Animated by social movements such as #RhodesMustFall and #BlackLivesMatter, universities today have entered a period of critical self-reflection on their histories.
The renaming of campus buildings, removal of statues and re-branding of whole universities are all evidence of this trend towards uncovering higher educationβs colonial legacies.
Yet this emphasis on campus iconography, or even on the campus itself, skirts a deeper history of universities and empire.
Most public universities founded in the 19th century β especially in what is now Canada, the United States and Aotearoa New Zealand, but also in South Africa and Australia β were large-scale landowners.
How Commonwealth universities profited from Indigenous dispossession through land grants
