Globalization, Political Realism, and the Agent-Exclusion Problem

Globalisation, Societies and Education, 2005

International Studies Perspectives, 2003

This article investigates the prospects for interdisciplinary global studies in the changing context of university education. Its central question is: as power and structure in the university become more and more integrated with the transformations of globalization, how can global studies become an authorized site of research and teaching while resisting the rules and micro-powers in the university that constitute it as such an authorized site which is increasingly determined by neoliberal globalization?

2014

Youth and Globalization, 2019

Amid growing debates about globalization of higher education (HE), an analysis of the onto-epistemic grammar underlying the articulation of this global phenomenon remains absent. This essay posits that our understanding of the nature of globalization of HE cannot be separated from questions of a) emotions, b) temporality, and c) ontology. Drawing on the extant literature on globalization of HE to date and personal experiences, it demonstrates the efficacy of these above three concepts, and argues that our understanding of globalization of HE insidiously perpetuates a geopolitics of being, and constrains us from knowing/embodying inter-being. It suggests pursuing inter-being as alternatives to fixed notions of human progress and coloniality of knowledge embedded in the prevailing onto-epistemic grammar. By refusing to tame uncertainty or provide 'probable outcomes', this essay intends to provoke and imagine alternative ways of knowing/being.

Comparative Education, 2014

The Promise of Higher Education

When the IAU was founded on 9 December 1950, I had just been conceived. We “met” each other only in the 1990s, but I think it is fair to say that the IAU’s seventy years are, in a sense, also my almost seventy years. We both share one aspect of this historical period: the IAU at the macro-level and I at the micro-level. There is no doubt that we are of the same generation.

The paper looks at claims that the U.S. is entering a period of isolationism as well as the importance of diversity and tolerance in education. It then discusses the longer term responses of institutions of higher education to changes in the ecosystem of globalization. it concludes with some short-term issues that might be addressed by scholars and reserachers working in the field.

Qeios, 2023

Global education for a dynamic of transculturality can be a way of tuning a whole logic that wants to be different under the same tone. And, the more diverse this dynamic is, the further away we are from multiculturalism and closer to interculturality. In a clear departure from what globalization intended: Cosmopolitanism. But if it is true that the world became unified, through the expansion of capitalism, it also diversified, through different resistances and adaptations (Sahlins, 1993, p. ix). As a result of the fact that global integration and local differentiation would to some extent been concomitant. Differentiation would develop in response to world integration. This is the context in which it seems to me that what we can call "intercultural globalization" should be situated. Cosmopolitan globalization, founded on information technologies and the economy, cannot be thwarted by lonely and powerless individuals, nor by nation-states in crisis. It could be, however, due to intercultural globalization, which brings together people from broad geocultural areas, promotes and respects differences, dignifying, at the same time, languages national. It is about the globalization of what is diverse, what is different, what is other. Contradicting the colonial dynamics, in which the colonizer looked at "the other", the colonized, as if he were a mirror of himself. Contrary to this one-sided look, it will be the acceptance of the 'other' that will determine the beginning of an ethical dimension (Eco, 1997). It is in this way that we have to take into account the concepts of decoloniality and postcoloniality , before we get to globalization itself. Decoloniality refers to a set of critical perspectives that seek to challenge and dismantle colonial power structures and the forms of knowledge that sustain them. This approach questions the idea that colonization was an event of the past and argues that its logics and practices continue to shape and perpetuate oppression and inequality in the contemporary world. Decoloniality seeks to decolonize thought, institutions and social practices. promoting a perspective that values knowledge, cultures and ways of life marginalized or subordinated by colonial systems. and it is It is in this context that the name of Aníbal Quijano (1930-2018) appears, who was a Peruvian sociologist and theorist known for his contribution to the understanding of colonialism and racism in Latin America. He coined the concept of " power i coloniality " to describe how colonial power relations continued to operate even after the political independence of colonized countries. Together, decoloniality and the work of Aníbal Quijano seek to challenge colonial power structures, dismantle the coloniality of power, and promote an alternative and egalitarian vision of the world. These perspectives have been influential in areas such as cultural studies, postcolonial studies , critical theory, and social movements striving for social justice, inclusion, and empowerment of marginalized communities. The critique of the field of post-colonial studies by Latin American decolonialism stems from two epistemological sources, insofar as its genealogy is located in French post-structuralism, and not in the dense history of decolonial planetary thought (Mignolo, 2017). Indeed, it is easier for European intellectuals to accept postcolonial thinking than decolonial thinking , as it is closer to them. Moreover, in the scientific production of the Global North, Latin America and the Caribbean are absent or occupy a marginal place in debates and central texts. Although postcoloniality differs from what has traditionally been done in the field, with a critique of the paradigm of rationality and European modernity (Ganter & Ortiz, 2019).

