We function in an increasingly politicized environment, hostile to Socratic discourse and the pedagogies of education abroad. The classroom has become a battleground in which ideologies of right and left collide, making debate and dissent problematic. These pressures have distorted the ways in which we talk about our endeavors. We believe that international education is a social good with benefits that transcend individual interest and those of any single country. Yet, if we scratch beneath the surface of the rhetoric of education abroad, we unearth ideas that, inadvertently and unconsciously, mimic neo-conservative elitism and ultra-nationalism. The intent of this essay is to deconstruct those notions and to suggest that an urgent imperative is to revise our agenda, to use language that better reflects the principles that have motivated us to commit to education abroad. The issues analyzed here suggest that, in short, we do not believe what we say, nor do we say what we believe.

Dominant national myths create versions of reality that we need to deconstruct if we are to take students beyond stereotype. Using the USA as an example, histories that do not align with critical national narratives become silenced or muted. Preoccupation with Black and White dichotomies is just such a narrative that has hidden the significance of class; the idea of the USA as a haven for the stranger similarly blurs a long history of anti-Semitism. The essay demonstrates that collective identities are constructs not objective realities. They devolve from myths, acts of imagination, seductive narratives. A transition from myth to history, from archetypal dream to reality, reveals complexities that subvert simplistic stereotypes. Conventional assumptions about ethnicity and race need to be subject to deconstruction; if exported abroad they are likely to bring confusion rather than clarity. In these circumstances, destabilizing student perceptions is an intellectual imperative.

Cosmopolitanism is an ambiguous and inherently paradoxical notion. Because of the complexities it raises, it generates analyses and discourses that challenge simplistic assumptions embedded in theory and practice of education abroad. Global citizenship, comprehensive internationalization, cultural relativity, immersion, cross-cultural learning, and community engagement are some of the concepts deconstructed through the lens of cosmopolitan ideas and histories. Cosmopolitan philosophies are also of particular and special relevance to student experience in international education. In short, cosmopolitanism is not one idea but a field of meaning, a cluster of profound propositions that might collectively enrich the curriculum of education abroad.

The editors believe that religion, while an area of discussion not often at the center of study abroad, deserves to be more comprehensively included. Neglecting it can result in at least three significant problems. It raises questions about our commitment to inclusivity in study abroad; it results in significant missed educational opportunities as students observe the “foreign” culture into which study abroad drops them, and it leaves a gap in academic work related to the cultural experience of a people.

This essay examines the interaction between the myth of the Wandering Jew, diaspora history and the notion of cosmopolitanism. This is a paradoxical synthesis that points in several directions: towards the ideals embedded in international education; towards the roots of anti-Semitism; in the direction of the notion of cosmopolitanism as a crime against the nation (something that Hitler, Stalin and Henry Ford agreed upon). The figure of the Wandering Jew has roots in history and myth and is a presence in the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. The figure wanders through history as an emblem of a cursed outcast, the possessor of arcane secrets, and a sophisticated global flâneur. The essay explores Biblical, literary, and historical sources with further reference to memoirs including Edmund de Waal’s The Hare with Amber Eyes.

London is a global city which constitutes a major hub of the world economy and is characterised by the socioeconomic contradictions of its success. It provides significant opportunities for active experiential and inquiry-based learning which transcend the conventional study abroad agenda. As a centre for exploration and discovery, participation and observation, global London offers a rich field of academic potential precisely because it is (by its nature) multi-dimensional, complex and challenging. This paper outlines how urban field studies, internships and service-learning may be used to analyse the city’s contested terrain and facilitate critical engagement with the global city in all of its diversity.

The object of this discussion is to explore some of the ways in which Europe has been created and recreated in the American mind and to relate those constructs to the limitations, opportunities and dynamics that may be explored in education abroad. Those constructs represent in part the baggage that students bring with them. In what follows, the structure will recreate the experience of students coming to Europe. The essay explores the baggage they carry; engagement with the European environment and, finally, the process of return. In that structure, which mirrors the experience of the study abroad student, a partial but suggestive set of perspectives emerge that go further than defending the traditional and, instead, present a cogent set of rich realities that collectively create the case for Europe.

This article presents an essay about the idea of the global citizen, which has accumulated around the work of international education professionals and practitioners. The propagation of this notion derives from, essentially, two sources: it is a recurrent claim made by study abroad programs and it is used also a means of self-description.The objective is to explore some of the assumptions behind the phrase which, ultimately, do a disservice to the credible aspirations embedded in international education. The phrase when used in a personal context usually describes someone who is, or who aspires to be, broad minded, intellectually engaged with other cultures, aware of the interdependence of nations, committed to tolerance and understanding of difference, and so on. That describes, I will argue, a good citizen. Shared beliefs in international values impose no rights or legal obligations. It is a voluntary, ethical assertion not a form of membership which is one necessary component of citizenship. The global adjective is obfuscation (or, as Leo Rosten might say, a mishegas).

This article presents an international perspective on service-learning through its traditional definitions, learning objectives, and connections to study abroad.

The call to expand opportunities for study abroad students in "non-traditional” locations has become a kind of mantra throughout the international education community. This call is almost always allied to the intent significantly to expand numbers going to these non-traditional locations. The purpose of this essay is to define some of the issues that the field of education abroad needs to take in order to create a more concentrated view of what it means and intends.