Universities have changed drastically over the past few decades. To understand and articulate what has happened, I make a stab at answering, however sketchily, the following questions: What forces have shaped universities over recent decades? What as been the impact of social movements such as socialism, feminism, africanism on the process of the production of knowledge? Why has it been deemed necessary, not only to demand inclusion of the excluded in the domain of higher knowledge, but to challenge the existing canon and to struggle for radically new approaches to curricula? What has been achieved by history from below, gender studies, african studies, postcolonial studies? What has happened to all the passionate debates between contending paradigms? Are market forces marginalising all else? Is it desirable and/or possible to resist? How is the project of academic transformation in South Africa unfolding within this global field of forces?