Montreal’s Concordia University is seeking to “decolonize and Indigenize” every aspect of its academic curriculums and pedagogy.
The university has highlighted its agenda in a “5-Year Strategic Implementation Plan” published last fall.
“As direct beneficiaries of Concordia University’s curriculum programs, students will be grounded in the knowledge and ability to critically evaluate the history and impacts of colonialism, value the importance of learning about diverse Indigenous histories, voices and perspectives while experiencing creative learning opportunities both in and out of the classroom,” the plan notes.
Concordia’s strategy contains four priorities for “decolonization” – a term that the university defines as “a necessary and ongoing process of unlearning, uncovering, and transforming legacies of colonialism, as well as utilizing the educational and knowledge systems available to relearn and rebuild the social, cultural, and linguistic foundations that were lost, or eroded through colonialism.”
The first priority seeks to “decolonize and Indigenize curriculum and pedagogy university-wide.” Concordia adds that it wants “to critically evaluate and decenter Eurocentric knowledge systems” and “reconceptualize curriculum in ways that centre, weave and privilege Indigenous ways of knowing, lived experiences, histories and perspectives.”
There are several ways in which the university hopes to make this goal a reality, including by cultivating a “collective critical consciousness.”
Concordia’s second priority is the imposition of “cultural safety across diverse learning spaces,” which the school hopes to achieve through DEI training that centres on “microaggressions.”
“This will be achieved by working in collaboration with GradPro Skills, Equity office and CTL’s Inclusive Pedagogy on co-designing and implementing workshops, activities and/or events for faculty and grad students on ways to address microaggressions and develop the knowledge and skills to promote cultural safety in the classroom.”
Concordia’s two other priorities include the developing and codesigning of “new programs in collaboration with Indigenous communities” as well as expanding and supporting “collaborative, shared learning communities across Faculty units.”
The term “decolonization” has been the subject of controversy – with some critics linking it to violence.
Frantz Fanon, a Francophone Afro-Caribbean Marxist who was a prominent decolonial thinker and writer, believed that decolonization is always violent.
“Decolonization is always a violent phenomenon. At whatever level we study it – relationships between individuals, new names for sports clubs, the human admixture at cocktail parties, in the police, on the directing boards of national or private banks – decolonization is quite simply the replacing of a certain ‘species’ of men by another ‘species’ of men,” wrote Fanon in his famed book Wretched of the Earth.
Some woke progressives have also used the term “decolonization” to justify Hamas’ Oct. 7 attacks on Israel – falsely claiming that Israelis are settlers oppressing the Palestinians.
In the past, Concordia academics have made headlines for projects seeking to counter colonialism in physics and for claims that animal agriculture is linked to “Western modernism,” “Eurocentrism” and “whiteness.”
Concordia University did not return True North’s request for comment.
