Doug Stokes is the Director of the Strategy and Security Institute at the University of Exeter, a Fellow at the Legatum Institute and an Advisory Council member for the Free Speech Union. His writings on academic freedom and culture wars have appeared in The Daily Telegraph, The Times, The Critic, The Spectator and other international outlets. Follow him online @profdws or at www.dougstokes.net.

Introduction
1. Identity politics, decolonisation and social theory
2. Racism on campus
3. Moral panic and illiberalism in Universities
4. History reclaimed
5. Accounting for Wokery
Conclusion: the future of the West?

Following the killing of George Floyd in 2020, a moral panic gripped the US and UK. To atone for an alleged history of racism, statues were torn down and symbols of national identity attacked. Across Universities, fringe theories became the new orthodoxy with a cadre of activists, backed by university technocrats, adopting a binary worldview of moral certainty, sin, and deconstructive redemption through Western self-erasure.
This hard-hitting book surveys these developments for the first time. It unpacks and challenges the theories and arguments deployed by 'decolonisers' in a university system now characterised by garbled leadership and illiberal groupthink. The desire to question the West's sense of itself, deconstruct its narratives, and overthrow its institutional order is an impulse that, ironically, was underpinned by a more confident and assured Western hegemony that is now waning and under great strain. If its light continues to dim, who or what will carry the torch for human freedom and progress?