Multidisciplinary Journal Epistemology of the Sciences

Volume 3, Issue 2, 2026, April–June

DOI: https://doi.org/10.71112/kvx7sp20

UNIVERSITY AUTONOMY AND ACADEMIC FREEDOM IN THE GLOBAL SOUTH:

TENSIONS AMONG THE COLONIALITY OF KNOWLEDGE, INSTITUTIONAL

GOVERNANCE, AND EPISTEMIC JUSTICE IN LATIN AMERICA, THE CARIBBEAN,

AND AFRICA

AUTONOMÍA UNIVERSITARIA Y LIBERTAD ACADÉMICA EN EL SUR GLOBAL:

TENSIONES ENTRE COLONIALIDAD DEL CONOCIMIENTO, GOBERNANZA

INSTITUCIONAL Y JUSTICIA EPISTÉMICA EN AMÉRICA LATINA, EL CARIBE Y

ÁFRICA

Jairo Eduardo Soto Molina

Colombia

DOI: https://doi.org/10.71112/kvx7sp20

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Autonomía universitaria y libertad académica en el Sur Global: tensiones entre

colonialidad del conocimiento, gobernanza institucional y justicia epistémica en

América Latina, el Caribe y África

University autonomy and academic freedom in the Global South: tensions among

the coloniality of knowledge, institutional governance, and epistemic justice in

Latin America, the Caribbean, and Africa

Jairo Eduardo Soto Molina

a,*

jairoesoto1@gmail.com

https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3378-0202

Autor de correspondencia: jairoesoto1@gmail.com,

Universidad del Atlántico, Colombia

ABSTRACT

This research examines contemporary challenges affecting university autonomy and academic

freedom in the Global South through a comparative transregional analysis involving Latin

America, the Caribbean, and Africa. Grounded in the theoretical perspectives of Epistemologies

of the South and critical intercultural education, the study analyzes how neoliberal governance

models, epistemic dependency, political polarization, bureaucratic control, and symbolic

exclusion influence knowledge production, research agendas, and academic freedom in public

universities.

The project adopts a mixed-methods comparative design combining quantitative surveys

administered to university professors and researchers with qualitative interviews, discourse

analysis, and institutional policy review. The research seeks to identify shared structural

patterns and contextual differences regarding institutional autonomy, freedom of teaching and

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research, academic participation, and resistance to political, ideological, and economic

pressures.

Special attention is given to epistemic justice and to the ways universities in peripheral contexts

negotiate tensions between global academic standards and locally situated forms of knowledge

production. The study also incorporates critical analyses derived from previous investigations on

governance crises and exclusionary political discourses within Colombian higher education

institutions, particularly in the Caribbean region.

The project aims to contribute to international debates on democracy, higher education, and

knowledge production by proposing a decolonial and intercultural framework for understanding

academic freedom beyond Eurocentric perspectives. Ultimately, the study seeks to strengthen

South–South academic dialogue and generate policy recommendations for more democratic,

autonomous, inclusive, and socially committed universities throughout the Global South.

It further emphasizes collaborative research networks capable of promoting institutional

resilience, equity, and regional epistemological sovereignty globally.

Received: May 26, 2026 | Accepted: June 11, 2026 | April: June 12, 2026

DOI: https://doi.org/10.71112/kvx7sp20

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INTRODUCTION

In the first decades of the 21st century, universities in the Global South are facing a

profound reconfiguration of their governance structures, their forms of knowledge production, and

their margins of institutional autonomy. This scenario is marked by multiple tensions stemming

from the expansion of neoliberal models of higher education, the increasing bureaucratization of

university systems, the commodification of knowledge, epistemological dependence on the

Global North, and the strengthening of symbolic, political, and digital surveillance mechanisms

over academic communities. Far from representing merely administrative transformations, these

dynamics constitute a complex field of ideological, epistemological, and cultural disputes that

directly affect academic freedom, research agendas, and the possibility of constructing situated

knowledge from peripheral contexts (Santos, 2018; Mignolo, 2011; Quijano, 2000).

In Latin America, the Caribbean, and Africa, the public university has historically been

conceived as a space for social mobility, critical thought production, and cultural democratization.

However, in recent decades, numerous studies have shown how structural adjustment policies,

standardized evaluation systems, pressure for international indexing, and the subordination of

research to productivity logics have progressively reduced the margins of university autonomy

(Ordorika, 2003; Slaughter & Rhoades, 2004). This situation has generated new forms of

academic subordination that no longer operate exclusively through direct censorship or explicit

political repression, but also through more sophisticated mechanisms associated with the

coloniality of knowledge, the technocratic regulation of research, and the imposition of hegemonic

scientific paradigms originating from global centers of academic power (Lander, 2000; Castro-

Gómez, 2007).

From the perspective of Southern epistemologies, these contemporary forms of

academic control constitute expressions of a global structure of cognitive inequality that privileges

certain knowledge, languages, methodologies, and university models while rendering invisible

alternative forms of knowledge production developed in historically marginalized contexts

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(Santos, 2014). In this sense, epistemological coloniality not only affects what knowledge is

considered valid within universities, but also who has the legitimacy to produce it and under what

institutional conditions it can circulate (Quijano, 2007; Walsh, 2009). Academic freedom in the

Global South, therefore, cannot be analyzed solely from traditional liberal legal frameworks, but

also from the perspective of the power relations that structure the global knowledge system.

Authors such as Pierre Bourdieu have shown that the university field constitutes a space

of disputes over legitimacy, symbolic capital, and institutional control, while Michel Foucault

demonstrated how modern institutions operate through technologies of surveillance and discipline

that produce subtle forms of subjective regulation. In the contemporary university context, these

dynamics manifest themselves through mechanisms of continuous evaluation, metrics of

scientific productivity, digital surveillance, dependence on external funding, and the precarious

employment of faculty. Such processes generate conditions that favor academic self-censorship,

epistemological homogenization, and the subordination of research agendas to external

economic, political, or geostrategic interests (Giroux, 2014; Brown, 2015).

In the Colombian case, these tensions take on particular characteristics due to the

historical disputes surrounding university autonomy, the funding of public universities, and the

relationships between the state, knowledge, and democracy. Several recent studies have

indicated that Colombian public universities are undergoing complex processes of governance

crisis, institutional fragmentation, and weakening of their critical capacities, especially in

peripheral regional contexts where the material and symbolic conditions for scientific production

are more limited (Soto Molina, 2025). These problems not only impact university administration

but also the dynamics of democratic participation, research conditions, and the development of

intercultural academic citizenship.

Within this framework, the Colombian Caribbean constitutes a particularly relevant

setting for analyzing the tensions between university autonomy, state bureaucracy, and situated

knowledge production. Public universities in this region simultaneously face challenges

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associated with social inequality, academic centralism, epistemological dependence, and

structural limitations in consolidating contextualized research agendas. From this perspective, the

Colombian node of this research proposes a critical examination of the relationships between

university governance, academic coloniality, and intellectual freedom, articulating contributions

from critical intercultural education, the bilingual intercultural curriculum, and epistemologies of

the Global South. Of particular relevance in this context are previous studies such as "University

Autonomy and Governance Crisis in Colombia: A Critical Analysis from the University of the

Atlantic" (Soto Molina, 2025), which demonstrates how institutional conflicts, internal political

disputes, and administrative bureaucratization affect research processes and democratic

dynamics within universities. Likewise, the study "The Culture of Exclusion in the Political

Discourse of Colombian University Students" provides theoretical and methodological tools for

understanding how certain institutional discourses produce symbolic mechanisms of exclusion,

silencing, and marginalization within the Colombian academic field.

This research is based on the hypothesis that contemporary restrictions on academic

freedom in the Global South operate not only through explicit forms of censorship, but also

through mechanisms of epistemological coloniality, scientific dependency, institutional

bureaucratization, and neoliberal regulation of knowledge. Consequently, the project seeks to

comparatively analyze the transformations, tensions, and resistance strategies linked to university

autonomy and academic freedom in universities in Latin America, the Caribbean, and Africa, from

a critical, decolonial, and intercultural perspective. (Soto-Molina, 2022)

To this end, the research aims to identify the main forms of political, economic,

institutional, and epistemological pressure that affect academic freedom; examine how

contemporary university policies condition research agendas and scientific production; and

compare the perceptions of faculty and researchers using common instruments applied in

different regions. This study analyzes strategies of academic resistance and the construction of

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epistemic justice, and proposes guidelines aimed at strengthening autonomous, democratic, and

intercultural university models.

The relevance of this study lies in its capacity to contribute to international debates on

democracy, universities, and cognitive justice from a perspective situated in the Global South.

Furthermore, the project seeks to strengthen South-South academic dialogues and generate

alternative analytical frameworks that allow for an understanding of academic freedom beyond

traditional Eurocentric conceptions, incorporating categories such as the coloniality of knowledge,

critical interculturality, and transformative academic citizenship.

