TO DECOLONISE THE CURRICULUM or not to decolonise the curriculum, that is the question. In his latest book, Against Decolonisation: Campus Culture Wars and the Decline of the West, Doug Stokes turns his analytical eye for international affairs inwards to give a damning indictment of the “decolonisation” movement. Just what does its agenda of dismantlement spell for UK universities, and the integrity of the West as a whole? Stokes emerges as an intellectual Robin Hood, reclaiming British history for those who are being most underserved by those “educated” elites who push narratives of social justice and white guilt — that is, the white, working-class people of Britain.
Ranging through “identity politics” and “social theory”, “racism on campus” and “manufactured moral panic”, Stokes deconstructs the deconstructionists,