Decolonizing the Westernized University: Interventions in Philosophy of Education from within and without

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.

Table of Contents:
Introduction Ernesto Rosen Velásquez PART I: THE UNDERSIDE OF PHILOSOPHY OF EDUCATION 1. The University at a Crossroads Boaventura de Sousa Santos PART II: DECOLONIZING THE WESTERNIZED UNIVERSITY IN EUROPE, THE U.S. AND LATIN AMERICA 2. About Them, But Without Them: Race and Ethnic Studies Relations in Dutch Universities Kwame Nimako 3. The Dilemmas of Ethnic Studies: In Between Liberal Multiculturalism, Identity Politics, Disciplinary Colonization, and Decolonial Epistemologies Ramón Grosfoguel 4. The Crisis of the University in the Context of Neoapartheid: A View from Ethnic Studies Nelson Maldonado-Torres 5. Dropouts as Delinkers from the Modern/Colonial World System Ernesto Rosen Velásquez 6. Damnés Realities and Ontological Disobedience: Notes on the Coloniality of Reality in Higher Education in the Bolivian Andes and Beyond Anders Burman 7. Delinking from Western Epistemology: En Route from University to Pluriversity via Interculturality Robert Am

About the Author :
Ramón Grosfoguel is associate professor of ethnic studies at the University of California, Berkley. Roberto D. Hernández is assistant professor of Chicana/o studies at San Diego State University. Ernesto Rosen Velásquez is assistant professor of philosophy at the University of Dayton.

Review :
This volume offers a highly insightful contribution to debates in critical pedagogy as well as to practices of decolonisation more generally.... [T]he volume unambiguously succeeds in conveying the urgency with which the Westernised university needs to be decolonised.