Raised in a Colonial Death Cult: 600 Years of KU Leuven and still…
EUROPE, 30 Jun 2025
Koenraad Priels – TRANSCEND Media Service
KU Leuven, Belgium
Introduction: A Birthday Worth Questioning
As KU Leuven celebrates its 600th anniversary, the university’s official narrative will no doubt highlight centuries of “excellence,” “progress,” and “service to society.” But beneath the banners and festivities, a more uncomfortable truth lingers: for much of its history, KU Leuven has functioned as an indoctrinatory pillar of colonial, extractive, and ecologically destructive power. Today, as the world faces a polycrisis of social and ecological collapse, it is time to ask: what has really been cultivated here for six centuries?
- Colonial Roots, Colonial Fruits
Founded in 1425, KU Leuven grew up alongside the rise of European colonialism. Its theologians, scientists, and economists helped justify and administer the extraction of wealth, land, and lives from the Global South. The university’s archives are rich with evidence of complicity: from missionary training to the development of “scientific” racism, from legal doctrines that legitimized dispossession to economic models that normalized exploitation.
Colonialism was not a footnote in KU Leuven’s history—it was the curriculum.
- The Death Cult of Growth
Fast forward to the present, and the university’s core dogmas remain largely unchanged. As documented in my PhD-application and complaint with the Flemish Institute for Human Rights and the Magna Charta Observatory, KU Leuven and its peers continue to monopolize economic discourse around the “growth imperative.” Alternative models—such as degrowth, doughnut economics, and rent-free finance—are systematically excluded from curricula, research funding, and policy advice.
This is not mere academic inertia. It is the perpetuation of a death cult: a system that demands endless economic expansion, at the cost of planetary boundaries and human rights. Indoctrination, gatekeeping, and greenwashing have replaced genuine pluralism and critical thought.
- Systemic Exclusion and Academic Complicity
The university’s exclusion of system-critical, internationally recognized scholarship is not accidental. As my own experience demonstrates, researchers who challenge the status quo—especially those working on the intersection of finance, ecology, and justice—are denied funding, mentorship, and professional advancement. This is institutional discrimination, plain and simple.
KU Leuven’s refusal to support research on the structural violence of the global financial system is not just an academic failure; it is a violation of its public mandate and a betrayal of society’s urgent needs.
- The Legacy of Harm—and the Possibility of Renewal
Six centuries of “excellence” have left a legacy of harm: ecological devastation, social inequality, and the reproduction of colonial hierarchies. Yet the university also holds the seeds of its own renewal. The recognition of system-critical research by bodies such as the United Nations, the adoption of laws like the Belgian Ecocide Act, and the growing student demand for decolonial, socially just education all point to a different future.
But renewal requires honesty. It requires KU Leuven to confront its past and present as a “colonial death cult”—and to choose, finally, to become an institution of life, justice, and planetary stewardship.
Conclusion: Six Hundred Years Is Enough
As KU Leuven blows out the candles on its 600th birthday cake, let us not celebrate uncritically. Let us remember the millions whose lives and lands were sacrificed on the altar of “progress.” Let us demand that the next century be different: that the university serve not the cult of endless growth, but the cause of decolonization, planetary justice, and socio-ecological intelligence.
After six centuries, it’s time for KU Leuven to grow up—and to grow beyond its colonial roots.
_____________________________________________
Koenraad Priels is an independent researcher, transformative criminologist, and founder of Free-B. He has published six peer-reviewed articles, authored a UN report, and initiated the first legal case against the global interest banking system for ecocide in Belgium. He is currently applying for an interdisciplinary PhD at KULeuven, focusing on the systemic links between financial architecture and crime, violence, ecocide and genocide.
Tags: Belgium, Colonialism, Education, Europe, History, Tradition
This article originally appeared on Transcend Media Service (TMS) on 30 Jun 2025.
Anticopyright: Editorials and articles originated on TMS may be freely reprinted, disseminated, translated and used as background material, provided an acknowledgement and link to the source, TMS: Raised in a Colonial Death Cult: 600 Years of KU Leuven and still…, is included. Thank you.
If you enjoyed this article, please donate to TMS to join the growing list of TMS Supporters.
This work is licensed under a CC BY-NC 4.0 License.
Join the discussion!
We welcome debate and dissent, but personal — ad hominem — attacks (on authors, other users or any individual), abuse and defamatory language will not be tolerated. Nor will we tolerate attempts to deliberately disrupt discussions. We aim to maintain an inviting space to focus on intelligent interactions and debates.