Higher Education Commons^™

Afterword: Reimagining Higher Education Internationalization As A Practice Of Racial Justice, Louise Michelle Vital, Jing Yu, Benjamin Denga

Journal of Comparative & International Higher Education

This afterword reflects on the two-part special issue, “Examining Race, Racism, and Racialization in the Internationalization of Higher Education from Global Perspectives,” published in the Summer 2026 edition of the Journal of Comparative and International Higher Education. Bringing together twenty-nine contributions, the issue centers race as foundational to how higher education internationalization is imagined, organized, practiced, and contested across global contexts. The afterword synthesizes key insights across both volumes, showing how internationalization is shaped by colonial histories, geopolitical inequalities, market logics, legal regimes, linguistic hierarchies, and racialized structures of belonging. Contributors challenge celebratory and neutral accounts of global engagement …

Selected Others In A Non-Western Host: Racialized Governance Of Southeast Asian Students In Taiwan’S Technical And Vocational Higher Education Under The New Southbound Policy, Chia-Ming Hsueh

Journal of Comparative & International Higher Education

This article examines how Taiwan’s New Southbound Policy constructs and governs Southeast Asian students within higher education internationalization. Drawing on critical discourse and policy analysis of public policy documents, institutional materials, recruitment discourse, and related media sources from 2016 to 2024, the study argues that Southeast Asian students are positioned as “selected others”: welcomed as regional partners and future talent while also subject to differentiated forms of linguistic, administrative, and labor-oriented governance. Focusing particularly on Taiwan’s technical and vocational higher education sector, the analysis identifies three interrelated dynamics: selective inclusion by nationality and educational track, Mandarin as a technology of …

Advancing Equity Through Mentorship: Supporting Racialized Immigrant And International Students In Canadian Higher Education, Cecilia Bukutu Phd, Viola Manokore Dr, Michael Safo Ofori

Journal of Comparative & International Higher Education

Mentorship initiatives have increasingly supported racialized students in Canada, yet gaps remain in addressing their intersectional needs. This study examines the experiences of Black postsecondary immigrant, refugee, and international students in the Mentorship and Resilience Project (MRP), a racially concordant mentorship initiative. Using a convergent mixed-methods design, data were drawn from interviews, focus groups, and post-workshop surveys. Guided by Anti-Black Racism and Intersectionality frameworks, the study explores how institutional diversity discourses may operate as non-performative practices that obscure structural inequities. Findings show students faced intersecting challenges related to migration status, race, and gender, marked by tensions between invisibility and hypervisibility. …

‘Out Of Sight, Out Of Mind’: Refugee Students And Internationalization Practices In Canadian Higher Education Institutions, Zuhra Abawi, Nidhi Menon

Journal of Comparative & International Higher Education

As of 2024, over 123 million people have been forcibly displaced due to war, persecution, climate catastrophe, and geopolitical instability. Among them, young people constitute a significant portion, many of whom aspire to rebuild their lives through higher education. Canada, a top destination for refugee resettlement, remains deeply inequitable for refugee access to postsecondary education. Although lauded for its commitments to diversity and inclusion, Canadian settler-colonial hierarchies and racialized politics of belonging continue to shape which displaced bodies are seen as deserving of education, opportunity, and protection. These dynamics underscore how forced migration, race, and higher education intersect within the …

Lost In Translation: How Higher Education Studies Conflates Latinx And International Latin American Experiences Through Misplaced Racialization, Eduardo Santander

Journal of Comparative & International Higher Education

This autoethnographic study examines how higher education studies conflates international Latin American and domestic Latinx student experiences through what I term “misplaced racialization”, namely, the imposition of domestic racial categories onto international students that fundamentally misrecognizes their distinct positioning as temporary residents, adult-onset racialization subjects, and transnational knowledge holders. Colonial logics are not merely structural; they breathe through the field’s racial grammars. Drawing on Fricker’s (2007) hermeneutical injustice, I argue that higher education’s epistemological boundedness, its lack of native theory and reliance on borrowed American frameworks, does not merely contain colonial logics but is constituted by them, rendering those logics …

Seeing Through Indigenous Eyes: Language, Humility, And The Possibilities Of International Research, Janine E. Metallic

