This chapter critically examines Walter Mignolo’s influential framework of epistemic delinking from Western epistemologies. While Mignolo’s approach has inspired substantial decolonial scholarship in higher education, it is argued that his emphasis on breaking away from Western knowledge systems can inadvertently lend itself to ethno-essentialist and authoritarian co-option. The chapter discusses how epistemic decolonization’s narrow focus on dismantling Western knowledge hierarchies risks overlooking complex historical, material and political dimensions essential to anticolonial thought. By discussing examples of higher education from India, Russia, and elsewhere, the chapter warns against oversimplified rejections of liberal-Western knowledge and advocates for a more complex, politically grounded understanding of decoloniality that resists nationalist and exclusionary tendencies By highlighting these risks, this chapter highlights the importance of maintaining a nuanced, politically informed approach to decolonization in higher education that avoids essentialist assumptions and takes into consideration that potential pitfalls of some versions of decoloniality.