Enough With the Globalization Hype

By Rajan Menon. I've had it with globalization. In my line of work, academe, it's virtually impossible these days to avoid hearing senior university officials begin a speech (especially at commencement or at a conclave of would-be financial benefactors) with the solemn observation that "we live in a globalized world," that states and borders are of diminishing significance, that higher education must be loaded with "global content" (a vacuous, unlovely, though ubiquitous, term), and that students must be taught to become "global citizens."
There isn't a single college president, provost, or dean who fails to peddle this line, which, by virtue of its ubiquity, has become a cliché. I think that there's a secret mountain somewhere whose summit these folks scale every so often to receive, from a robed sage with a long white beard, a tablet inscribed with the watchword du jour -- and these days it's "globalization." More...