Let Us Build a Table: Decolonization, Institutional Hierarchies, and Prestige in Academic Communities

If global higher education is truly committed to decolonization, there will have to be some radical changes. A decolonized university would increase the freedom of students and staff through undoing the legacy of the past, a past which was exclusive and homogenous. In order for this to materialize, universities must adopt a different consciousness. They must move away from the current culture that has privileged global north epistemic and pedagogical frameworks that serve to alienate the student from the global south. For universities to be able to undo the effects of the epistemic injustice that indigenous students have faced, the academy must approach education with a new mindfulness of whom it is that it is designed to serve. When we approach higher education with a consciousness of decolonization and a recognition of the identity of whom the education system is meant to serve, then management systems and epistemic and pedagogical frameworks in our universities cannot remain abstract in nature. Rather they must be fully cognizant of the students’ backgrounds, their social needs, and their academic needs. These cannot be mere considerations but must be the information which directs what is taught and how it is taught, for a just education system is not and can never be decontextualized. As Afro-communitarianism prescribes, decontextualization disregards the necessity of, and integral relationships to, others and the world. Any just pedagogical system must acknowledge the legitimacy of, and draw from, contributions in culture, knowledge, and perspective that come from the students themselves—both as individuals and as insiders of a particular class, culture, and indigenous group. It is in this symbiotic relationship where both the student and the educator can begin to be humanized again.