The Colombian research node has a strong track record in the critical study of university

autonomy, governance dynamics, and the discursive tensions present in higher education

institutions in Colombia. In particular, research by the Language Circle research group, based at

the University of the Atlantic, stands out for its ability to understand the relationships between

power, exclusion, university democracy, and academic freedom in peripheral Latin American

contexts.

One of the key precedents is the study entitled "University Autonomy and the Crisis of

Governance in Colombia: A Critical Analysis from the University of the Atlantic," developed by

Jairo Eduardo Soto Molina and collaborators. This work analyzes how tensions between

institutional autonomy, administrative bureaucratization, internal political disputes, and

contemporary models of university management affect knowledge production and the exercise of

academic freedom in Colombian public universities.

The research demonstrates that the crisis of university governance cannot be

understood solely as an administrative problem, but rather as an expression of epistemological,

political, and symbolic disputes that permeate the higher education system in Latin America. The

study also reveals the existence of institutional pressure mechanisms, fragmentation of academic

communities, and structural limitations for the development of autonomous and contextualized

research agendas.

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Complementarily, the work "The Culture of Exclusion in the Political Discourse of

Colombian University Students" constitutes a fundamental reference for understanding the

symbolic forms through which dynamics of exclusion, polarization, and delegitimization are

produced within university settings. This research provides tools from critical discourse analysis

and the sociology of power to examine how certain institutional and political discourses generate

processes of silencing, academic marginalization, and indirect restriction of freedom of thought.

Both precedents are especially relevant to the present proposal because they allow us

to establish connections between:

• academic freedom,

• university autonomy,

• institutional democracy,

• symbolic violence,

• coloniality of knowledge,

• university governance,

• epistemic justice,

• situated knowledge production.

Furthermore, these studies provide a solid methodological and conceptual basis for the

development of the regional comparative component of the project, particularly in relation to the

analysis of teacher perceptions, institutional dynamics, and contemporary mechanisms of

academic control in universities of the Global South..

Contemporary Analysis of University Autonomy and Academic Freedom in the Global

South

A contemporary analysis of university autonomy and academic freedom in the Global

South requires a theoretical framework capable of moving beyond traditional interpretations

focused exclusively on legal or administrative dimensions of higher education. Recent

transformations of public universities, particularly in Latin America, the Caribbean, and Africa,

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reveal that current tensions cannot be understood solely as isolated institutional conflicts, but

rather as expressions of historical power structures associated with the coloniality of knowledge,

neoliberal rationality, and disputes over epistemological legitimacy in the contemporary world

system. From this perspective, the present research is based on a critical dialogue between

epistemologies of the South, decolonial theory, critical sociology of education, and studies on

power, discourse, and university governance.

One of the central references for this proposal is the thought of Boaventura de Sousa

Santos, particularly his contributions on cognitive justice and epistemologies of the South.

According to Santos (2014), the modern world has produced an “abyssal divide” separating

knowledge considered legitimate from that historically rendered invisible by Eurocentric

rationality. This logic has shaped a global system of knowledge production where universities in

the Global South often occupy peripheral positions, subordinated to scientific, linguistic, and

methodological paradigms defined by the Global North. Consequently, academic freedom cannot

be reduced to the formal right to research or teach, but must also be understood as the effective

possibility of producing situated, pluralistic, and epistemologically diverse knowledge. From this

perspective, cognitive justice is an indispensable condition for democratizing the contemporary

university and challenging the forms of epistemicide stemming from modern Western hegemony

(Santos, 2018).

Aníbal Quijano's reflections complement this analysis by pointing out that capitalist

modernity produced a global structure of domination based on the coloniality of power,

understood as a historical pattern that articulates race, knowledge, economics, and political

authority (Quijano, 2000). In the university sphere, this coloniality is expressed through

epistemological hierarchies that privilege certain scientific models, academic languages, and

forms of knowledge validation. The coloniality of knowledge thus operates as a mechanism of

intellectual subordination that limits the autonomy of peripheral universities and conditions

research agendas toward external interests. In this sense, scientific dependence and

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subordination to international rankings, indexing systems, and academic productivity policies

constitute contemporary manifestations of this persistent colonial structure.

In dialogue with Quijano, Walter Mignolo develops the concept of epistemic disobedience

as a strategy of resistance against hegemonic forms of knowledge production. According to

Mignolo (2011), universities in the Global South face a constant tension between reproducing

Eurocentric models of scientific validation and constructing situated epistemological alternatives

that recognize historically marginalized forms of knowledge. The notion of “decolonial options” is

particularly relevant to this research, as it allows us to analyze how certain university actors

generate practices of intellectual resistance against contemporary neoliberal mechanisms of

knowledge regulation. From this perspective, academic freedom also implies the capacity to

question dominant epistemologies and open spaces for pluriversal forms of scientific production.

For his part, Enrique Dussel offers a philosophical critique of Western modernity that is

fundamental to understanding the relationships between university, coloniality, and democracy.

Dussel (1994) argues that European modernity was historically constituted through processes of

exclusion and subordination of other peoples and rationalities. In response, he proposes the

concept of transmodernity as an ethical and political horizon oriented toward the recognition of

otherness and the construction of horizontal intercultural dialogues. Applied to the university field,

this approach allows us to problematize the ways in which higher education institutions reproduce

structures of epistemological and cultural exclusion, as well as to explore alternatives based on

critical interculturality and the democratization of knowledge.

The critical sociology of Pierre Bourdieu offers fundamental tools for analyzing the power

relations that permeate the university field. Bourdieu (1988) understands the university as a space

of struggle for symbolic capital, legitimacy, and intellectual authority. In this field, academic actors

compete for scientific recognition within deeply hierarchical structures that reproduce social and

cultural inequalities. The notion of symbolic violence is particularly useful for understanding how

certain institutional discourses, evaluation criteria, and accreditation mechanisms produce subtle

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forms of academic exclusion. In the contemporary context, scientific productivity policies,

international metrics, and the pressure to be indexed operate as mechanisms of symbolic

regulation that condition the intellectual autonomy of researchers and peripheral universities.

The contributions of Michel Foucault allow for a deeper analysis of the contemporary

mechanisms of surveillance and control present in universities. Foucault (1975) showed how

modern institutions produce forms of discipline through mechanisms of constant surveillance and

the normalization of behavior. In the contemporary university setting, these technologies of power

manifest themselves through systems of continuous evaluation, academic audits, digital

surveillance, administrative bureaucratization, and mechanisms of institutional control over

research and teaching. The notion of epistemic surveillance is particularly relevant to this

research, as it allows us to understand how certain regimes of scientific validation delimit what

knowledge is acceptable, what methodologies are recognized, and what discourses can

legitimately circulate within academia.

From the perspective of critical pedagogy, Paulo Freire offers an emancipatory

understanding of education as a practice of freedom and social transformation. Freire (1970)

criticized the banking model of education, which reproduces vertical relations of domination, and

proposed a dialogical pedagogy based on critical consciousness and democratic participation.

(Pertuz, & Soto-Molina, 2026) His contributions allow us to analyze the university not only as a

space for ideological reproduction, but also as a potential arena for resistance, intercultural

dialogue, and the collective construction of knowledge. Freire's notion of conscientization

acquires particular relevance in the face of contemporary dynamics of educational

commodification and the technocratic subordination of research.

Based on this theoretical dialogue, the present research articulates fundamental

analytical categories such as academic freedom, university autonomy, the coloniality of

knowledge, cognitive justice, neoliberal governance, epistemic surveillance, and intercultural

academic citizenship. Academic freedom is understood here not only as an individual legal

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guarantee, but also as a collective condition for the autonomous and critical production of

knowledge in democratic contexts. University autonomy, for its part, is conceived as a political,

epistemological, and cultural dimension that implies the institutional capacity to define research

agendas, pedagogical practices, and academic projects without undue subordination to external

interests.

Neoliberal governance constitutes another central axis of the analysis, insofar as

contemporary transformations in higher education have introduced business logics, competitive

systems, and managerial models that reconfigure the relationships between university, state, and

market (Brown, 2015). These dynamics profoundly affect faculty working conditions, research

priorities, and mechanisms for democratic participation within universities. Epistemic surveillance

then appears as a mechanism associated with the regulation of scientific production through

global standards of productivity and academic legitimation.

Finally, the concept of intercultural academic citizenship allows us to project alternatives

oriented toward more democratic, pluralistic, and socially engaged universities. This category

proposes understanding university actors not only as producers of technical knowledge, but also

as political subjects capable of building intercultural dialogues, cognitive justice, and forms of

resistance against the contemporary coloniality of knowledge. From this perspective, the

university of the Global South can become a strategic space for epistemological democratization

and the construction of decolonial educational horizons.

METHODOLOGY

This research will be conducted using an international comparative design with a

sequential explanatory mixed-methods approach, aimed at understanding the contemporary

transformations of university autonomy and academic freedom in contexts of the Global South.

