It's at least a case study in "choosing words that are not controversial" for things that one considers important.

Interesting that the response of the university is to continue the program, but euphemise its description and hide it from the public --- that speaks volumes.

@Ben not my department, and if by "the university" you mean the central administration, they had nothing to do with it, from what a gather, it was a purely bottom up initiative. I also think that its not a euphemism, but actually a better description of what is actually happening.

@Ben - Its a complex and tricky field, and one where words carry huge amounts of subtext. Choosing appropriate words isn't trivial, and isn't political correctness (if anyone thought that, too) - its an integral part of the personal and institutional learning, to comprehend the problem/s in the first place. A bit like a speeding course for drivers, or restorative justice, the first stage is simply understanding the problem for real. Then see if that helps people be motivated to improve or at least not worsen it, going forward.

"it's impossible to remove colonialism from the whole field, and perhaps arrogant to propose that we can" What do you mean by colonialism? I assume you don't mean one country taking over another and governing it.

To me this sounds like the university may have found an acceptable middle ground. A charitable view of DEI pushback is that it tempers the ambitions of more "radical" members of the initiative. When people start claiming the scientific method is a tool of white supremacy, it's probably for the best that things are toned down a little.

@darijgrinberg That sounds like a very strong claim given that the answer does not even state the field of the department in question. Are you claiming that colonialism has never had an impact on any field of study or do you have more information on the specific situation?

@JSLavertu: I have assumed that the OP is about STEM, even though it has been left unsaid. I do not want to claim too much about the humanities as there is a rather wide variety. In STEM, I stand to the claim that "colonialism" (even in the widest senses) is not embedded in the current curriculum to any extent that would warrant urgent removal (or "decolonization"). The fact that the history of Western science is better known than many parallel developments is well-understood, and has been so for decades, but unfortunately there is no way to unburn the manuscripts ...

... that Diego de Landa has burned, nor to recover the lost books of the library of Baghdad. Trying to fill the gaps with "oral history" and activist speculation is no better than seeking cosmological constants in the dimensions of the Great Pyramid. As to the content of Western science, thousands of researchers from all over the globe easily joining its tradition (well, no less easily than us Westerners do so) are reason enough for me to believe its objectivity.

@darijgrinberg When people talk of colonialism in education, they're referring to systems of discrimination that favor people of a majority ethnic group (typically of white European ancestry) over others from other backgrounds. In the US and Canada, that discussion includes both people of American descent before European colonialization, as well as groups brought to the Americas for labor from colonial holdings whether as slaves or low-wage workers

Can also apply to the history of colonialism that affects how people are treated within European countries with a history of colonizing the rest of the world and exploiting labor and resources in those colonies, and continuing to treat minority groups as part of those exploitable "others"

@Bryan Krause I think your definition of colonialism is exactly what most people would mean by racism. Do you agree?

@BryanKrause: Very little of this is relevant to STEM curricula. (I can think of some relevance in medicine, but it is probably better put into a different frame.)

@darijgrinberg I think that attitude is a key aspect of initiatives like the one Ian describes. People like to say "this doesn't apply to me/us" and yet...disparities suggest otherwise

@toby544 There's certainly a lot of overlap, but they aren't synonyms.

@BryanKrause: Disparities start long before undergraduate admissions and are multifactorial. Why should curricula be the right lever to pull? (And it's absolutely weird to speak of colonialism when you are talking about things happening contemporarily.)