Who controls the narrative? The (re)productions of power and coloniality in the higher education in emergencies community

Who controls the narrative? The (re)productions of power and coloniality in the higher education in emergencies community

In this article, we critically examine the coloniality of knowledge production processes within the education in emergencies community and explore how and why such actions continue despite mounting critique. We do so by reflecting on our joint involvement in a consultancy for a large donor which sought to map range of threats facing higher education systems under political or ideological coercion. As the work progressed, it became clear that our own academic freedom was being diminished by the funder’s own political and diplomatic interests, limiting the contexts we could include or not in our analysis. Reflecting on this experience, we map out the various drivers that implicate many higher education scholars, ourselves included, in projects that perpetuate epistemic erasure, ignorance and/or violence. We explore how collectively, we become implicated in the very systems of imperialism, capitalism and racism we critique – largely through our continued relationship with and dependence on a small group of funders. This is shaped by enterprises of academic capitalism coupled with the rise of the neoliberal university. Rather than accept these dynamics as a given, however, we argue for the importance of finding small spaces of resistance within our everyday scholarly work to unsettle such forces.