Print this article Decolonization” has become a keyword on campuses. It refers to symbolic changes that are supposed to promote diversity and eliminate vestiges of white supremacy. Student- and scholar-activists, aided by sympathetic administrators, promote “decolonized” syllabuses that include more writers of color. Rhetorically, “decolonization” links the grievances of relatively privileged students and university employees to the national liberation struggles that swept Africa and Asia in the middle of the 20th century. The scions of our new elite imagine themselves as the wretched of the earth.
Campus “decolonization” is joined to shifts in academic research. This is particularly true of scholars of France working in the United States, who use the rhetoric of colonialism and decolonization to attack France for its alleged racism, Islamophobia, and misogyny. (In return, French government officials have lashed out against U.S. ideas of “social justice.”) Iron