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This chapter traces the origin of racism and reviews the historical and contemporary debates around race and racialisation in western thought. There are persistent disagreements surrounding the origin and nature of racism. Because of the evolution of racist ideas, behaviours and institutional practices and policies, there are various views about the meaning and analytical application of racism. This chapter explores how ideas of race – understood as innate and immutable human differences that can be classified and ranked hierarchically based on race – has emerged in western history and evolved over time. It examines how this has influenced social and political practices and associated policies across the evolution of modernity. The chapter specifically discusses the Atlantic slave trade and how it shaped the historical development of race and racism within the context of colonialism. It concludes with a discussion and critical review of some of the racist systems and policies which have been enforced across different multiracial countries.

In the 21st century, placing higher education institutions in the global world has become the norm. Therefore, many higher education institutions in Ghana and across the globe have set out to internationalise or become world-class universities as part of their strategic ambitions. Thus, finding ways to become visible on a global scale and transcend beyond the countries in which they operate has become of major interest to most universities. The authors of this chapter were curious to determine how universities adopt imported organisational templates as a strategic ambition. One should not assume that the semblance of such imported concepts is mere institutional isomorphism stemming from internationalisation and globalisation. The study employed semi-structured interviews and institutional documents as data collection tools among ten (10) university actors in a flagship university in Ghana. The study used postcolonial theory to critically examine the drivers and current practices embedded in dominant hegemonic global discourses, such as internationalisation. The findings revealed that the drivers and reforms underpinning university internationalisation ambition are framed within economic rationalities, producing human capital, self-marketisation to promote visibility, and a quest for global competition couched within global neoliberal ideology. The study recommends the need for university actors to (re)focus and (re)evaluate university internationalisation discourse to ensure a balance between local relevance and global forces.

While most West European nations were formed around pre-existing entities that could be called “countries” before the modern age, this was not the case in the Middle East. Some entities, like Egypt, did have a clear political and cultural identity before colonialism, others, like Algeria, did not. This chapter discusses the four states of the Maghreb: Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia and Libya, through the perspective of “country creation” going into and coming out of colonial rule. We can see here two “models” of fairly similar types of historical development, one showing a gradual process through a protectorate period to relatively stable modern nations, another through violent conquest and direct colonization ending in violent liberation and military and wealthy but fragile states. The article asks whether these models for the history of country creation and the presence or absence of pre-colonial identities can help explain the modern history and nature of these states in the Arab Spring and the years thereafter. Then, a more tentative attempt is made to apply these models to two countries of the Arab east, Syria and Iraq. While local variations ensure that no model can be transferred directly, it can show the importance of studying the historical factors that go into the transition from geographical region to a country with people that can form the basis of a nation.

This paper aims to present insights on the governance of sustainability transitions in higher education in Africa. The authors interrogate the research literatures on the governance of socio-technical transitions in water, electricity, transport and waste management, and identify barriers and enabling factors that enhance transformative practices in universities.

The analytical framework proposed in this paper combines the elements of governance network theory (GNT) and transition topology. The framework of this study is grounded in an actor-centric approach using GNT to understand networks conducive to sustainability transitions. Events and governance networks were mapped on a transition topology to visualise organisational and institutional changes over time. The study engaged students, management, academic and administrative staff in building a community of practice towards sustainability. This research is based on qualitative content analysis grounded in interview data, focus group discussions, workshops, webinars and secondary data analysis.

The findings show that the university has consolidated a sustainability vision and targets, but several factors prevent the community from achieving these targets, including hierarchical decision-making processes, a multitude of disjointed committees and fragmentation in the campus community.

This research adds to an emerging body of literature in the field of sustainability in higher education with two contributions. Firstly, the study presents a novel perspective(s) on the governance of sustainability transitions by combining the literatures on governance and sustainability transitions using a new methodological approach of transition topology to show organisational and institutional changes. Secondly, the study presents new empirical evidence for improving the governance of sustainability transitions in a diverse and highly unequal African university community in the process of (de)colonisation of knowledge and governance.

This study employs Stein Rokkan's methodological approach to analyse state formation in the Greater Middle East. It develops a conceptual framework distinguishing colonial, populist and democratic pacts, suitable for analysis of state formation and nation-building through to the present period. The framework relies on historical institutionalism. The methodology, however, is Rokkan's. The initial conceptual analysis also specifies differences between European and the Middle Eastern state formation processes. It is followed by a brief and selective discussion of historical preconditions. Next, the method of plotting singular cases into conceptual-typological maps is applied to 20 cases in the Greater Middle East (including Afghanistan, Iran and Turkey). For reasons of space, the empirical analysis is limited to the colonial period (1870s to the end of World War 1). Three typologies are combined into one conceptual-typological map of this period. The vertical left-hand axis provides a composite typology that clarifies cultural-territorial preconditions. The horizontal axis specifies transformations of the region's agrarian class structures since the mid-19th century reforms. The right-hand vertical axis provides a four-layered typology of processes of external intervention. A final section presents selected comparative case reconstructions. To the authors' knowledge, this is the first time such a Rokkan-style conceptual-typological map has been constructed for a non-European region.

This paper aims to examine female entrepreneurship perceptions at the nexus of understandings of Muslim behaviour in Pakistan, the “formula” of Shapero for considering entrepreneurial intentions and the viewpoints of young Pakistani women.

Data collected from 555 women between 18 and 30 years of age, undertaking tertiary-level business studies in Pakistan constitute the sample of the study, and structural equation modelling was used to test the hypotheses.

This study finds that the respondents’ perceptions of Islam positively impact the formula at the feasibility component, whilst also inverting the desirability component, therefore, resulting in a “does not equal” outcome for intentions.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this work is one of the first to empirically examine the role of Islamic perception in shaping entrepreneurial intentions through the individual components of desirability, feasibility and propensity to act. It puts forth contextual deliberations for a meaningful heterodoxy in light of female entrepreneurship in an Islamic country.

Narratives about racism and equity in schools have been documented in varying degrees of detail and accuracy in the news media (Farhi, 2012). Thus, race is front and center in the news reports, demonstrating how education policies are detrimental to the Island while also contending that policy drivers of Ley de Reforma Educativa de Puerto Rico (LREPR) are ignoring the racialized consequences of these neoliberal policies.

To examine the implementation of LREPR in education discourse in the media, a content analysis on texts in the Puerto Rican media was conducted. To conduct the analysis, an original dataset of texts from the four major newspapers in Puerto Rico: El Nuevo Dia, El Vocero, Primera Hora and The San Juan Daily Star (n = 119) was created.

The study shows how the collective resistance of Puerto Ricans towards LREPR suggests racialized consequences for this “post”-colonial Island as they engage in dialogues about property rights and dispute policy discourse. Data suggests the alarming effects of neoliberalism as perceived by Puerto Rican citizens, while highlighting shared concerns aligned with elements of critical race theory such as colorblindness and property rights.

This study breaks ground by identifying a new intellectual pursuit of charter schools purchasing land or buildings in marginalized communities. It argues that the news coverage demonstrates how Puerto Rican citizens have illuminated the purchase of land for charter schools, viewing it as an act of colonialism veiled as market competition and economic improvement for the Island. Implications for policy and practice are discussed.

The findings from this research contribute to how critical race theory is used and conceptualized in the educational leadership field. Additionally, the study contributes to the field of research by conducting a content analysis of newspaper articles in Puerto Rico, looking through the CRT lens to illuminate systemic racism that is present in media accounts of education.