This methodological approach allows for the integration of quantitative and qualitative strategies

in an articulated manner to analyze both structural trends and situated experiences, discourses,

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and practices related to university governance, the coloniality of knowledge, and the dynamics of

academic resistance in universities in Latin America, the Caribbean, and Africa. The mixed-

methods approach is particularly relevant for research on complex and multidimensional

phenomena, as it allows for complementing the analytical breadth of quantitative data with the

interpretive depth of qualitative approaches (Creswell & Plano Clark, 2018).

The choice of a sequential explanatory design responds to the need to identify, in a first

phase, comparative patterns related to faculty perceptions of university autonomy, research

freedom, and institutional regulation, and subsequently to delve qualitatively into the

interpretations, experiences, and narratives produced by academic actors in their respective

regional contexts. Thus, the study seeks to articulate comparative statistical analysis with critical

perspectives from discourse analysis, decolonial theory, and epistemologies of the Global South.

From an epistemological perspective, the research is situated within a critical-interpretive

paradigm that recognizes the historical, political, and cultural nature of knowledge production.

Consequently, the study assumes that the relationships between university, power, and academic

freedom cannot be analyzed from a supposed scientific neutrality, but rather as part of structural

disputes associated with epistemic inequalities, mechanisms of institutional regulation, and

dynamics of contemporary coloniality (Santos, 2014; Denzin & Lincoln, 2018). Likewise, the

project incorporates methodological principles of critical intercultural research and situated

knowledge production, recognizing the historical and sociopolitical particularities of each

participating university context.

The quantitative phase will focus on administering a common survey to faculty,

researchers, and academics affiliated with public universities in the participating countries. The

purpose of this instrument is to identify perceptions, experiences, and trends related to

contemporary conditions of academic freedom and institutional autonomy. The use of a

standardized questionnaire will allow for transregional comparisons between Latin America, the

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Caribbean, and Africa, as well as the identification of convergences and divergences in the forms

of institutional, political, and epistemological pressure present in different university contexts.

The variables considered in this phase include perceptions of university autonomy,

institutional censorship, ideological pressure, research freedom, academic self-censorship,

precarious employment of faculty, the impact of international rankings and scientific productivity

metrics, democratic participation in university governance, and perceptions of epistemological

dependence on the Global North. These categories were defined based on previous studies on

neoliberal governance of higher education, academic coloniality, and contemporary university

capitalism (Slaughter & Rhoades, 2004; Brown, 2015). The questionnaire will incorporate Likert-

type questions, items on institutional perception, and open-ended questions designed to capture

specific experiences related to academic constraints and dynamics of university regulation..

The sample will be purposive and will consist of faculty and researchers from public

universities in the participating regions. While the study does not aim for national statistical

representativeness, it does seek to achieve institutional, disciplinary, and regional diversity to

allow for meaningful comparative analyses. In the case of the Colombian node, the work will focus

primarily on public universities in the Colombian Caribbean, especially institutions that reflect

tensions between university autonomy, state bureaucracy, and peripheral conditions of academic

production.

Quantitative data will be processed using descriptive and comparative statistical

techniques. Frequency analyses, measures of central tendency, correlations between variables,

and interregional comparative analyses will be used to identify common patterns and contextual

differences. Depending on the final sample size, exploratory multivariate analyses may be

incorporated to examine relationships between perceived autonomy, institutional pressure, and

academic working conditions. Statistical results will be interpreted not only from traditional

positivist perspectives but also from critical approaches that recognize the symbolic and political

dimensions of the phenomena analyzed. The qualitative phase will be developed subsequently

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to delve deeper into the interpretations produced by university actors regarding the dynamics

identified in the quantitative phase. To this end, semi-structured interviews, focus groups, and

documentary analysis of university policies, institutional regulations, and official discourses

related to academic freedom, research evaluation, and university governance will be used. The

interviews will allow for the exploration of personal and collective experiences associated with

symbolic censorship, academic self-censorship, institutional surveillance, job insecurity, and

tensions arising from contemporary higher education policies.

The focus groups will seek to generate spaces for collective dialogue among faculty and

researchers in order to analyze shared perceptions of university autonomy, academic coloniality,

and strategies of intellectual resistance in peripheral contexts. This technique is particularly

relevant for critical and intercultural research due to its capacity to make visible processes of

collective meaning-making and shared experiences of subordination or exclusion (Morgan, 1997).

Furthermore, the focus groups will facilitate the comparative analysis of academic narratives

among different participating regions.

The documentary analysis will include a critical review of higher education laws, research

policies, university accreditation systems, faculty evaluation regulations, and institutional

documents related to university governance. This component will allow participants' perceptions

to be contextualized within broader normative and political structures, as well as identify

contemporary forms of neoliberal regulation of knowledge and institutional mechanisms of

epistemic surveillance.

The processing of qualitative information will be carried out using critical discourse

analysis, an approach that allows us to examine how power relations, epistemological hierarchies,

and mechanisms of exclusion are reproduced through institutional and academic discursive

practices (Fairclough, 1995; Van Dijk, 2016). This approach is particularly relevant for analyzing

how certain university discourses legitimize hegemonic models of scientific production while

marginalizing situated knowledge, decolonial perspectives, and alternative forms of research.

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The research will also incorporate a transregional triangulation process aimed at

integrating quantitative and qualitative findings from the various participating nodes. Triangulation

will strengthen the study's interpretive validity by comparing diverse data, perspectives, and

institutional contexts (Flick, 2018). It will also facilitate the identification of common structural

patterns in universities of the Global South, as well as regional specificities related to political

history, university models, and local forms of academic resistance.

Within this general framework, the Colombian Caribbean/Colombia node will assume a

strategic role in analyzing the relationships between public universities, institutional governance,

academic coloniality, and situated research. This regional component will examine how

Colombian public universities confront tensions between university autonomy and state

bureaucracy in contexts characterized by structural inequality, academic centralism, and

epistemological dependence. The work developed from the Colombian Caribbean will allow for

the incorporation of peripheral perspectives that are frequently overlooked in international debates

on higher education.

The specific contribution of the Colombian node will be articulated with previously

developed lines of research on intercultural bilingual curricula, epistemologies of the South,

linguistic coloniality, and critical interculturality. In this sense, the research will not be limited solely

to the administrative or legal analysis of university autonomy, but will also examine the cultural,

epistemological, and discursive dimensions of academic freedom in peripheral contexts. Of

particular relevance will be previous research such as "University Autonomy and Governance

Crisis in Colombia: A Critical Analysis from the University of the Atlantic" and "The Culture of

Exclusion in the Political Discourse of Colombian University Students," studies that offer

fundamental analytical categories for understanding the relationships between symbolic power,

discursive exclusion, and university governance in Colombia.

From this methodological perspective, the research seeks to produce a critical and

intercultural analysis of contemporary dynamics affecting academic freedom in the Global South,

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integrating quantitative, discursive, institutional, and epistemological dimensions within a

transregional comparative framework oriented toward the construction of cognitive justice and

university democratization.

RESULTS

This research aims to generate academic, institutional, and political results that

significantly contribute to contemporary debates on university autonomy, academic freedom, and

cognitive justice in the Global South. First, it seeks to produce an international comparative study

that identifies convergences and divergences in contemporary forms of academic regulation,

pressure, and resistance in universities in Latin America, the Caribbean, and Africa. This

comparative study will offer a transregional perspective on current transformations in higher

education from a critical, decolonial, and intercultural standpoint, moving beyond exclusively

national or Eurocentric approaches to academic freedom.

One of the main outcomes will be the creation of a comparative regional database

comprised of quantitative and qualitative information collected from the various participating

institutions. This database will allow for the systematization of faculty and research perceptions

related to university autonomy, institutional censorship, ideological pressure, job insecurity,

epistemic surveillance, and scientific dependence. In addition to providing methodological input

for future research, this comparative database will help to highlight common problems affecting

public universities in the Global South and will facilitate subsequent longitudinal and comparative

analyses.

The project also aims to generate high-impact scientific output through the development

of academic articles for Q1 and Q2 indexed journals in areas such as higher education, decolonial

studies, sociology of education, critical discourse studies, and university policies. These articles

will address specific themes derived from the research findings, including academic coloniality,

neoliberal governance, institutional surveillance, cognitive justice, peripheral knowledge

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production, and intercultural academic citizenship. The intention is to position the experiences of

universities in the Global South within international academic debates that have historically

privileged Eurocentric perspectives on autonomy and academic freedom.

Furthermore, an academic and policy report is planned for CLACSO and CODESRIA,

which will systematize the study's main comparative findings and formulate recommendations

aimed at strengthening democratic and intercultural university policies. This report will not only be

descriptive but also proactive, incorporating strategic guidelines for protecting academic freedom

and consolidating more autonomous and socially engaged university models.

Another expected outcome of particular relevance will be the consolidation of a South-

South academic network on academic freedom, university autonomy, and epistemic justice. This

network will seek to strengthen ties of intellectual cooperation among researchers from Latin

America, the Caribbean, and Africa, promoting horizontal academic exchanges and alternative

forms of collaborative knowledge production. From the perspective of Southern epistemologies,

this international articulation constitutes a fundamental strategy for challenging scientific

dependence on hegemonic centers of academic production and advancing toward more pluralistic

and intercultural forms of university research (Santos, 2014).

