Drawing on critical feminist perspectives on research ethics and on the meaning and significance of decoloning, I take research on Iraq as a framework to raise essential questions about politics and geopolitics of knowledge production and on what constitutes the global academy today. I shed light on structural, infrastructural, and political dimensions that led to Iraq being researched and theorized outside of its borders and highlights the systemic inequalities existing between scholars based in the US and scholars based in Iraq. I question the production of knowledge and the development of research agendas stemming from institutions based in and tied to an imperial powers that have destroyed the very possibility of the existence of a robust academic life in Iraq. I also propose an alternative research imaginaries that politicize research ethics by putting justice and equality over an obsession for research.