The alternative is to envision a decolonial world through academic systems

According to Watts, Williams, & Jagers (2003, p. 187) liberation “requires vision—a transition from critique to creativity.” Creativity is necessary to envision a better professional and cultural environment as well as a moral order. For these authors liberation “involves challenging gross social inequities between social groups and creating new relationships that dispel oppressive social myths, values, and practices” (p. 187). To this end, space must be made for multiple voices to participate in non-consensus driven dialogue and to express multiple knowledges and epistemologies. This can be created within, through, and in spite of the formal, established academic system. Individual actors are crucial in efforts to create formal institutional space for trans- formation (e.g., diversity committees, round tables, conferences, policy reviews), as well as informal spaces of resistance and liberation (e.g., strategizing behind closed doors, bearing witness to counter-stories). These spaces can mitigate microaggressions (i.e., acts of individual racism in the form of cultural insensitivity, dismissal of relevant racial/cultural issues, and/or stereo- typical assumptions) and counter the coercive control of “power over” boundary transgressions. Effective participation in these spaces requires acknowledging and being held accountable for our interconnected privileges based on gender, race, ethnicity, nation of origin, sexual orientation, abilities, institutional networks and promotion, and professional roles. Figure 2 illustrates our understanding of how a post-colonial academia might value cultural democracy by transforming exclusive Andro-, Euro-, and middle-class centered institutions to include and value the voices and life experience of all involved. Cannella and Manuelito (2008) argued at length for an anti-colonialist research stance which would end the separation between how data is collected from communities and the intellectuals who write about them. They have advocated for research interaction guidelines that make transparent public conversations, as well as new methodologies that lend themselves to the development of public conversations. Finally, Cannella and Manuelito have pressed for practices that would “avoid the reinscription of economic power that results when the dominant also becomes the method for the elimination of oppression/colonialism” (p. 50). This framework can inform practices beyond the realm of research, including academia. This includes the promo- tion of open, democratic, transformative processes that support inclusion and equity. Our vision of a post-colonial academy involves the following elements: (a) using the lens of intersectionality to transcend conceptualizations of oppression organized around single axes of identity, (b) identifying and providing alternatives that transform White and other systems of privilege into fair participatory structures and processes for all, and (c) prioritizing considerations of accountability and justness across a wide range of social differences.