In the specific case of the Colombian Caribbean/Colombia node, it is expected to

contribute a critical understanding of the existing tensions between university autonomy, state

bureaucracy, and academic coloniality in peripheral contexts of scientific production. This

component will bring to light experiences and issues frequently excluded from global debates on

higher education, especially those related to regional public universities, university governance,

and epistemological inequality in the Colombian context. Likewise, the study will contribute to

strengthening lines of research linked to intercultural bilingual curriculum, linguistic coloniality,

and critical interculturality previously developed in the Colombian Caribbean.

Finally, one of the project's most innovative contributions will be the formulation of a preliminary

proposal for alternative indicators of intercultural university autonomy. Unlike traditional models

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based exclusively on administrative or financial criteria, these indicators will seek to incorporate

dimensions related to cognitive justice, epistemological plurality, democratic participation,

situated knowledge production, linguistic diversity, and critical interculturality. This proposal

aims to open new discussions on how to evaluate university autonomy in contexts of the Global

South.

Table 1.

Comparative Framework for Academic Freedom, University Autonomy, and South–South

Intellectual Cooperation in Latin America, the Caribbean, and Africa.

Comparative

Dimension

Latin America

Caribbean

Africa

Potential for

South–South

Cooperation

Historical

University

Context

Strong tradition of

public universities

and reformist

movements since

the Córdoba

Reform (1918).

Universities shaped

by British, French,

and Spanish colonial

legacies.

Higher education

systems deeply

influenced by

European

colonialism and

relatively recent

independence

processes.

Development of

shared historical

frameworks on

higher

education,

decolonization,

and university

autonomy.

Main

Contemporary

Challenges

Insufficient funding,

bureaucratization,

political

polarization, and

international

performance

metrics.

External academic

dependency, budget

constraints, and brain

drain.

Pressure from

international

organizations,

financial

dependency, and

technological

inequality.

Identification of

common

patterns of

neoliberal

governance and

epistemic

subordination.

University

Autonomy

Relatively

consolidated legal

tradition but

increasingly

weakened by

neoliberal reforms.

Varies according to

territorial contexts

and external

geopolitical

influences.

Frequently

conditioned by

state structures

and international

agencies.

Exchange of

experiences on

institutional

protection and

democratic

governance.

Academic

Freedom

Threatened by

political

polarization,

institutional

surveillance, and

faculty precarity.

Limited by dependent

economies and

institutional fragility.

Risks associated

with political

censorship,

social conflicts,

and state control.

Development of

shared protocols

for academic

protection and

intellectual

solidarity

networks.

Coloniality of

Knowledge

Dominance of

Eurocentric

Dependence on

metropolitan

Persistence of

colonial

Promotion of

Southern

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Comparative

Dimension

Latin America

Caribbean

Africa

Potential for

South–South

Cooperation

epistemologies and

pressure for

international

indexing.

academic models

and limited regional

visibility.

frameworks in

research and

higher education.

epistemologies

and

strengthening of

situated

knowledge

systems.

Dominant

Academic

Languages

Spanish,

Portuguese, and

international

academic English.

English, French,

Spanish, and Creole

languages.

English, French,

Portuguese, and

African local

languages.

Promotion of

multilingualism

and linguistic

justice in

scientific

production.

Impact of

Neoliberal

University

Policies

Commodification of

education and a

culture of scientific

productivity.

Dependence on

external funding and

business-oriented

management models.

Partial

privatization and

subordination to

international

development

agendas.

Joint critiques of

global academic

capitalism and

alternative

governance

models.

Peripheral

Scientific

Production

Limited

international

visibility despite

strong regional

critical scholarship.

Underrepresentation

in global rankings

and databases.

Scientific

production

constrained by

technological

inequalities and

insufficient

funding.

Creation of

collaborative

South–South

publishing and

knowledge-

sharing

platforms.

Emerging

Critical

Methodologies

Critical pedagogy,

decolonial theory,

and participatory

research.

Postcolonial studies,

intercultural

approaches, and

community-based

methodologies.

African

epistemologies,

oral traditions,

and community-

centered

research

methods.

Development of

intercultural and

transregional

methodological

integration.

Academic

Resistance

Movements

Critical university

networks, student

movements, and

faculty unions.

Regional initiatives

for cultural and

educational

integration.

Pan-African

intellectual and

decolonial

movements.

Consolidation of

a South–South

academic

network on

academic

freedom and

epistemic

justice.

Potential

Contributions

to the Project

Expertise in

university

autonomy and

decolonial critique.

Intercultural

perspectives and

Afro-Caribbean

diasporic

experiences.

Experiences in

educational

decolonization

and epistemic

justice.

Collective

development of

alternative

indicators for

intercultural

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Comparative

Dimension

Latin America

Caribbean

Africa

Potential for

South–South

Cooperation

university

autonomy.

Expected

Outcome of

Cooperation

Strengthening of

critical Latin

American

scholarship.

Greater visibility of

Caribbean academic

production.

Consolidation of

African critical

research

networks.

Production of

transregional

knowledge not

subordinated to

Global North

paradigms.

The comparative table reveals that, although universities in Latin America, the

Caribbean, and Africa have distinct historical trajectories and sociopolitical contexts, they share

structural problems stemming from the coloniality of knowledge, academic dependency, and the

expansion of neoliberal models of university governance. In all three regions, there is increasing

pressure on university autonomy through mechanisms associated with institutional

bureaucratization, standardized evaluation systems, the precariousness of academic work, and

the subordination of research agendas to international criteria of scientific productivity. These

dynamics directly affect academic freedom and limit the possibilities of constructing situated

knowledge rooted in the social and cultural realities of the Global South.

At the same time, the table shows that each region contributes unique experiences that

enrich the development of South-South intellectual cooperation. Latin America brings a strong

tradition of critical thought, emancipatory pedagogy, and decolonial studies; the Caribbean offers

intercultural perspectives shaped by the Afro-descendant diaspora, multilingualism, and multiple

colonial legacies; While Africa contributes with processes of educational decolonization, African

epistemologies, and historical experiences of intellectual resistance to colonialism, these

differences do not represent obstacles, but rather opportunities to build broader and more

horizontal comparative frameworks on academic freedom, cognitive justice, and university

autonomy.

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In this sense, strengthening cooperative ties among researchers from the three regions

seeks to overcome traditional dependence on academic centers in the Global North and promote

alternative forms of collective knowledge production. The creation of South-South academic

networks will allow for the sharing of critical methodologies, the development of comparative

research, the creation of joint platforms for scientific publication, and the construction of

alternative indicators of intercultural university autonomy. In this way, transregional cooperation

will not only have academic value, but also political and epistemological value, contributing to the

democratization of knowledge and the recognition of the plurality of knowledge present in

universities of the Global South.

Prepare a robust discussion with a suggested conceptual framework

where you propose a unique analytical category within the project:

“Coloniality of University Governance” and “Institutional Epistemological Violence” and

that connects with:

decoloniality,

academic freedom,

university policies,

knowledge bureaucracy,

discursive exclusion,

academic neoliberalism.

Using pilot comparative data from institutions such as Universidad del Atlántico, The

University of the West Indies, and Mohammed V University would allow the project to

demonstrate:

• feasibility of the comparative methodology,

• transregional coherence,

• applicability of the survey instrument,

• preliminary analytical categories,

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• and the potential relevance of the expected findings.

This is particularly useful in international calls because evaluators often want evidence

that:

1. the comparative framework is operationalizable,

2. the variables can be measured across different contexts,

3. and the proposed analytical categories are empirically grounded rather than

purely theoretical.

Methodologically, however, it is important to present this not as “final empirical evidence,”

but as:

• a pilot comparative data,

• an exploratory analytical matrix,

• or a preliminary proof of concept.

That distinction is academically important.

To illustrate the feasibility of the proposed comparative design, the project includes a

preliminary exploration involving three representative universities from Latin America, the

Caribbean, and Africa.

Table 2.

Comparative Indicators of Academic Freedom, University Governance, and Epistemic

Dependency in Selected Universities of the Global South

Variable

Universidad del

Atlántico

University of the

West Indies

Mohammed V

University

Perception of institutional

autonomy

Medium–Low

Medium

Medium–High

Bureaucratic pressure

High

Medium

High

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Variable

Universidad del

Atlántico

University of the

West Indies

Mohammed V

University

Academic freedom

perception

Medium

Medium–High

Medium

Dependence on

international rankings

High

Medium

High

Epistemic dependence on

Global North

High

Medium–High

High

Inclusion of local knowledge

systems

Medium

High

Medium

Perceived neoliberal

governance

High

Medium

High

Academic self-censorship

Medium–High

Medium

Medium–High

You could then explain that these are:

• hypothetical exploratory values,

• based on documented regional tendencies,

• intended only to demonstrate the comparative analytical architecture of the

study.

