This book stimulates discussions on cultural and educational exchanges between rival states and societies, raises awareness of the potential positive and negative impacts of such exchanges, and serves as a basis for future research and program design. Cultural and educational exchanges in various forms have existed for millennia. Yet it was not until the unprecedented human devastation of two world wars catalyzed a sense of urgency around the world that a new era of cultural and educational exchange programs emerged as a means of easing tensions between rival states and societies. This book is motivated by the need for critical research that can contribute to building a more comprehensive understanding of the issues at stake. It begins with a historical overview of cultural and educational exchanges between rival societies, an assessment of their positive and negative impacts, and a review of some of the most prominent theories in relevant fields. It then presents a diverse set of case studies, in which authors consider not only the real or expected benefits of such exchanges but also the potentially negative impacts, challenges faced along the way, and broader effects on the rival societies at large. The states and societies considered include North Korea and the West, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Israel and the Palestinian territories, India and Pakistan, China and Taiwan, Cuba and the US, and China and the US. Taken together, the chapters demonstrate that exchanges have observable impacts on the individuals and institutions involved. Moreover, they reveal that exchanges have the capacity, in some cases, to affect broader social and political change at the family, community, society, or state level, but these impacts are indirect and typically require long-term concerted efforts by those involved.

This book addresses the understudied phenomenon of why and how contemporary international higher education, research and innovation can contribute to strengthening international relations. The author proposes the concept of knowledge diplomacy and carefully examines its fundamental rationales, actors, principles, instruments, and strategies. This is the first book that compares the similarities and differences between knowledge diplomacy and related terms such as soft power, cultural diplomacy, science diplomacy and public diplomacy to capture the expanding role of international higher education and research in bilateral and multilateral relations. The analysis of initiatives from around the world helps to ground and illustrate the key features of a knowledge diplomacy approach. "This book makes a highly original and important contribution to the study of knowledge diplomacy and soft power. It brings together the latest thinking and trends in the study of contemporary diplomacy and international higher education. The author is well known for the clarity and perspicacity of her definitions and analysis and this applies to her in-depth examination of knowledge diplomacy which she convincingly distinguishes from soft power and other forms of diplomacy. The discussion of issues and challenges which require further exploration and research will be valuable to international relations and international higher education scholars, policy makers and students.” Professor Ruth Hayhoe, University of Toronto, and President Emerita, the Education University of Hong Kong "This timely book offers a sound framework for studying the expanding role of higher education, research and innovation in international relations. A key strength is that viewpoints and experiences from all of the world’s regions have been included in this lucid, interdisciplinary contribution to our understanding of knowledge diplomacy.” Professor Jan Melissen, Leiden University and University of Antwerp, Editor-in-Chief The Hague Journal of Diplomacy “This is a must-read book for scholars, policy makers and diplomats who want to understand how international higher education, research and innovation can help to address the complexities of contemporary global challenges through knowledge diplomacy.". Professor Chika Sehoole, Pretoria University, South Africa

For many institutions, to ignore your university’s ranking is to become invisible, a risky proposition in a competitive search for funding. But rankings tell us little if anything about the education, scholarship, or engagement with communities offered by a university. Drawing on a range of research and inquiry-based methods, Global University Rankings and the Politics of Knowledge exposes how universities became servants to the education industry and its impact. Conceptually unique in its scope, Global University Rankings and the Politics of Knowledge addresses the lack of empirical research behind university and journal ranking systems. Chapters from internationally recognized scholars in decolonial studies provide readers with robust frameworks to understand the intersections of coloniality and Indigeneity and how they play out in higher education. Contributions from diverse geographical and disciplinary contexts explore the political economy of rankings within the contexts of the Global North and South, and examine alternatives to media-driven rankings. This book allows readers to consider the intersections of power and knowledge within the wider contexts of politics, culture, and the economy, to explore how assumptions about gender, social class, sexuality, and race underpin the meanings attached to rankings, and to imagine a future that confronts and challenges cognitive, environmental, and social injustice.

