Journal Article — Introduction: From University to Pluriversity: A Decolonial Approach to the Present Crisis of Western Universities — by Capucine Boidin, James Cohen, and Ramón Grosfoguel

This is a co-editors’ introduction to the 2011 special issue of Human Architecture: Journal of the Sociology of Self-Knowledge, entitled “Decolonizing the University, Practicing Pluriversity,” including papers that were presented at the conference entitled Quelles universités et quels universalismes demain en Europe? un dialogue avec les Amériques (Which University and Universalism for Europe Tomorrow? A Dialogue with the Americas) organized by the Institute des Hautes d’Etudes de l’Amerique Latine (IHEAL) with the support of the Université de Cergy-Pontoise and the Maison des Science de l’Homme (MSH) in Paris on June 10-11, 2010. The aim of the conference was to think about what it could mean to decolonize the Westernized university and its Eurocentric knowledge structures. The articles in this volume are, in one way or another, decolonial interventions in the rethinking and decolonization of academic knowledge production and Western university structures.