Elites, Faux-Populism, and the Politics of Internationalization in Early Twenty-First-Century US Higher Education

This piece explores the current social and political climate toward outsiders and its implications for different forms of internationalization with US higher education. Employing an international-comparative framework highlights that the United States resembles many peer Global North countries with respect to both the underlying logics on the part of stakeholders within higher education who wish to increase the number of international students and increasingly negative mainstream public opinion toward outsiders. I argue that this convergence is the inevitable outcome of a concerted effort to remove barriers toward the further consolidation of advantage by elites at the direct expense of non-elites. Moreover, seemingly Populist appeals aimed at marginalizing international students often directly benefit elites by deflecting attention away from their extreme resource hording and the mechanisms behind it.