Article 26(1) of the UN Declaration of Human Rights calls for equal access to higher education based on merit, rather than income or citizenship. Organisations like University of Sanctuary and Council for At-Risk Academics (CARA) seek to promote universities as a place of refuge for displaced and threatened scholars and students, in a world distorted by violence and insecurity.

However, as well as having the capacity to act as a place of safety for refugees, universities are complicit in oppression and exploitation. This matters particularly because this involvement is not historic. Colonialism – which can be thought of as control over power, identity and knowledge – is not a thing of the past. This article will argue that it is through better engagement with forcibly displaced persons that we can more fully acknowledge and seek to progress from our colonial legacy. 

The imperial legacy

An example of the imperial entanglement involving contemporary universities and oppression is evident in the 2015 campaign led by students at the University of Cape Town to have the statue of Cecil Rhodes (pictured right) removed from their campus. This campaign achieved international attention under the hashtag #RhodesMustFall 

Cecil Rhodes is a controversial figure because his mining company in Africa, De Beers, practised brutal and racially prejudicial control of indentured workers, and was instrumental in extending British influence on the continent. 

There is also a statue of Cecil Rhodes at Oriel College, Oxford. Despite calls for its removal, the Cecil Rhodes statue remains there with the College opting for ‘contextualising the legacy’ rather than removing it. This decision was also based, Oriel College states, on the ‘significant challenges’ to overcome in gaining permission to remove the statue, and ongoing contestation of the character of Rhodes’ legacy. Another UK university, King’s College London, has chosen to distance themselves more explicitly from association with Rhodes. 

Although we can think of recent times as flashpoints in efforts to decolonise university spaces, calls for education to be more representative of non-white and non-European histories has a longer history. In the United States, for example, there has long been calls for education to be more representative of Indigenous peoples and Black communities. More recently, since 2015 the UK National Union of Students has been running two campaigns, ‘Why is my curriculum white’ and #LiberateMyDegree, to examine the issue of decolonisation. 

‘Decolonising the university’

So, what does it mean to decolonise a university? 

A university is a complicated ecosystem including a history, an identity, and a sense of purpose, expressed in an assortment of buildings, resources and, above all, people. 

Challenging the financial and historical ways in which universities may have profited from racist exploitation during the imperial era is important and painstaking work. 

But there is also the question of what we do in the here and now: what do they teach, and who is it taught to? 

What is taught?

The content of teaching at universities often reinforces power imbalances and the legacy of colonialism. Take my own discipline of International Relations as an example. Its focus on international interactions tends to mean that it focuses on certain kinds of actors and issues – states and sovereignty and ignores others. But statehood is a Western idea, spread through the world by Western power and influence. When we teach the history of the discipline, we are teaching a history of borders and colonialism.

The imposition of nation states on subjugated territories by western imperial powers often paid scant attention to the political and social realities on the ground. The ability of western powers to bestow or withhold statehood has been held responsible for ongoing instability and massive population displacement. For example, many argue that the contemporary turmoil in the Middle East region has its origins in French and British colonial policy. The British government estimates that, as of 2022, there were 6.8 million internally displaced people and 5.3 million global refugees and asylum seekers as a result of the Syrian conflict alone. The current humanitarian crisis in Gaza may be traced in part to the legacy of the Sykes-Picot agreement in the Middle East. 

What’s the answer?

Decolonising universities is not just about the experience of refugees and forced migrants – it is a broader call for greater representation of different voices and perspectives from across society in university curricula. It is especially important to include those from forced migrant backgrounds in discussions because of their unique experiences, and the extent to which these have often been sidelined or ignored in teaching and learning. While attention is turning to the need to make higher education available to refugees, there is an equal need to enrich university curricula with voices from outside the establishment. Thinking of refugees as a problem, as International Relations tends to do, just confirms its association with the interests of the powerful whose power is increasingly criticised as being damaging for global justice. There is a need to explore more collaborative ways of learning and using knowledge, and there are interesting projects – such as the Creating Safer Space Network – which try to do this and to be open to other ways of representing experience.  

This place of safety is what the contemporary university needs to be for refugee learners and academics. When we try to decolonise the university, maybe we should start by opening the door, so that those who have been excluded can make, and be, the change. The openness of The Open University could be the guide. Refugees could be the teachers. 

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