Universitas: Why Higher Education Must Be International intervenes with urgency in the debate on the virtues, and pitfalls of internationalizing higher education. It unites voices of academics from around the globe with considerable experience with international higher education in a well-considered defense of the university as a public space transcending locality, counteracting parochialism, and defending the quality of scholarship. All authors writing in this volume have themselves followed international trajectories, across different parts of the world. At the same time, all are now settled academics. They have been observing the relevant trends in their work environments and have been actively involved in managing them. Universitas brings their informed auto-ethnographic reflections in conversation with each other and connects them into a systematic analysis that allows us to recognize and communicate the virtues of internationalizing higher education and to better navigate its challenges. At the same time, the auto-biographical subtexts of the contributions vividly illustrate how international experiences impact personal and professional development and help make the case for defending the internationalization of higher education against its detractors.