Journal of Comparative & International Higher Education

This essay critically examines the internationalization of higher education through Indigenous epistemologies, asking: What might international research look like if guided by Indigenous values such as language, humility, and relationality? Drawing on Indigenous research methodologies and autoethnographic reflection, the essay explores how global academic norms, rooted in colonial legacies, often marginalize Indigenous ways of knowing. Theoretical constructs from Wilson (2008), Kovach (2021), and Smith (2021) inform the analysis, emphasizing relational accountability and ethical engagement. The discussion highlights that Indigenous language situates knowledge in place, humility resists prestige-driven scholarship, and relationality redefines research as reciprocal and community-centered. These insights challenge dominant …

Centering Positionality In Pursuit Of Combating Anti-Blackness In Study Abroad Via Intentional Pedagogical Design, Reka C. Barton, Taylor Woodman

Journal of Comparative & International Higher Education

In an attempt to address historical legacies entrenched in global learning, this case study (Yin, 2009) disrupts the white-centered norm of study abroad through intentional design and diversity of student participation. This study explores the question, In what ways did these design elements interrogate and/or disrupt occurrences of anti-Blackness? To answer this question, our case study site utilizes a long-standing graduate student study abroad fieldwork program in Cuba that explicitly discusses elements of race, identity, and nationality, with an emphasis on the unique and complex histories of manifestations of race in Cuba and the United States. This project interrogated how …

Mashin’ Up Stratified Blackness: Unpacking The Communal Responsibility Of Black International/Immigrant Academics To Black American Academics, Candice Peters, Abigail Smith

Journal of Comparative & International Higher Education

Our duoethnographic inquiry, grounded in Intersectionality, addresses the following questions: How do intersectionality and internationalization complicate Black diasporic dynamics within the United States? What communal responsibilities do Black international/immigrant people hold toward Black American people within the U.S. academy? Through critical engagement with three previously published poems, we foreground the communal responsibility that arises at the hands of internationalization and unpack the intertwined realities of anti-Blackness, racialized hierarchies, and diasporic dynamics. Our findings unmask three themes: (1) evolving understandings of race across transnational contexts, (2) Black intraracial stratification, and (3) taking up responsibility. We conclude by urging a (re)commitment to …

The Myth Of Familiarity: Racialization & Intra-Faith Marginalization In Malaysian Islamic Higher Education, Rangga T. Nugraha

Journal of Comparative & International Higher Education

This article examines how intra-faith marginalization operates within South–South international student mobility, challenging the assumption that shared religion and linguistic proximity facilitate belonging. Drawing on an autoethnographic study of an Indonesian Muslim scholarship student in Malaysian Islamic higher education, the analysis introduces the myth of familiarity as a critical conceptual framing, describing how shared religious or cultural identity may produce more granular hierarchies of legitimacy, thereby contradicting the belief that similarity guarantees inclusion. Using neo-racism and symbolic violence, three narrative vignettes illustrate how hierarchies of piety, nationality, and class are enacted and normalized within a shared Islamic context. The findings …

Settler-Colonial Entanglements: Using Par/Des(I) To Understand Black And Racialized International Student Experiences In Canada, Abu Arif

Journal of Comparative & International Higher Education

This scholarly paper discusses the complex positioning of Black and Racialized international students (BRIS) in Canada, both as marginalized bodies and complicit in perpetuating settler colonialism. It delves into the paradoxical role these students play within the framework of Canadian higher education, which is deeply entwined with the country's colonial history and contemporary policy shifts aimed at managing the influx of international students. The Par/Des(i) decolonial research framework offers a pathway for understanding how BRIS are entangled within settler colonial structures, free from the limitations of the western gaze. The framework guides scholars toward recognizing hybridized ways of being and …

Critical Race Theory And Refugeecrit: A Reflective Account On Understanding The Structural Racism And Power Asymmetries Faced By Afghan Refugee Students In Universities In Delhi, Akanksha Dochania Dr

Journal of Comparative & International Higher Education

Using Critical Race Theory and RefugeeCrit, this study examines structural racism and power asymmetries facing Afghan refugee students in Delhi universities. Drawing on eighteen in-depth interviews, analysis reveals four interconnected themes: (1) invisibility/hypervisibility paradoxes—students are academically voiceless yet constantly surveilled; (2) epistemic inequality—their trauma is extracted while intellectual contributions are dismissed; (3) pedagogical microaggressions—deficit assumptions erode confidence; and (4) institutional gatekeeping—documentation barriers perpetuate marginalization. Findings show that access-oriented policies are insufficient, as neutral-sounding rules reinforce systemic hierarchies. Reflexive thematic analysis underscores researcher positionality in meaning-making. The study expands CRT and RefugeeCrit within the Indian context, urging faculty training, curricular inclusion …

