Internationalization as a Moral Project

Abstract

This article discusses the perspectives of teaching faculty on the growing number of international students in their undergraduate classrooms. Our analysis takes note of expressions of emotion in faculty accounts and uses these to draw attention to the careful deliberations by which faculty reconcile personal commitments with the changing conditions of their work. We highlight moral and epistemological tensions in the project of internationalizing higher education. While these tensions have been considered for some time in critical comparative education circles, they are rarely acknowledged at the level of the mundane, daily practices of teaching. Our findings lead us to propose an alternative figuring of internationalization as a moral project. We believe that shifting the discussion toward moral tensions embedded in the lived reality of the contemporary university provides a rich ground for resolving any number of vexing dilemmas and, perhaps, to realizing the promise of internationalization.