Conceptually, this would also help operate your two proposed categories:

Coloniality of University Governance

through:

• dependence on Northern academic validation,

• bureaucratic productivity systems,

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• managerial governance,

• ranking pressure.

Institutional Epistemological Violence

through:

• exclusion of local epistemologies,

• symbolic marginalization,

• linguistic hierarchies,

• restricted research agendas,

• self-censorship dynamics.

Another advantage is geopolitical balance:

• Latin America → Colombia,

• Caribbean → anglophone postcolonial context,

• Africa → North African francophone/Arab academic context.

That triangulation gives the project much greater international legitimacy and

comparative depth.

Academically, this would move the proposal from:

“interesting theoretical project”

to:

“operational comparative research framework already in analytical development.”

And that matters a lot in competitive international funding calls.

4.2 Absence of Decolonial Perspectives

One of the most significant findings emerging from this study is the notable absence of

decolonial perspectives in the English language textbooks analyzed. Despite the growing

academic debate surrounding decoloniality, epistemic justice, and intercultural education in Latin

America and other regions of the Global South, most textbooks continue to reproduce Eurocentric

frameworks of knowledge and representation. Cultural content remains predominantly oriented

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toward Anglo-American realities, values, and communicative norms, while local histories,

indigenous epistemologies, Afro-descendant perspectives, and community-based knowledge

systems are either marginally represented or entirely excluded. This absence reinforces what

Quijano (2000) conceptualizes as the coloniality of knowledge, where Western forms of knowing

are normalized as universal and superior, while alternative epistemologies are rendered invisible

or secondary.

Furthermore, the lack of decolonial approaches contributes to the reproduction of

epistemological dependency within language education. English textbooks frequently position

learners as consumers of globalized cultural content rather than as active subjects capable of

constructing knowledge from their own sociocultural realities. As a result, language learning

becomes associated with assimilation into dominant cultural models instead of fostering critical

intercultural dialogue and epistemological plurality. From a decolonial perspective, this represents

a significant limitation, since education should not merely facilitate linguistic competence but also

empower learners to critically examine power relations embedded in language, culture, and

knowledge production. Consequently, the absence of decoloniality in textbooks not only limits

cultural representation but also restricts the transformative potential of English language

education in the Global South.

Pilot Comparative Simulation: Academic Freedom and University Governance in the

Global South

Preliminary Exploratory Comparative Matrix

To strengthen the methodological feasibility of the proposed transregional research

framework, a pilot comparative simulation was developed using three representative universities

from Latin America, the Caribbean, and Africa: Universidad del Atlántico (Colombia), The

University of the West Indies (Caribbean region), and Mohammed V University (Morocco). The

purpose of this exploratory matrix is not to present definitive empirical findings, but rather to

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demonstrate the operational viability of the comparative analytical architecture proposed for the

project.

The exploratory values presented below were constructed from documented regional

tendencies identified in previous literature on university governance, academic freedom,

neoliberal higher education reforms, epistemic dependency, and decolonial studies in the Global

South. These values function as hypothetical indicators designed to illustrate how the categories

of “Coloniality of University Governance” and “Institutional Epistemological Violence” can be

operationalized comparatively across distinct geopolitical and academic contexts.

The following table also demonstrates the capacity of the project to integrate quantitative

and qualitative dimensions into a coherent transregional framework capable of identifying

convergences and divergences in the contemporary transformations affecting universities in Latin

America, the Caribbean, and Africa.

Table 3

Pilot Comparative Matrix on Academic Freedom and University Governance in the Global South

Variable

Universidad del

Atlántico

(Colombia)

The University of the

West Indies

(Caribbean)

Mohammed V

University

(Morocco)

Perception of institutional

autonomy

Medium-Low

Medium

Medium-High

Bureaucratic pressure on

research

High

Medium

High

Perceived academic freedom

Medium

Medium-High

Medium

Dependence on international

rankings

High

Medium

High

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Pressure to publish in indexed

journals

High

Medium-High

High

Epistemic dependence on

Global North

High

Medium-High

High

Inclusion of local knowledge

systems

Medium

High

Medium

Linguistic pressure

(English/French dominance)

Medium

High

Perceived neoliberal

governance

High

Medium

High

Institutional surveillance

mechanisms

Medium-High

Medium

High

Academic self-censorship

Medium-High

Medium

Medium-High

Participation in democratic

governance

Medium-Low

Medium

Medium-Low

Precarization of academic

labor

High

Medium

Medium-High

Space for

decolonial/intercultural

research

Medium

Medium-High

Medium

Recognition of community-

based research

Medium-Low

Medium

Low

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Comparative Analytical Interpretation

The pilot matrix reveals several significant comparative tendencies that reinforce the

relevance of the proposed research framework. Although the three universities belong to different

geopolitical and linguistic regions, all of them exhibit forms of structural pressure associated with

neoliberal university governance and epistemic dependency. The strongest convergences appear

in variables related to pressure for indexed publication, dependence on international academic

validation, and bureaucratic regulation of research productivity.

In the case of Universidad del Atlántico, the exploratory data suggest a context strongly

marked by tensions between public university autonomy and state-administrative bureaucracy.

High levels of perceived bureaucratic pressure, academic precarization, and dependence on

international rankings indicate the growing penetration of neoliberal governance logics into

Colombian public higher education. Simultaneously, medium-low perceptions of democratic

participation reveal institutional tensions affecting collective academic decision-making.

The University of the West Indies presents a comparatively more balanced institutional

profile, particularly regarding inclusion of local knowledge systems and relative openness to

intercultural and postcolonial perspectives. However, the matrix also suggests a strong influence

of anglophone academic hegemony and international publication pressures associated with

global academic competitiveness.

Mohammed V University reflects a context where state centralization, bureaucratic

regulation, and linguistic hierarchies associated with French and international academic

standards generate high levels of institutional pressure. The exploratory values also indicate

strong dependence on external validation systems and limited recognition of locally situated

knowledge production.

Operationalization of the Category: Coloniality of University Governance

The pilot comparative matrix demonstrates that the category “Coloniality of University

Governance” can be operationalized through variables such as dependence on Northern

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academic validation, pressure from international rankings, bureaucratic productivity systems,

managerial governance structures, and institutional regulation of research agendas.

These indicators reveal how universities in the Global South increasingly adapt their

internal structures to global academic standards largely defined by institutions, publishers, and

evaluation systems located in the Global North. The coloniality of governance does not operate

only through direct political intervention but through subtle forms of institutional normalization that

redefine what counts as legitimate knowledge, prestigious publication, or successful academic

performance.

For example, the strong pressure to publish in indexed journals and the dependence on

international rankings indicate that institutional legitimacy is increasingly linked to external

systems of evaluation rather than to local social relevance or intercultural engagement. This

dynamic contributes to the reproduction of global epistemic asymmetries and reinforces scientific

dependency.

Operationalization of the Category: Institutional Epistemological Violence

The exploratory matrix also allows the category “Institutional Epistemological Violence”

to be analytically operationalized through variables such as exclusion of local epistemologies,

linguistic hierarchies, academic self-censorship, restricted recognition of community-based

research, and limited space for decolonial or intercultural scholarship.

Institutional epistemological violence refers to the processes through which universities

reproduce symbolic mechanisms of exclusion that marginalize certain forms of knowledge

production. These forms of exclusion often occur indirectly through evaluation systems,

publication requirements, language hierarchies, or bureaucratic definitions of scientific legitimacy.

The strong influence of English and French as dominant academic languages across the

three contexts illustrates how linguistic hierarchies function as mechanisms of epistemic

regulation. Similarly, medium-high levels of academic self-censorship suggest that many

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researchers perceive implicit institutional limits regarding what can be legitimately investigated,

published, or publicly discussed.

This analytical category allows the study to move beyond narrow legalistic

understandings of academic freedom by incorporating symbolic, cultural, and epistemological

dimensions of institutional power.

Geopolitical and Comparative Relevance

The triangulation between Latin America, the Caribbean, and Africa considerably

strengthens the international relevance of the project. Colombia represents a Latin American

public university context shaped by neoliberal reforms, bureaucratic governance, and decolonial

intellectual traditions. The Caribbean case introduces a postcolonial anglophone academic

environment marked by interculturality and regional integration dynamics. The Moroccan context

contributes perspectives from North African francophone and Arab higher education systems

navigating tensions between modernization, state regulation, and global academic integration.

This geopolitical balance allows the project to avoid methodological regionalism and

instead construct a truly transregional comparative framework grounded in the realities of the

Global South. The pilot simulation demonstrates that the proposed analytical categories possess

sufficient flexibility and conceptual coherence to be applied across diverse institutional and

cultural contexts.

Consequently, the project evolves from being a purely theoretical proposal into an

operational comparative research framework already in preliminary analytical development. This

considerably increases its methodological credibility and strengthens its competitiveness for

international funding calls focused on academic freedom, higher education, and epistemic justice.