Principles For An Antiracist And Decolonial Internationalization Based On "Pedagogy In Process: The Letters To Guinea-Bissau" By Paulo Freire, Bruno Pereira De Souza Andrade, Alexandre José Cadilhe

Journal of Comparative & International Higher Education

This paper critically reflects on possible paths toward an antiracist and decolonial internationalization of higher education, grounded in the ethical, political, and pedagogical principles of Paulo Freire’s Pedagogy in Process: The Letters to Guinea-Bissau. Theoretically and reflectively oriented, it combines an analytical reading of Freire’s work with a narrative synthesis of critical and decolonial studies on internationalization. The analysis is structured around three axes: (i) Decolonizing to internationalize; (ii) Internationalization as a practice of freedom; and (iii) Challenges and pathways for antiracist institutional practices. Given the commonly market-oriented character of internationalization, which perpetuates colonial legacies, Freire’s work provides a powerful …

Rules, Risk, And Racialization: Chinese International Students’ Experiences With Compliance And Care Through Non-Academic Misconduct Policies In U.S. Higher Education, Haishan Yang

Journal of Comparative & International Higher Education

This qualitative study examines how first-year Chinese international students (CIS) understand misconduct policies and procedures, and how those experiences relate to belonging. Drawing on interviews with 14 Chinese international undergraduates at a private research university, the study applies AsianCrit and IntlCrit to analyze how race, foreignness, and noncitizen status shape students’ encounters with institutional policy. Findings show students often learned misconduct policies through a hidden curriculum of compliance without clear institutional teaching. Participants described uncertainty and fear about the adjudication process and racialized experiences of hierarchy, otherness, and visa-related risk. Policies were accepted as necessary but rarely associated with trust …

Implementing Anti-Racism Pedagogies In Internationalized Higher Education: Instructor Perspectives From A Community College, Benjamin Denga, Wanda Chell, Caylee R. Kreller

Journal of Comparative & International Higher Education

This study examines how instructors in internationalized community college programs engage with a co‑developed Anti‑Racism Curriculum & Pedagogy Toolkit designed to support anti‑racist teaching in highly diverse learning environments. The internationalization of higher education often foregrounds mobility, intercultural competence, and institutional prestige while underexamining racialized power relations and obscuring the racialized hierarchies and colonial legacies that shape knowledge production, pedagogy, and the daily experiences of students and instructors. Drawing on a convergent mixed‑methods design, the study integrates survey data (n=42), interviews (n=15), and focus groups to assess the toolkit’s perceived relevance, pedagogical impact, and institutional conditions shaping its uptake. Findings …

Introduction To Special Issue 18(5), Louise Michelle Vital, Jing Yu, Benjamin Denga

Journal of Comparative & International Higher Education

This special issue centers race as an analytical lens in the internationalization of higher education from global perspectives. Contributors investigate how internationalization is structured through legal regimes, institutional practices, and epistemic norms that differentially position students and scholars across contexts. The articles are organized around five interconnected themes that collectively advance a critical, equity-oriented vision of internationalization: (1) Indigenous perspectives and decolonial knowledge systems, (2) legal status and institutional regulation, (3) differentiated identities and belonging in internationalization, (4) refugee student inclusion and invisibility, and (5) pedagogical and epistemic interventions.

Across diverse geographic and methodological approaches, the contributions from scholars, professors, …

Introduction To Jcihe 18(5) 2026 Issue Summer 2026 Special Issue Part 2 Special Issue 18(5) Introduction, Rosalind L. Raby

Journal of Comparative & International Higher Education

No abstract provided.

Pdf Full Issue, Rosalind L. Raby

Journal of Comparative & International Higher Education

No abstract provided.

Shared Equity Leadership In An Offshore Medical School: Distributing Responsibility For Equity, Vishal B. Surender, Sreekrishna Penna, Oluwabusola Osimosu

Journal of Comparative & International Higher Education

This essay applies the Shared Equity Leadership (SEL) framework to an offshore MD program at a private Caribbean medical school where students complete basic sciences on an island and clinical clerkships across multiple international sites. Using SEL scholarship and de-identified institutional data, we ask how equity work is currently distributed, where gaps emerge in assessment, remediation, and mobility for historically underrepresented students in medicine, and how responsibility for equity might be more deliberately shared. The Woven model of SEL provides a lens to map existing structures like curriculum committees, CQI dashboards, advising systems, and clinical site partnerships. We propose a …

