Critical Citizenship after Black Lives Matter: The Case of Decolonialising the Curriculum and the Neoliberal University

This chapter considers the way contemporary political and civic activity manifests itself in UK higher education. We take the recent ‘decolonising the curriculum’ movement as a case example to reflect on the content, character and trajectory of this activism within university contexts and we evaluate the implications of these findings for fostering citizenship in ever-increasing neoliberal contexts, particularly where the relationship between students, university staff, institutions and their political and civic engagement continues to evolve.

This chapter charts universities from their historical post-war context to their current status, to show how universities have moved from broadly ‘social citizenship’ models focussed on public goods and democratic participation, to a neoliberal variant that spans institutional ‘rationale’, ‘policy’ and ‘process’, and sees higher education as offering public goods which are increasingly converted into private advantages by individuals and entities who can ‘play the game’.

We argue that despite sympathising with many of the broad aims of the movement, in practice the substantive parts of the decolonising movement have been co-opted and reconstituted by neoliberal managerialism. We conclude the chapter by briefly examining how universities may maintain their historic role in cultivating knowledge as well as encouraging active and critical citizens in uncertain times.