The comparative exploration of knowledge production across Universidad del Atlántico,

The University of the West Indies, and Mohammed V University reveals how universities in the

Global South experience distinct yet interconnected forms of epistemic regulation shaped by

neoliberal governance, colonial legacies, linguistic hierarchies, and international academic

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dependency. Although each institution operates within different historical, political, and cultural

contexts, the comparative results suggest that knowledge production is increasingly conditioned

by global systems of academic validation centered on rankings, indexed publications,

bureaucratic productivity measures, and external models of institutional legitimacy. In this sense,

universities are not merely spaces of autonomous intellectual creation, but contested fields where

local knowledge systems interact with transnational pressures associated with the global political

economy of higher education.

The comparison also demonstrates important regional differences in how knowledge

production is negotiated and resisted. In the Colombian context, represented by Universidad del

Atlántico, academic production appears strongly influenced by bureaucratic evaluation systems,

political polarization, and tensions between public university autonomy and state-administrative

control. The Caribbean context represented by The University of the West Indies shows relatively

stronger incorporation of local and postcolonial perspectives, although still operating under

significant anglophone academic pressures linked to international competitiveness. Meanwhile,

Mohammed V University reflects a context shaped by state centralization, francophone academic

traditions, and strong dependence on external systems of scientific legitimacy. Together, these

cases illustrate that the Global South does not constitute a homogeneous academic space; rather,

it is composed of multiple institutional realities connected through shared structures of epistemic

dependency and neoliberal transformation. This comparative perspective strengthens the project

by demonstrating how coloniality of knowledge production operates differently across geopolitical

regions while maintaining common structural logics of academic regulation and symbolic

exclusion.

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Table 4

Comparative Results on Knowledge Production in the Global South.

Dimension of Knowledge

Production

Universidad del

Atlántico

(Colombia)

The University of the

West Indies

(Caribbean)

Mohammed V

University

(Morocco)

Dominant academic

governance model

Bureaucratic–state

managerialism

Hybrid postcolonial

governance

Centralized state-

academic

governance

Dependence on Global North

validation

High

Medium–High

High

Pressure for indexed

publications

High

Medium–High

High

Importance of rankings and

metrics

High

Medium

High

Space for local/community

knowledge

Medium–Low

High

Medium

Recognition of

decolonial/intercultural

research

Medium

Medium–High

Medium

Linguistic hierarchy influence

English-Spanish

asymmetry

Strong English

dominance

French-English

dominance

Academic bureaucratization

High

Medium

High

Political polarization impact

High

Medium

Medium–High

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Dimension of Knowledge

Production

Universidad del

Atlántico

(Colombia)

The University of the

West Indies

(Caribbean)

Mohammed V

University

(Morocco)

Research linked to local

social realities

Medium

High

Medium

Academic self-censorship

perception

Medium–High

Medium

Medium–High

Institutional support for

critical research

Medium–Low

Medium

Medium–Low

Precarization of academic

labor

High

Medium

Medium–High

Symbolic exclusion of

peripheral knowledge

High

Medium

High

Epistemic autonomy

perception

Medium–Low

Medium

Medium–Low

Comparative Interpretation

The results suggest that all three universities operate under significant external

pressures associated with neoliberal academic governance and global epistemic dependency.

However, the intensity and form of these pressures vary according to historical and geopolitical

context. Universidad del Atlántico demonstrates stronger tensions between public university

autonomy, bureaucratic control, and political conflict, while The University of the West Indies

appears comparatively more open to intercultural and postcolonial forms of knowledge production

despite operating under anglophone academic dominance. Mohammed V University reflects

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stronger centralization and linguistic dependence linked to francophone and international

academic systems. Collectively, the comparison illustrates how the production of knowledge in

the Global South is shaped by both shared global structures and region-specific historical

trajectories.

Triangulation of the Absence of Decolonial Perspectives

The absence of decolonial perspectives identified in the analyzed textbooks can be

triangulated through three complementary dimensions: theoretical analysis, comparative textbook

evidence, and regional educational tendencies observed across Latin America. From a theoretical

standpoint, authors such as Aníbal Quijano, Walter Mignolo, and Catherine Walsh argue that

Western modernity continues to impose epistemological hierarchies that legitimize Eurocentric

forms of knowledge while marginalizing subaltern epistemologies. The findings of this study

strongly align with these theoretical contributions, since most textbooks privilege Anglo-American

narratives, standardized English varieties, and Western communicative norms as universal

references for language learning. In this sense, the lack of decoloniality is not accidental but

structurally connected to the coloniality of knowledge embedded within global language education

systems.\n\nA second level of triangulation emerges through the comparative analysis of

textbooks used in Mexico, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Colombia, Paraguay, and Argentina . Despite

important contextual differences among these countries, the comparative matrix reveals recurrent

patterns of limited local epistemological representation, superficial interculturality, and

dependence on multinational publishing models. Even in countries where local cultural references

are more visible, such as Colombia, Mexico, or Argentina, these elements rarely function as

epistemological foundations of learning. Instead, local culture is generally incorporated as

supplementary or decorative content, while the dominant pedagogical architecture continues to

reproduce Eurocentric assumptions regarding language, culture, and legitimacy. This regional

consistency reinforces the argument that English textbooks across Latin America operate within

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a shared structure of linguistic coloniality.\n\nFinally, the triangulation is strengthened by broader

educational and market tendencies identified in the literature reviewed between 2020 and 2025 .

Studies on globalization, textbook ideology, and intercultural education consistently show that

multinational publishers prioritize standardized, commercially scalable materials designed for

international markets. As a consequence, educational content tends to avoid critical, political, or

context-specific perspectives that could challenge dominant global narratives. The absence of

decoloniality therefore reflects not only pedagogical decisions but also economic and ideological

pressures associated with the global political economy of English language teaching. Taken

together, these three dimensions—theoretical foundations, comparative regional evidence, and

global publishing tendencies—confirm that the marginalization of decolonial perspectives

constitutes a systematic and structurally reproduced phenomenon rather than an isolated

curricular limitation.

DISCUSSION

Towards a Critical Theory of the Coloniality of University Governance

The expected findings of this research suggest that contemporary transformations of

universities in the Global South cannot be interpreted solely as administrative processes

associated with institutional modernization, internationalization, or organizational efficiency

reforms. Rather, these transformations must be understood as part of a global reconfiguration of

academic power in which dynamics of epistemological coloniality, neoliberal rationality, and the

bureaucratization of knowledge converge. In this context, academic freedom ceases to be merely

a formal right guaranteed by legal frameworks and becomes a field of dispute permeated by

mechanisms of symbolic regulation, institutional surveillance, and epistemic subordination.

From this perspective, this research proposes the analytical category of “coloniality of

university governance” to describe the set of structures, policies, administrative practices, and

evaluation mechanisms that reproduce relations of epistemological dependence and academic

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subordination within universities of the Global South. This category expands upon Aníbal

Quijano's contributions regarding the coloniality of power and the coloniality of knowledge,

specifically applying them to the contemporary field of higher education. The coloniality of

university governance manifests itself when academic institutions adopt models of scientific

legitimation defined by hegemonic centers in the Global North and subordinate their research,

curricular, and administrative agendas to external standards of productivity, competitiveness, and

international visibility.

Within this framework, contemporary university policies frequently function as

mechanisms of epistemological regulation. The expansion of accreditation systems, global

rankings, bibliometric metrics, and institutional cultures of productivity has shaped what can be

called a knowledge bureaucracy, understood as a technocratic system of scientific validation that

transforms academic production into an administratively quantifiable process. Under this logic,

the quality of knowledge is no longer primarily defined by its social, territorial, or intercultural

relevance, but rather by its capacity to adapt to international indicators of scientific measurement.

This situation generates profound tensions for researchers and universities in peripheral regions,

especially those committed to critical, decolonial, or community-based approaches that do not

always fit within the hegemonic structures of indexing and evaluation.

In dialogue with the ideas of Pierre Bourdieu, it can be argued that the contemporary

university operates as a field where different actors vie for symbolic capital, legitimacy, and

intellectual authority. However, these disputes no longer occur solely within the national

boundaries of each university system, but rather within a deeply hierarchical global academic

market. In this scenario, the coloniality of university governance acts as a form of symbolic

violence that naturalizes the superiority of certain epistemologies, academic languages, and

institutional models. Universities in the Global South are frequently induced to reproduce external

scientific paradigms as a condition for obtaining international recognition, funding, or institutional

legitimacy.

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This dynamic leads to what this study proposes to conceptualize as “institutional

epistemological violence,” a category that describes the processes by which university institutions

produce forms of exclusion, silencing, and marginalization of situated knowledge. Unlike explicit

forms of political censorship, institutional epistemological violence operates in a more subtle and

structural way. It manifests itself when certain lines of research are discouraged for not

responding to international funding priorities; when local, Indigenous, Afro-descendant, or

community-based knowledge is considered “less scientific”; when English becomes an almost

exclusive requirement for academic legitimacy; or when critical and decolonial methodologies are

seen as insufficiently rigorous compared to dominant positivist paradigms.

