Shifts
the narrative around the history of US higher education to examine
its colonial past.
Over the past several decades, higher education in the United
States has been shaped by marketization and privatization. Efforts to
critique these developments often rely on a contrast between a bleak
present and a romanticized past. In Unsettling the University,
Sharon Stein offers a different entry point—one informed by
decolonial theories and practices—for addressing these issues.
Stein describes the colonial violence underlying three of the most
celebrated moments in US higher education history: the founding of
the original colonial colleges, the creation of land-grant colleges
and universities, and the post–World War II "Golden Age."
Reconsidering these historical moments through a decolonial lens,
Stein reveals how the central promises of higher education—the
promises of continuous progress, a benevolent public good, and social
mobility—are fundamentally based on racialized exploitation,
expropriation, and ecological destruction.
Unsettling the University invites readers to confront
universities' historical and ongoing complicity in colonial violence;
to reckon with how the past has shaped contemporary challenges at
institutions of higher education; and to accept responsibility for
redressing harm and repairing relationships in order to reimagine a
future for higher education rooted in social and ecological
accountability.