Reimagining Global Dei Through Adaptive Leadership: A Framework For Advancing Racial Equity In International Higher Education Partnerships, Briana C. Edwards

Journal of Comparative & International Higher Education

Abstract

As internationalization in higher education expands through transnational research, global curricula, humanitarian training programs, and faculty mobility, discourses on diversity often remain Western-centered and detached from lived realities of structural inequity. This paper argues that adaptive leadership, grounded in mobilizing communities to confront systemic challenges in complex and uncertain environments, provides a useful pathway for rebuilding global DEI with racial equity at the center (Heifetz et al., 2009). Drawing from practice-based insight in global health, humanitarian workforce systems, HBCU models of global engagement, and higher education HR structures, the paper interrogates how colonial legacies, racial hierarchies, anti-DEI political climates, …

Knowledge Dilution And Tinted Pedagogical Dissemination: A Call For De-Colonizing Commercial Textbooks In Teacher Education For International Students, S. A. N. Zaidi, Cherian, F.V.

Journal of Comparative & International Higher Education

Abstract

This qualitative study examines how commercially produced textbooks mediate professor agency and shape the racialized and epistemic positioning of international students within a Canadian Teacher Education program. Situated within the internationalization of higher education, the study interrogates how textbook-driven curricular practices reproduce racial hierarchies, Eurocentric knowledge systems, and epistemic exclusion. The study responds to ongoing debates on race, racism, and racialization by examining how knowledge production and dissemination in classrooms may marginalize the lived experiences and intellectual contributions of international and racialized students. Data were collected through semi-structured interviews and document analysis in programs serving racialized and international students. …

Resistance, Rebuttal And Risk: Exploring Black International Students’ Perceptions Of Racial Justice Organizing In Western Canada., Prof-Collins Ifeonu

Journal of Comparative & International Higher Education

Based on 40 interviews, this study develops a three-fold typology that captures the heterogeneous nature of Black international students’ political engagement. Drawing on diasporic consciousness, I show how students negotiate their relationship to racial justice movements through race, ethnic identity, nationality, and temporary legal status. The findings underscore the need for a more nuanced understanding of Black students’ political subjectivities and brings attention to the incessant striving for personal belonging that these students undergo in their experiences of foreign study.

Contradiction And Critical Consciousness: Engaging Canadian University Students In Racial Dialogue On Anti-Chinese Racism, Dan Cui

Journal of Comparative & International Higher Education

This study examines how Canadian university students perceived and engaged with anti-Chinese racism during the COVID-19 pandemic. Drawing on grounded theory and interviews and written reflections from 28 undergraduates at a predominantly White university, the study analyzes students’ contradictory understandings of racism shaped by media, national narratives, and prior educational experiences. Informed by Bourdieu’s concept of habitus, it conceptualizes these tensions as a contradictory racialized habitus, in which awareness and denial, empathy and distancing, coexist. Three themes emerged: contradictory orientations toward anti-Chinese racism, the transnational influence of U.S. political discourse, and the limited transformative impact of a social justice course. …

Old Wine New Bottles: Racial Microaggressions Experiences Of Black African International Students In England, Solomon A. Zewolde

Journal of Comparative & International Higher Education

Despite increasing attention to inequality in higher education, the everyday experiences of Black students and how they navigate racialized environments remain underexplored. This study examined Black African international undergraduates’ experiences of racial microaggression and their coping strategies in the context of higher education in England. Drawing on Critical Race Theory, a qualitative approach was used to analyze the accounts of 16 undergraduates studying in 11 English universities.  Findings indicate that students experienced racialized challenges along two interrelated dimensions: identity-based marginalization (including assumptions of poor/inferior previous education in Africa and pathologizing discourse) and social exclusion (including devaluation of classroom contributions, invisibility, …

The Prevalence And Landscape Of Accent Reduction Programs At Us Institutions Of Higher Education, Sandra Greene, Katie Hopkins, Melissa Whatley, Christina W Yao

Journal of Comparative & International Higher Education

Many institutions offering accent reduction programs claim they help international staff and students modify their accent, thereby helping them be more successful within the context of higher education. Despite accent reduction programs being labeled as predatorial, deficit-laden, and pathologizing of accents, programs continue to proliferate on college campuses while perpetuating English language dominance, linguistic racism, and the hierarchization of Englishes. Yet, there is limited research on the scope of these programs within higher education. This descriptive study, informed by QuantCrit, adds to the existing literature by highlighting the landscape and characteristics of the approximately 9% of institutions of higher education …

