The Ethics of Internationalisation : Strangers in the House of Reason

The internationalisation of higher education gives rise to the curious entity of the global university. Promoted as the harbinger of cultural diversity, knowledge partnerships, educational exchanges, economic opportunity and ethical coexistence, it is hindered by both its quintessentially national origins, in which it remains embedded, and its national orientation to which it is wedded. Like any organisation within an institutional environment undergoing change, the global university is riddled with numerous contradictions and The Ethics of Internationalisation is a critique of the ethical elements that traverse national universities that wish to play on the international stage of higher education.

The post-1990s commercial turn in the internationalisation of higher education has given rise to the global research university (GRU). Promoting educational exchanges and research partnerships as the engine of the knowledge economy, GRUs that play in a deterritorialised academic super league are hindered by their national origins, in which they remain ethically embedded, and their national orientation to which they are politically wedded. Like any organisation within an institutional environment undergoing change, GRUs that internationalise without also denationalising their organisational culture are saddled with contradictions. The Ethics of Internationalisation offers a critique of three of them: the ethical dilemmas of trans-national scholars, who face estrangement when their difference encounters the ethno-national prejudice of local faculty; the politics of the idea of the university, which under the logic of new public management valorises commercially viable, quantitative research and side-lines critically focused, qualitative studies; and given the event of the Anthropocene, the imperative to reclaim internationalisation from its commercial hijackers in favour of an ethical iteration, which takes up the challenge of thinking the idea of the university vis-à-vis the existential condition of the potential extinction of homo sapiens together with other forms of life on earth.