Decentring humanities education through intercultural studies: the decolonial gesture and epistemic authority

Polycrisis, including armed conflicts, resurgent ethno-nationalisms, and anti-immigrant sentiment, intensifies demands for frameworks that navigate cultural and epistemic divides. The humanities may be positioned/required to navigate these divides given their modes of meaning-making and critique. This article explores how Moroccan master’s programmes in Intercultural Studies might constitute a decolonial gesture to institutionalise a Southern-grounded humanities education. Drawing on in-depth interviews with core faculty across three programmes, the study traces three findings. First, professors articulate the purposes of these programmes from decolonial disruption to pragmatic framings, yet share a refusal to treat cultural difference as self-evident. Second, decentring involves holding knowledge systems in tension, since additive inclusion of local texts is insufficient without friction. Third, institutional constraints are productive conditions for negotiation, as professors use accommodation without losing critical orientation. The decentring value of humanities education in the Global South emerges as an ongoing negotiation of epistemic authority within asymmetrical structures.