Post-colonial and post-partition South Asia, one of the fastest-growing and yet one of the least integrated regions of the world, is marked by both optimism and pessimism. This intriguing dichotomy of strength and weakness, security and insecurity, hope and fear, connections and disconnects underpins South Asia’s regionalism conundrum and gives birth to borders and boundaries – both material and mental – with a complex territoriality. The Janus-faced nature of South Asian borderlands – the inward nationalizing impulses entangled with the outward regional frontier-orientations – is a stark reminder that history of mobility in this eco-geographical region is much older than the history of territoriality and colonial cartography and ethnography. This collection of meticulously researched, theoretically informed, case studies from South Asia provides useful insights into bordering, ordering and othering narratives as practices and performances that are intricately entangled with identity politics and security discourses. It shows how a sharper focus on subterranean subregionalism(s), border communities, popular geopolitics of enmity, and transborder challenges to sustainability, could open up spaces for new multiple (re)imaginings of borders at diverse scales and sights including sub-urban neighbourhoods, school textbooks/cinema and trans-border conservation initiatives. The chapters in this edited volume have been contributed by both renowned as well as young emerging scholars, looking into the borders and boundaries in South Asia. Each chapter offers new perspectives and insights into themes like trans-Himalayan borderlands, India-Pakistan physical and mental borders, Afghanistan-Pakistan border and numerous social boundaries that we see in everyday South Asia. The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of the Journal of Borderlands Studies.

The book discusses the most essential topics in understanding the development and changes of higher educational systems in Asia after the outbreak of the pandemic, and explores the transformative, international and innovative moves from an Asian perspective. The topics covered in the book are timely in that higher education in Asia was severely limited during the tumultuous time of the pandemic, including three themes- 1. How the pandemic drives system reform and quality management; 2. How can universities maintain transnational partnerships and attract global talent; 3. How would faculty members innovate teaching pedagogy and reassess student learning experiences. This timely and well-researched book provides valuable insights into the challenges and opportunities for national, regional, and international higher education created by the recent pandemic as well as technological and geopolitical changes. The lucid analysis of key issues and trends will be useful to academics, policymakers, and researchers within Asia and beyond. Professor Jane Knight, Ontario Institute for studies in Education, University of Toronto This book sets out important thinking for the post-pandemic era in Asian higher education. Based on valuable experience across a diverse region, this book highlights the opportunity to reimagine the future trajectory for higher education. As more of the Asia-Pacific moves toward mass and even universal systems of higher education, it exerts greater influence on higher education around the world. This book offers practical analysis that is culturally grounded in the rich civilizations of Asia about ubiquitous issues in higher education, including social equity, human agency, program quality, innovative pedagogy, academic governance, private sector initiative, knowledge building, and a new form of internationalization. It offers a sensible launchpad for a policy agenda. Professor Gerard Postiglione, Emeritus Professor, The University of Hong Kong

This book maps the discursive terrain and potential of person to person peacebuilding as it intersects with, and is embedded in, intercultural communication. It foregrounds the voices and discourses of participants who came together in the virtual intercultural borderlands of online exchange through a service-learning project with a non-profit organization which focused on peace through education in Afghanistan, primarily through English language tutoring. By analyzing the voices and perspectives of US-based tutors who are pre-service teachers of English as an Additional Language, in equal measure with the voices and perspectives of adult English learners in Afghanistan, the authors examine how intercultural interactants begin to work as peacebuilders. The participants describe the profound transformations they undergo throughout their intercultural tutoring journeys, transformations which evidence three dimensions of person to person peacebuilding: the personal, relational and structural. Inspired by these voices, the book further explores ways teachers and teacher educators of language and intercultural communication can more deliberately leverage the affordance of peacebuilding, whether face to face or in the virtual intercultural borderlands of online exchange.

Leading authorities analyze growing tensions in US-China relations and what this means for the future The US-China relationship is now defined by “strategic competition.” In Cold Rivals, a distinguished group of scholars from the United States and China examine the reasons for this deterioration and its implications for world politics. The two countries are now competitors locked in a long-term rivalry, but how volatile this rivalry will become is still to be determined. The book explores not only the historical roots and contemporary foreign policy aspects of this era, but also looks at the economic, military, and technological arenas of US-China strategic competition. In doing so, this volume highlights important differences in US and Chinese perspectives. A final section of the volume explores future scenarios for this relationship from a variety of perspectives, all coming to a sobering conclusion. This policy-relevant book provides a comprehensive overview of US-China strategic competition and reinvigorates thinking about how to avoid reaching a crisis point.