Colonialism Impact Australia

Academic Colonialism, False Consciousness, and the Western ...

By Ben Wildavsky. Is the spread of the Western higher education model around the world evidence that repressive colonialism is alive and well in academe? Apparently so, according to a statement issued by participants in the International Conference on Decolonizing Our Universities, held recently at the Universiti Sains Malaysia in Penang. The authors of the manifesto, which I read about last week in GlobalHigherEd, minced no words in describing the alleged harm done to universities outside the West by “the tutelage and tyranny of Western institutions.” They complained that in non-Western nations “indigenous intellectual traditions” have been denigrated and marginalized. The group, which included participants from Australia, China, India, Indonesia, Iran, Japan, Malaysia, Nigeria, the Philippines, Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan, Tanzania, Thailand, Turkey, and Uganda, duly issued a call to action: “We are firmly convinced that every trace of Eurocentrism in our universities – reflected in various insidious forms of western controls over publications, theories, and models of research must be subordinated to our scintillating cultural and intellectual traditions.” And so forth. For good measure, participants showed that they weren’t afraid to take things to the next level: they wrote a letter to UNESCO. How seriously should one take such concerns? I’ve certainly heard assorted variations on these themes – mostly without the silly rhetoric, thankfully – from people who worry, for instance, that growing aspirations in the developing world to create Western-style world-class universities will result in a global homogenization of academic institutions. One Indian university president used the term “glocalization” to describe to me the balance he believes ought to be struck between a nation’s universities and the worldwide academic culture in which so many now operate. Many scholars in non-English speaking nations worry that growing pressures to publish in English will erode the study of certain national literatures and politics. And national-global tensions aren’t necessarily a function of language. An Australian economist who focuses on domestic public policy was among those who condemned government research rankings (since revamped) that gave the highest marks only to those who published in top international journals.

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