front cover of Decolonizing the University
Decolonizing the University
Edited by Gurminder K. Bhambra, Kerem Nisancioglu and Dalia Gebrial
Pluto Press, 2018
"A must-read for anyone interested in enhancing a historical understanding of our present through a consideration of what it means to decolonize."—Priyamvada Gopal, University of Cambridge

In 2015, students at the University of Cape Town demanded the removal of a statue of Cecil Rhodes, the imperialist, racist business magnate, from their campus. Their battle cry, #RhodesMustFall, sparked an international movement calling for the decolonization of universities all over the world.
 
Today, as the movement develops beyond the picket line, how might it go on to radically transform the terms upon which universities exist? In this book, students, activists, and scholars discuss the possibilities and the pitfalls of doing decolonial work in the heart of the establishment. Subverting curricula, demanding diversity, and destroying old boundaries, this is a radical call for a new era of education. Chapters include:
 
*Rhodes Must Fall: Oxford and Movements for Change (Dalia Febrial)
*Race and the Neoliberal University ((John Holmwood)
*Black/Academia (Robbie Shilliam)
*The Challenge for Black Studies in the Neoliberal University (Kehinde Andrews)
*Open Initiatives for Decolonising the Curriculum (Pat Lockley)
*Decolonising Education: A Pedagogic Intervention (Carol Azumah Dennis)
*Understanding Eurocentrism as a Structural Problem of Undone Science (William Jamal Richardson)
 
As the book’s insightful Introduction states, "Taking colonialism as a global project as a starting point, it becomes difficult to turn away from the Western university as a key site through which colonialism—and colonial knowledge in particular—is produced, consecrated, institutionalized and naturalized." Offering resources for students and academics to challenge and resist colonialism inside and outside the classroom, Decolonizing the University provides the tools for radical change in educational disciplines, pedagogies, and institutions.  
 
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front cover of Defending Diversity
Defending Diversity
Affirmative Action at the University of Michigan
Patricia Gurin, Jeffrey S. Lehman, and Earl Lewis, with Eric L. Dey, Gerald Gurin, and Sylvia Hurtado
University of Michigan Press, 2004

Even as lawsuits challenging its admissions policies made their way through the courts, the University of Michigan carried the torch for affirmative action in higher education.
In June 2003, the Supreme Court vindicated UM's position on affirmative action when it ruled that race may be used as a factor for universities in their admissions programs, thus confirming what the UM had argued all along: diversity in the classroom translates to a beneficial and wide-ranging social value. With the green light given to the law school's admissions policies, Defending Diversity validates the positive benefits gained by students in a diverse educational setting.
Written by prominent University of Michigan faculty, Defending Diversity is a timely response to the court's ruling. Providing factual background, historical setting, and the psychosocial implications of affirmative action, the book illuminates the many benefits of a diverse higher educational setting -- including preparing students to be full participants in a pluralistic democracy -- and demonstrates why affirmative action is necessary to achieve that diversity.
Defending Diversity is a significant contribution to the ongoing discussion on affirmative action in higher education. Perhaps more important, it is a valuable record of the history, events, arguments, and issues surrounding the original lawsuits and the Supreme Court's subsequent ruling, and helps reclaim the debate from those forces opposed to affirmative action.
Patricia Gurin is Professor Emerita, Department of Psychology, University of Michigan. Jeffrey S. Lehman, former Dean of the University of Michigan Law School, is President of Cornell University. Earl Lewis is Dean of Rackham Graduate School, University of Michigan.
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front cover of Discarded, Discovered, Collected
Discarded, Discovered, Collected
The University of Michigan Papyrus Collection
Arthur Verhoogt
University of Michigan Press, 2017
The first-ever history of Michigan’s celebrated collection of papyri offers nonspecialists an inviting encounter with the ancient world
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front cover of The Division of Literature
The Division of Literature
Or the University in Deconstruction
Peggy Kamuf
University of Chicago Press, 1996
Where does the university begin and the "outside" end? How has literature become established as a separate domain within the university? Demonstrating that these questions of division are intricately related, Peggy Kamuf explores the space that the university devotes to the study of literature.

Kamuf begins by analyzing the complex history of literary study within the modern university, critically reading developments from the French Revolution through the nineteenth century and beyond in Europe. She then turns to one of the most troubling works in the American literary canon—Melville's The Confidence-Man—to show how academic literary history has avoided confronting the implications of works in which meaning is never solely confined within a past. By engaging a future readership to which it applies for credit, Kamuf argues, literature cannot serve as a stable object of study. It locates, rather, a site of "the university in deconstruction."

Ranging from disciplinary histories of literature to our current culture wars, Kamuf offers a fascinating critique of academic literary study.
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