Based on extensive fieldwork in Venezuela, The Alternative University outlines the origins and day-to-day functioning of the colossal effort of late President Hugo Chávez’s government to create a university that challenged national and global higher education norms. The session will commence with reading from the book and outlining some of its main themes. It will then open a dialogue will participants about some of the lessons that the book carries and challenges that the Venezuelan experiment poses to the possibility of revolutionary change in higher education.