ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters in this book. The book represents an intellectual intervention into this crisis with the explicit intention to contribute to the acceleration of the academy's urgent and necessary decolonization. It serves as an introduction to a book project that began as a three-day event at the University of Edinburgh in February 2016 that sought to explore ways that we might decolonize the academy. The book discusses how neoliberalization and racialization are entangled in the contemporary university through a hegemonic whiteness that obscures and excludes. It deals with the challenges posed by, and facing, Black Studies in the westernized university. The book focuses on the US context and the development of Black Studies in the 1960s during the Cold War. It considers strategies for decolonizing particular fields of study with a focus on development studies, urban studies and law.
