ABSTRACT

The term global has become increasingly salient because university stakeholders find themselves in a new, and increasingly treacherous, global economy in which their institutional interests and the personal and career interests of their graduates are linked ever more explicitly to global financial capital and to multinational corporations. Richard Handler considers not development per se, but the teaching of development and global studies in American universities. He argues that universities focus very little on the real crises causing underdevelopment and conflict. More often, they present lots of vague platitudes about leadership and internationalism. Students create great vitae showing leadership capacity but learn little about actual foreign cultures, actual foreign problems or about what rich nations do, intentionally or not, that perpetuate these problems. The students show up in government or Non-Governmental Organization (NGOs) with inadequate understanding of what is really wrong, and therefore, with new ideas of how problems could actually be solved.