I recently attended a roundtable discussion hosted by the LSE Center for Southeast Asia Studies on the topic of decolonization in relation to higher education. The purpose of the roundtable, Prof. Hyun Bang Shin (Director of SEAC) said in his opening remarks, was to consider the emergence and growth of an intellectual initiative across the global North that aims to “decolonialize” higher education and the university, and the potential limitations of these efforts.
The roundtable discussion raised fundamental and difficult questions about how to pursue decolonisation from our respective socio-spatial positions. I wrote some reflections for the LSE SEAC blog which you can read here.
As someone who is invested in postcolonial urbanism and conducts research in post colonies, I was interested to learn more about this conversation which seems, at least to me, to be much more vibrant in the UK and Southeast Asia than in the US.
What would it mean to “de-colonize” colleges and campuses in the settler colonial context of the US?
Universities have a particular role in the history of Native American dispossession. The Morrill Acts of 1862 and 1890, signed under Lincoln, funded the establishment of new colleges by granting federally controlled land to states to sell and endow. But this land was not theirs to give. Land-grant universities occupy Native land. They might be better described as Land-grab universities.
“What would it mean to “de-colonize” colleges and campuses in the settler colonial context of the US?”
There has been a push recently to develop Land Acknowledgments. The University of Oklahoma’s Undergraduate Student Congress recently passed a bill implementing a Land Acknowledgment before all meetings. OU faculty and centers also use a land acknowledgment in emails (myself included) and on webpages:
The University of Oklahoma is on the traditional lands of the Caddo Nation and the Wichita & Affiliated Tribes. This land was also once part of the Muscogee Creek and Seminole nations. It also served as a hunting ground, trade exchange point, and migration route for the Apache, Cheyenne, Comanche, Kiowa, and Osage nations. Today, 39 federally-recognized Tribal nations dwell in what is now the State of Oklahoma as a result of settler colonial policies designed to confine and forcefully assimilate Indigenous peoples.
Of course this is not enough. Higher education in the US needs to move beyond an acknowledgement of history, toward decolonization and reparations. Scholars have offered some potential avenues. For instance, colleges might invest in “decolonial praxis” by decentering Western ways of knowing the world, and incorporating Indigenous pedagogies and knowledge. Others, including Dr. Lisa Tilley, suggest that the college’s resources might be put to work in the name of decolonization.
Colleges might also reconfigure their relationships to the global political economy, finding solidarity with Indigenous people’s movements, divesting from fossil fuels and, as la paperson argues in A Third University is Possible (which you can read here for free), counteract war making.