Race, Language, Culture, and Disability in Inclusive Higher Education

This chapter examines inclusive higher education as a dynamic intersection of democracy, equity, and social justice. It analyzes how global frameworks such as the Sustainable Development Goal 4 and national policies including India's Rights of Persons with Disabilities Act (2016) and National Education Policy (2020) translate into practice, revealing persistent structural exclusions. Using an integrated theoretical lens combining intersectionality, Critical Disability Studies, epistemic justice, and Culturally Sustaining Pedagogy, the chapter explores how caste, language, and disability interact to reproduce inequity. Comparative insights from India, Brazil, South Africa, and New Zealand illustrate how accreditation, pedagogy, and policy both perpetuate and resist exclusion. Through selected institutional cases, the chapter proposes a justice-oriented framework aligning Universal Design for Learning with cultural, linguistic, and disability justice to reimagine universities as democratic and inclusive spaces of knowledge creation.