Editorial

November 2020

Detoxing internationalisation from Trumpist malady

Damtew Teferra is Professor of Higher Education at the University of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa and Founding Director of the International Network for Higher Education in Africa. He is Founding Editor-in-Chief of the International Journal of African Higher Education. Teferra steers the Higher Education Cluster of the Africa Union’s Continental Education Strategy for Africa (CESA). He may be reached at teferra@ukzn.ac.za and teferra@bc.edu. 

In 2017 the United States president, Donald Trump, declared: “There is no global flag, no global currency, no global citizenship.” Earlier, in 2016, the former United Kingdom prime minister, Theresa May, exclaimed: “If you believe you are a citizen of the world, you are a citizen of nowhere.” These open and hostile statements have had a chilling effect on the essence, spirit and praxis of higher education internationalisation as manifested in its multiple forms. Read more