Doing the World Justice? The Geopolitical Ambiguity of the Global University

• In Event: 33.079 - Roundtable Session 12
  In Roundtable Session: 33.079-10 - Differing Perspectives on Global Higher Education (1)

Abstract

Contrary to current theory, the ‘global’ university has not shed its historical ties to the nation-state. Interviews conducted at four elite universities in the U.S. and U.K. reveal that those who work on internationalization commonly rationalize it through a national imaginary, in which the university’s national obligations remain paramount, securing advantage over other nations is essential, and national cultural differences are deep and nearly insurmountable. This taken-for-granted collective ideology poses serious questions about the university as an agent of global justice, as its nationalistic allegiances are not so easily uprooted. Discussions of the new globalism in higher education remain overtly celebratory; yet there is a need to analyze its ulterior dimensions, in which passports remain significant arbiters of individual opportunity.

Author

• Jonathan Z Friedman, New York University