In Europe and the United States, there is also the specific return to colonial form and nostalgia. In Portugal, I’ve been struck by the visible presence of what are still referred to as the “explorers” or the “discoveries,” rather than “colonizers” and “encounter.” The depiction of African bodies in official art and monuments is often stereotyped, almost degrading. I don’t see this, unfortunately, as an exception but as an example of the new divisions. Universities set a poor example here, with minorities and people of color being systematically underrepresented on both sides of the Atlantic.
Part of our task is to build a canon, knowledge, and a way of knowing. This is happening against the backdrop of a movement by South African students to decolonise their universities; Black Lives Matter protests in the United States; and in the context of a much deeper history of national reimagination across Africa and the world.With this history in mind our faculty is working towards what we consider a decolonial social science curriculum. We’ve adopted seven commitments to help us meet this goal, and which we hope will shift educational discourse in a more equitable and representative direction.
The idea of freedom as a point of arrival – an accomplishment that lies behind us, materialized and monumentalized; freedom as a ballot, a single gesture hinged to a turning point; freedom carved in stone, set on a hill, allegorized in a recognizable form; freedom as a lofty place we ascend to, is one that can be counterpoised to freedom as departure, as work and process; an immaterial, contingent ideal; an ambition and responsibility which escapes and evades one’s grasp, but to which one continuously commits.
In Europe and the United States, there is also the specific return to colonial form and nostalgia. In Portugal, I’ve been struck by the visible presence of what are still referred to as the “explorers” or the “discoveries,” rather than “colonizers” and “encounter.” The depiction of African bodies in official art and monuments is often stereotyped, almost degrading. I don’t see this, unfortunately, as an exception but as an example of the new divisions. Universities set a poor example here, with minorities and people of color being systematically underrepresented on both sides of the Atlantic. 
Part of our task is to build a canon, knowledge, and a way of knowing. This is happening against the backdrop of a movement by South African students to decolonise their universities; Black Lives Matter protests in the United States; and in the context of a much deeper history of national reimagination across Africa and the world.With this history in mind our faculty is working towards what we consider a decolonial social science curriculum. We’ve adopted seven commitments to help us meet this goal, and which we hope will shift educational discourse in a more equitable and representative direction. 
The idea of freedom as a point of arrival – an accomplishment that lies behind us, materialized and monumentalized; freedom as a ballot, a single gesture hinged to a turning point; freedom carved in stone, set on a hill, allegorized in a recognizable form; freedom as a lofty place we ascend to, is one that can be counterpoised to freedom as departure, as work and process; an immaterial, contingent ideal; an ambition and responsibility which escapes and evades one’s grasp, but to which one continuously commits. 
