Decolonial University Studies & the Arts of Global Engagement

What are the responsibilities of a global university in a wounded world?

Located in one of the wealthiest metropolitan regions in the world and engaged in research projects across the planet, the University of Washington (UW) is in the very early days of defining its responsibility in an unequal and unjust global society. Headlines announcing the latest environmental tragedies, outbreaks of violence, mass incarceration, and economic dislocations are indicators of the ongoing and overlapping work of colonialism, racism, extractive capitalism, nationalism, and patriarchy. While it is tempting to see the university as a place for solutions to these crises, it is important to note that university knowledge is, as Edward Saíd famously put it, “never innocent.”

Organized around the visit of Critical University Studies scholar K. Wayne Yang, this micro-seminar will invite students to consider the decolonial work that has emerged in Critical University Studies and to apply theories and insights from this work in a self-critical and self-reflexive examination of the UW’s own discourses and practices on global engagement. Key readings will include the excerpts from the work of Sharon Stein, K. Wayne Yang, Eve Tuck, Ruth Wilson Gilmore,  Denise Ferreira da Silva, Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò, Nelson Maldonado-Torres, and the current version of the  UW’s Guidelines for Global Engagement.

The final assignment in the seminar will be a collaboratively produced revision of the UW’s Guidelines for Global Engagement. This microseminar is part of the project on Activating the Third University: A Worlds of Difference Initiative.

Image credit: The bronze statue of imperialist Cecil Rhodes is removed in Cape Town on 9 April 2015 as protesters film the event: DESMOND BOWLES/FLICKR