This chapter presents a picture of the implications of neoliberal re-structuring, framed as 'academic capitalism', to the erosion of the public role of the university and to understandings and practices of higher education. Drawing from experiences in Canada and Ireland, we offer insights from an international collaborative project on ethics and internationalisation in higher education, invoking its underlying principles of intelligibility, dissent and solidarity. Reflecting upon aspects of education and resistance, and emphasizing the dilemmas of power and complicity, we examine different possibilities for hopeful and ethical academic praxis in times of austerity and glocal crises.

2022

In this essay, we take up the call of this review symposium to explore how the emergence of (new) nationalisms affects the university's status as a "global institution." We challenge the binary view that there is an inherent tension between the "national(ist)" and the "global" role of the university, whereby either its global character is reducing its national distinctiveness, or its nationalist appeal is challenging its global tendencies. This binary positioning, we argue, obscures the compound and context-specific understandings of both (new) nationalism and higher education. To make our case, we draw on our current comparative study on the impact of neonationalism on European higher education. We start with a discussion of neonationalism and how our conceptualization informs the debate on the "national" and "global" interaction. We then provide a snapshot of some of our empirical findings on the impact of neonationalism on higher education policy in Denmark and the United Kingdom to shed light on the complex ways they interact. Through this reflection, we hope to advance discussion on how to research the (re)nationalization of higher education in the context of an increasingly globalized system.

In the current context of a global imperative (Pashby, 2008), the university’s role as a critic and as the conscience of society is both heightened and attacked. Universities are increasingly responding to calls to internationalize through bringing in international students, sending students abroad, building international research partnerships, and internationalizing course curricula. This paper presents an overview of an inter-disciplinary, international mixed-methods research project funded through the Academy of Finland and involving over 20 university sites in 10 countries . The project examines how internationalization processes in higher education construct ideas of epistemic difference, transnational literacy, and global citizenship. At the SRHE conference in December 2013, we present the collectively developed analytic framework, key aspects of the methodology, and some preliminary findings. In particular, we demonstrate how early findings confirm the dominance of neoliberal views of internationalism and also include important examples of social responsibility in certain policies. We raise some questions around the implications of these findings for recognizing an ethical imperative in the current race to internationalize in higher education institutions.

The geopolitics of international higher education prior and during Covid-19: a decolonial feminist analysis, 2022

Thinking with four non-EU academic migrants from the global South, and their experiences of working/studying or starting to work/study during the Covid-19 pandemic, we are unravelling the current geopolitics of the internationalised higher education in the global North. Our central argument is that Covid-19 has not simply affected the national and global politics of migration, including international academic migration, but it has also worked as a magnifying glass of the historically established inequalities sustained and perpetuated by physical, biomedical and epistemic borders. Most importantly, we are not following the rather obvious theoretical route of biopolitics while analysing the internationalisation of higher education in relation to the Covid-19 health crisis and migration politics. Instead, we are looking at this geo-biopolitical and epistemic assemblage through a decolonial lens. In doing so, we want to contribute with our and our interviewees' reflections to the ongoing discussion on what currently counts as 'internationalisation' in higher education, pointing out the colonial and neoliberal foundations of it, and the possibilities of aligning it with the efforts of decolonising the university.

Review of International Studies, 2008