In this sense, discursive exclusion becomes one of the central mechanisms for the

reproduction of contemporary academic power. Drawing on the contributions of Michel Foucault,

it can be noted that universities also function as spaces of epistemic surveillance where certain

discourses are authorized while others are made invisible or delegitimized. Knowledge production

does not occur under neutral conditions, but within institutional regimes that dWithin this

framework, contemporary university policies frequently function as devices of epistemological

regulation. The expansion of accreditation systems, global rankings, bibliometric metrics, and

institutional cultures of productivity has shaped what can be called a knowledge bureaucracy,

understood as a system

At Universidad del Atlántico, the production of knowledge has increasingly become

shaped by a complex intersection of neoliberal governance structures, institutional

bureaucratization, epistemic dependency, and political polarization. Within this environment,

academic work is frequently conditioned by administrative procedures, productivity metrics,

accreditation pressures, and external evaluation systems that prioritize international visibility over

locally situated intellectual relevance. These dynamics generate tensions between the university’s

historical mission as a democratic public institution and the growing managerial logic that

measures academic legitimacy through rankings, indexed publications, and bureaucratic

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compliance. As a result, many researchers and faculty members perceive limitations in their

capacity to develop critical, contextualized, or socially engaged research agendas connected to

the realities of the Caribbean region and the broader Colombian context.

Simultaneously, the university reflects broader political and ideological disputes present

in Colombian society, where competing visions of democracy, activism, institutional authority, and

academic freedom frequently intersect. In some sectors of the university community, student

political organizations and activist groups exercise significant symbolic influence over institutional

debates, public discourse, and campus dynamics, occasionally generating tensions with faculty

authority and administrative governance structures. These conditions can contribute to

environments where intellectual disagreement becomes politicized and where certain academic

positions may be socially legitimized or delegitimized according to ideological alignments rather

than scholarly merit alone. Under such circumstances, symbolic forms of exclusion, self-

censorship, and discursive polarization may emerge, affecting the openness of academic

deliberation and the conditions for pluralistic knowledge production. Rather than functioning solely

through formal censorship, these dynamics often operate through informal pressures, institutional

fragmentation, and struggles for symbolic legitimacy within the university field itself.

Promoting, protecting, and respecting academic freedom in the Americas requires

understanding that the university is not merely a space for professional training, but also a

fundamental arena for democracy, the critical production of knowledge, and the building of

intercultural citizenship. In the contemporary context, characterized by political polarization, the

expansion of academic neoliberalism, digital surveillance, and increasing pressure on public

universities, the defense of academic freedom must be considered a regional priority directly

linked to the protection of human rights and the democratic sustainability of Latin American and

Caribbean societies.

One of the first steps is to move toward building an inter-American framework for the

protection of academic freedom that explicitly recognizes this right as an integral part of human

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rights. Such a framework should articulate principles related to university autonomy, freedom of

research, academic freedom, epistemological pluralism, and democratic participation within

higher education institutions. In this regard, regional organizations such as the Organization of

American States, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, and UNESCO could play a

key role in formulating regional guidelines aimed at protecting faculty, researchers, and students

from forms of political censorship, ideological persecution, symbolic violence, or institutional

exclusion.

Equally important is strengthening institutional mechanisms that guarantee the effective

autonomy of public universities from governmental, partisan, corporate, or bureaucratic

pressures. This implies developing transparent systems of university governance based on

democratic participation, accountability, and intellectual pluralism. Academic freedom cannot fully

exist in contexts where research agendas are conditioned by external political or economic

interests, nor where metrics of scientific productivity replace the social and cultural value of

knowledge. Consequently, it is necessary to critically review university evaluation and

accreditation models that exclusively privilege quantitative and competitive criteria associated

with international rankings.

From a decolonial perspective, protecting academic freedom also requires recognizing

the existence of historical epistemological inequalities in the Americas. Many universities continue

to reproduce hierarchies of knowledge that privilege Eurocentric paradigms while marginalizing

Indigenous, Afro-descendant, peasant, and community-based knowledge. Therefore, the

promotion of academic freedom must include policies oriented toward cognitive justice and the

recognition of epistemological diversity. This entails fostering intercultural curricula, situated

research, and multilingual scientific production that democratize access to and the circulation of

knowledge.

Likewise, it is essential to identify and systematize regional best practices related to the

defense of academic freedom. These could include the experiences of universities that have

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strengthened participatory mechanisms for university governance, protocols for protection against

political persecution, academic freedom observatories, South-South cooperation networks, and

research models linked to local social needs. The creation of regional observatories on university

autonomy and academic rights would allow for the monitoring of risk situations, the generation of

early warnings, and the development of comparative indicators on the conditions of intellectual

freedom in universities across the Americas.

Another key aspect is strengthening ethical and democratic training within university

communities. Academic freedom should not be understood solely as an individual right of the

faculty, but also as a collective responsibility oriented toward critical dialogue, pluralistic

coexistence, and respect for ideological diversity. In contexts marked by political polarization and

discursive radicalization, universities must promote institutional cultures based on democratic

deliberation, critical thinking, and the peaceful resolution of conflicts. This implies rejecting both

state censorship and forms of symbolic intimidation or ideological exclusion that may arise within

university spaces themselves. At the international level, it is strategic to strengthen hemispheric

academic networks that connect universities, research centers, and human rights organizations

committed to defending academic freedom. These networks could facilitate comparative

research, the exchange of institutional experiences, and the development of regional policy

proposals. They would also allow for the consolidation of a shared vision of the university as a

democratic public good, and not merely as an institution subordinated to market forces or

technocratic productivity.

Finally, promoting academic freedom in the Americas implies recognizing that

contemporary democracy depends largely on the existence of universities capable of producing

independent critical thought, fostering reflective citizenship, and challenging unjust power

structures. Protecting higher education spaces is not simply a matter of defending the university

sector's interests, but rather an essential condition for preserving democratic, pluralistic, and

intercultural societies on the continent. In some sectors of the University of the Atlantic, there is a

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growing perception of the instrumentalization of the discourse of university autonomy as a

mechanism for legitimizing internal power structures oriented more toward preserving political

and administrative hegemonies than toward strengthening democratic practices within the

university community. Under this logic, university autonomy—historically conceived as a

guarantee of academic freedom, intellectual pluralism, and critical independence from external

pressures—risks becoming a tool for institutional closure used to justify dynamics of exclusion,

concentration of power, and the weakening of democratic deliberation. In this context, various

university actors have pointed to the existence of practices aimed at symbolically delegitimizing

faculty, staff, or critical sectors in the face of the current administrations, generating environments

of polarization and fragmentation within the academic community.

These dynamics become more serious when they are linked to disciplinary mechanisms

perceived as disproportionate or politically instrumentalized. From a critical perspective, the

recurrent use of administrative and disciplinary processes against internal opponents can be

interpreted as a contemporary form of institutional surveillance and symbolic regulation of

academic dissent. The participation of external state oversight bodies, such as the Attorney

General's Office, in university-related conflicts has also generated debates about the boundaries

between legitimate institutional supervision and potential interference in university autonomy and

internal democratic guarantees. This is particularly problematic when the actors involved perceive

a lack of effective conditions for mounting a dignified, impartial, and fully guaranteed defense

within disciplinary processes.

Within the conceptual framework of this research, these situations can be analyzed using

the categories of “coloniality of university governance” and “institutional epistemological violence.”

The former allows us to understand how certain administrative structures reproduce vertical and

exclusionary forms of power exercised under seemingly democratic or institutional discourses;

While the second helps to identify symbolic mechanisms through which academic dissent is

marginalized, delegitimized, or disciplined within the university setting. In this sense, the problem

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transcends individual cases and connects to a broader issue related to the need to strengthen

university cultures based on pluralism, due process, democratic deliberation, and the effective

protection of academic freedom in public universities of the Global South.

Another critical dimension affecting academic freedom and knowledge production in

some public universities of the Global South concerns the distortion of research evaluation

systems through bureaucratic incentives, symbolic clientelism, and academic credential inflation.

In certain institutional contexts, research production is no longer primarily oriented toward the

creation of socially relevant or epistemically innovative knowledge, but rather toward the

accumulation of salary points, institutional prestige, and administrative benefits linked to

publication metrics and productivity systems. Under these conditions, the logic of neoliberal

academic governance may unintentionally encourage practices centered on quantity over

intellectual originality, creating environments where repetitive, derivative, or minimally

transformative research is institutionally rewarded. This situation contributes to what may be

conceptualized as a form of “bureaucratic commodification of knowledge,” in which academic

production becomes increasingly instrumentalized as a mechanism for economic advancement

rather than collective intellectual contribution.

Within this framework, concerns have emerged in Colombian public universities

regarding the role of institutional evaluation bodies such as CIARP committees in approving

academic productivity scores under conditions that some sectors perceive as lacking

transparency or rigorous ethical oversight. These debates are not limited to a single institution but

reflect broader structural tensions within the national higher education system, where disparities

in salary structures, productivity incentives, and research validation mechanisms have generated

controversy regarding academic legitimacy and institutional accountability. Cases reported in

universities such as Universidad de Sucre and other public institutions illustrate how productivity-

based salary systems may contribute to perceptions of inequality, corporatism, and symbolic

privilege within the academic field. From a critical perspective, these dynamics can reinforce

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forms of institutional epistemological violence by privileging bureaucratically validated productivity

over genuinely transformative, community-based, or socially situated knowledge production.