Inter(Sectional)(National): Modeling Belonging And Campus Climate Among Asian International Students’ Identities, Yun-Han Weng, Ionell Jay Terogo, Laura S. Dahl

Journal of Comparative & International Higher Education

International students’ belonging in U.S. higher education is shaped by institutional climates that are both racialized and internationalized, yet few quantitative studies model these dimensions simultaneously. Using data from the Assessment of Collegiate Residential Environments and Outcomes, we examine how campus nationality and racial climates relate to Asian international students’ sense of belonging, and whether these relationships vary by intersecting identities. We examine how campus nationality and racial climates relate to Asian international students’ sense of belonging (n = 763). Measurement model comparisons empirically supported a two-factor solution separating nationality and racial climates once reverse-worded items were removed for improved …

“It’S Very Racialized And Very Politicized”: International Educators Recount The Campus And Local Climate For International Students, Amanda R. Corso, Gaurav Harshe, Chrystal George Mwangi, Christina W Yao

Journal of Comparative & International Higher Education

International educators have served as the primary support system for international students and are responsible for supporting international students through navigating racist encounters often without feeling adequately prepared (George Mwangi et al., 2025; Yao et al., 2019). With a diverse learning environment model as our framework, our study explored how international educators in the United States make sense of their racialized local and campus contexts, specifically in their work with international students. Using a three-dimensional approach to narrative inquiry, we interviewed 31 participants from New York, Massachusetts, California, and Michigan who worked in international student and scholar offices. Our findings …

Nice White Ladies: Exorcising The Ghost Of Lady Bountiful, Renee Lynch

Journal of Comparative & International Higher Education

This article explores how individuals with racial privilege can both acknowledge and start to move beyond the ways they are implicated in systemic injustices in internationalization through collaboration. The study examines how the author acted in complicity with colonial power in an international collaborative research project in English language education at a university in Tanzania. Critical ethnographic data was analyzed using positioning theory and applying the archetype of Lady Bountiful - a “nice white lady” who graciously participates in the civilizing work of colonization. This construct illuminates how the author perpetuated colonialism at the intersection of whiteness and femininity while …

Not Quite Foreign, Never Fully Belonging: Racialization Of Southbound Policy Students In Taiwan, Garima Jha

Journal of Comparative & International Higher Education

This paper critically examines how race and racialization shape the socio-cultural adjustment experiences of international students from New Southbound policy (NSP) countries in Taiwan. Drawing from a qualitative part conducted for my master’s thesis, which explored the coping strategies and adjustment processes of seven students from Southeast and South Asia through semi-structured interview, I reframe the data to center race as an analytical lens using the conceptual framework proposed by Glasgow (2009) which explains that racialization as the process through which social meanings are attached to perceived cultural or bodily differences, creating and maintaining hierarchies among groups. and Brondolo et …

Transnational Racialization: An Exploratory Case Study Of Asian International Students In U.S. Higher Education, Jia Zheng, Kristyn Lue

Journal of Comparative & International Higher Education

This exploratory case study examines the transnational racialization experiences of 14 ethnically diverse Asian International Students (AIS) studying abroad in the U.S. Using International Student Critical Race Theory to foreground the contexts of participants’ home countries, we ask: What are AIS’s experiences with transnational racialization? Findings suggest that AIS are socialized to the racial dynamics of the U.S. through: (1) the different contexts of their home countries, (2) their specific social positioning within these contexts, (3) the influence of Western narratives across the globe, and (4) their academic communities in the U.S. Our findings advance theoretical perspectives on racialization in …

Resurrecting Anti-Apartheid Solidarity: Scholasticide, Race, And The Politics Of Internationalization In Higher Education, Divinia Jithoo, Alia Gilbrecht

Journal of Comparative & International Higher Education

This paper interrogates how racialized internationalization and epistemic injustice shape global higher education through a comparative critical analysis of South African and Palestinian academic resistance. Drawing on decolonial theory (Du Plessis, 2021) and Fricker’s (2007) framework of epistemic injustice, we examine how scholasticide—the deliberate destruction of Palestinian educational institutions—reveals higher education as a targeted site of racialized domination rather than a neutral casualty of war. Our findings show that normalization, sustained through Global South partnerships with Israeli institutions, functions as a racialized mode of internationalization that obscures complicity in settler-colonial violence. These dynamics are reinforced by transnational anti-Palestinian racism, a …