriginal knowledge is an Aboriginal right. Central to this process is the repositioning of Indigenous humanities, sciences, and languages as vital fields of knowledge, revitalizing a knowledge system which incorporates both Indigenous and Eurocentric thinking.

Decolonisation has lost its way. Originally a struggle to escape the West’s direct political and economic control, it has become a catch-all idea, often for performing ‘morality’ or ‘authenticity’; it suffocates African thought and denies African agency. Olúfẹ́mi Táíwò fiercely rejects the indiscriminate application of ‘decolonisation’ to everything from literature, language and philosophy to sociology, psychology and medicine. He argues that the decolonisation industry, obsessed with cataloguing wrongs, is seriously harming scholarship on and in Africa. He finds ‘decolonisation’ of culture intellectually unsound and wholly unrealistic, conflating modernity with coloniality, and groundlessly advocating an open-ended undoing of global society’s foundations. Worst of all, today’s movement attacks its own cause: ‘decolonisers’ themselves are disregarding, infantilising and imposing values on contemporary African thinkers. This powerful, much-needed intervention questions whether today’s ‘decolonisation’ truly serves African empowerment. Táíwò’s is a bold challenge to respect African intellectuals as innovative adaptors, appropriators and synthesisers of ideas they have always seen as universally relevant.

'A landmark in the process of decolonizing imperial Western knowledge.' Walter Mignolo, Duke University To the colonized, the term 'research' is conflated with European colonialism; the ways in which academic research has been implicated in the throes of imperialism remains a painful memory. This essential volume explores intersections of imperialism and research - specifically, the ways in which imperialism is embedded in disciplines of knowledge and tradition as 'regimes of truth.' Concepts such as 'discovery' and 'claiming' are discussed and an argument presented that the decolonization of research methods will help to reclaim control over indigenous ways of knowing and being. Now in its eagerly awaited second edition, this bestselling book has been substantially revised, with new case-studies and examples and important additions on new indigenous literature, the role of research in indigenous struggles for social justice, which brings this essential volume urgently up-to-date.