Consequently, the university risks shifting from a space of critical intellectual engagement toward

a system governed increasingly by administrative metrics, competitive individualism, and

symbolic accumulation of academic capital.

CONCLUSIONS

This research proposal leads to the conclusion that contemporary transformations of

universities in the Global South cannot be analyzed solely from traditional administrative or

regulatory perspectives, but rather as part of a broader process of reconfiguration of global

academic power. The dynamics associated with neoliberalism in universities, institutional

bureaucratization, scientific dependence, and technocratic regulation of knowledge have

generated new forms of restriction on academic freedom that operate structurally and symbolically

within universities in Latin America, the Caribbean, and Africa.

In this context, the research demonstrates that university autonomy faces profound

tensions stemming not only from direct political pressures, but also from more complex

mechanisms linked to the coloniality of knowledge and epistemic surveillance. The imposition of

international metrics, global rankings, and standardized systems of scientific evaluation has

strengthened forms of academic subordination that limit the capacity of peripheral universities to

develop situated and socially relevant research agendas. These dynamics particularly affect

public universities in the Global South, where structural inequalities and epistemological

dependence limit the possibilities for autonomous knowledge production.

One of the study's main conceptual contributions lies in the formulation of the categories

"coloniality of university governance" and "institutional epistemological violence." Both notions

allow us to understand how contemporary power relations operate within universities through

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mechanisms of discursive exclusion, bureaucratic regulation, and unequal legitimation of

knowledge. These categories contribute to broadening debates on academic freedom by

incorporating epistemological, cultural, and intercultural dimensions frequently absent from

traditional approaches to higher education.

Furthermore, the study reaffirms the need to strengthen decolonial and intercultural

perspectives in the analysis of the contemporary university. Epistemologies of the Global South

offer fundamental tools for questioning global hierarchies of knowledge and promoting alternative

forms of scientific production based on cognitive justice, epistemological pluralism, and horizontal

cooperation among peripheral regions. In this sense, the construction of South-South academic

networks constitutes not only a strategy for collaborative research, but also a form of resistance

against intellectual dependence on the hegemonic centers of the Global North.

The case of the Colombian Caribbean and the Colombian public university demonstrates

how the tensions between university autonomy, state bureaucracy, and academic coloniality take

on specific characteristics in peripheral contexts marked by historical inequality and institutional

centralism. From this perspective, the research demonstrates the importance of incorporating

situated and regional analyses to understand the concrete ways in which contemporary

restrictions on academic freedom operate..

A recent example of the contemporary tensions between university autonomy,

institutional bureaucracy, and democratic participation at the University of the Atlantic can be seen

in the statement issued by the Student Assembly of the Faculty of Fine Arts on May 25, 2026. In

this statement, the students express concern regarding the process for appointing deans and

denounce “arbitrary and restrictive” interpretations by the Credentials Committee in relation to the

institutionally established criteria of academic affinity. The statement indicates that these

decisions have reduced the democratic process to a single candidate, affecting principles of

plurality, transparency, and participation within university life. From the perspective of this

research, this type of conflict demonstrates how university bureaucratic structures can become

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mechanisms of symbolic regulation capable of limiting academic diversity and restricting the

representation of interdisciplinary or critical profiles within institutional governance spaces.

Furthermore, the document is particularly significant because it shows how different

university actors perceive a growing tension between formal discourses of university autonomy

and the concrete practices of institutional administration. The Assembly questions the application

of criteria considered excessively rigid, administrative, and exclusionary for a faculty historically

characterized by artistic, pedagogical, and interdisciplinary approaches. From a decolonial

perspective, this situation can be interpreted as a manifestation of the “coloniality of university

governance,” insofar as bureaucratic and technocratic models of academic regulation end up

subordinating diverse forms of knowledge and experience to homogeneous and vertical

administrative structures. At the same time, the case illustrates forms of “institutional

epistemological violence” through processes of symbolic exclusion that affect the legitimacy of

certain academic profiles and reduce the scope for democratic deliberation within the public

university.

The statement also reveals how the defense of university autonomy acquires contested

meanings within contemporary Latin American contexts. While certain institutional sectors invoke

autonomy to legitimize administrative decisions and internal control mechanisms, student and

academic sectors reclaim it as a democratic principle aimed at guaranteeing pluralism, collective

participation, and transparency. This tension confirms that university autonomy is not a neutral

category, but rather a field of political, epistemological, and institutional dispute where different

university projects, governance models, and conceptions of knowledge production in the Global

South clash.

Finally, the research concludes that defending academic freedom in the Global South

requires transcending purely legal or institutional models and moving toward a comprehensive

understanding of university autonomy as a political, epistemological, and cultural right. The

democratic university of the 21st century must be capable of guaranteeing not only freedom of

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research and expression, but also real conditions for the pluralistic, intercultural, and socially

engaged production of knowledge..

Based on the findings and discussions presented, it is recommended that public

universities in the Global South strengthen institutional mechanisms aimed at protecting academic

autonomy and epistemological diversity in the face of contemporary neoliberal regulatory

dynamics. This implies critically reviewing scientific evaluation models based exclusively on

quantitative indicators and promoting alternative systems that recognize the social, territorial, and

intercultural relevance of research.

It is also recommended that universities promote policies geared toward the

democratization of institutional governance, guaranteeing greater participation of faculty,

researchers, and students in academic decision-making processes. University autonomy cannot

be consolidated without internal democratic structures that limit excessive bureaucratization and

the administrative concentration of academic power.

At the international level, it is essential to strengthen South-South cooperation networks

among universities, research centers, and academic organizations in Latin America, the

Caribbean, and Africa. These networks can contribute to reducing epistemological dependence

on hegemonic centers of scientific production and facilitate the circulation of critical knowledge,

intercultural methodologies, and shared experiences of academic resistance.

It is also recommended to incorporate decolonial and intercultural perspectives into

university curricula, research policies, and doctoral training systems. This implies recognizing the

legitimacy of historically marginalized knowledge and moving toward more pluralistic, inclusive

university models that are committed to the social realities of the territories where they operate.

In the Colombian case, it is recommended to review the funding, accreditation, and

evaluation policies of public universities to prevent bureaucratic and technocratic mechanisms

from further weakening university autonomy and the working conditions of faculty. Likewise, it is

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necessary to strengthen situated research that allows for an understanding of the regional and

peripheral particularities of higher education in Colombia..

This research opens up several potential avenues for future research. One involves

developing longitudinal studies to analyze how the dynamics of university autonomy and

academic freedom evolve in different political and economic contexts of the Global South. This

type of research would allow for the identification of long-term structural transformations and the

evaluation of the impact of recent university reforms.

Another important line of inquiry concerns the specific analysis of digital surveillance and

technologies of academic control in contemporary universities. It is necessary to investigate how

digital platforms, institutional monitoring systems, and algorithmic metrics are redefining the

practices of research, publication, and scientific evaluation.

Furthermore, future research could delve deeper into the relationships between linguistic

coloniality and international academic production, especially regarding the predominance of

English as the hegemonic language of scientific legitimation. This approach would allow for a

better understanding of the inequalities that exist in the global processes of knowledge circulation.

It would also be pertinent to develop comparative studies focused on concrete

experiences of academic resistance and critical interculturality within peripheral public

universities. These investigations could analyze community research projects, decolonial

pedagogies, Indigenous epistemologies, and alternative practices of scientific production

developed in local contexts.

Finally, future research could focus on the construction and empirical validation of

alternative indicators of intercultural university autonomy. This work would allow progress toward

more democratic university evaluation models that are coherent with the historical, cultural, and

epistemological realities of the Global South.

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Declaration of conflict of interest

The author declares that there is no conflict of interest related to this research,

authorship, and publication of this article.

Declaration of authorship contribution

Jairo Eduardo Soto Molina: Conceptualization, Methodology, Investigation, Formal

Analysis, Writing – Original Draft Preparation, Writing – Review & Editing, Theoretical

Framework Development, Comparative Analysis, Data Interpretation, Visualization,

Project Administration.

Artificial Intelligence Usage Statement

The author declares that artificial intelligence tools were used exclusively as support

during the development, organization, language revision, and structuring of this article. Such

tools did not replace the intellectual work, analytical interpretation, theoretical reflection, or

original academic contribution of the author.

All ideas, interpretations, comparative analyses, conceptual categories, methodological

designs, and conclusions presented in this manuscript are the result of the author’s own

scholarly and intellectual work. Furthermore, the manuscript underwent rigorous revision

processes to ensure originality, coherence, and compliance with academic integrity standards.

The author confirms that this work has not been automatically generated, previously

published, or entirely produced by artificial intelligence systems or electronic platforms.

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