Introduction

Developments in higher education governance have not emerged in a vacuum. Universities everywhere have evolved through struggles of power that are profoundly shaped by dynamics involving religion, race, gender, colonial and postcolonial, state political, ethnolinguistic, capitalist and other interests (Mudzielwana & Maphosa, 2013). Such struggles have manifested themselves through patriarchal, religious and homophobic symbolic violence (Brigley Thompson, 2020), and racialised, gendered and sexuality-based oppressions have been common (Mikato Fa’avae et al., 2022). These forces have historically contributed to patterns of deceit and misrepresentation and the reproduction of inequality and exclusion. They are addressed in the different chapters of this book.