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This “reconstructed interview-conversation” involves the entire editorial team of the Journal of Contemplative and Holistic Education (JCHE). Together, the team dialogues around the shared visions, aspirations, motivations, and aims we have in creating this new journal platform. With this sharing, the team sends out a welcoming invitation to colleagues from around the world to get to know our new journal and to join our work to support and promote contemplative and holistic education. We at JCHE are committed to the ideal of education as transformative integration of mind-body-heart-spirit, which we ultimately understand as a decolonizing project. Through this interview, various research and life themes have emerged: the centrality of education for wisdom, the life-sustaining importance of contemplative practice, the role of contemplative and holistic education as decolonial project; how JCHE exemplifies and aims at cultivating the wide diversity that exists in intellectual work; the place of contemplative and holistic education within peace education and environmental education; the important contributions that Indigenous knowledge practices make to education, science, medicine, and health care, and to the broader task of cultivating ecological and human flourishing; as well as concerns about contemplative/holistic practices being co-opted by neoliberal and instrumental forces in education.

As a field, we increasingly recognize how the internationalization of higher education globally often means the spread of Westernization, marketization, and neocolonialism. But, where do Christianity and Christian supremacy belong in this discourse? In this piece, I respond to this question and share examples from my research on higher education internationalization in Japan.

Science education has historically been viewed both as a tool to advance competitiveness as well as to improve the human condition. However, science education as it is enacted at a systemic level o...

The editors of the special issue on critical religious studies frame the articles, discussing examples of new critical religious theories and scholarship and setting the agenda for how research and...

PurposeThis paper reviews the national and institutional internationalization activities in Japan's higher education sector and considers the extent to which these efforts have attempted to incorporate and/or contribute to meeting the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).Design/methodology/approachThis paper was developed based on a review of available demographic data on internationalization in Japan (in both English and Japanese), a survey of recent scholarly literature on this topic and conversations with numerous faculty and staff members working on internationalization issues in a wide range of higher education institutions throughout the country.FindingsThere are substantial internationalization efforts being made at both national and institutional levels, yet scholars and practitioners of higher education question the extent to which genuine internationalization is occurring. Moreover, the metrics used to track internationalization are somewhat limited and the available data, in many cases, can be complicated to interpret. A bit of tension also exists in Japanese universities between those who support the movement to internationalize and those who see it as a passing fad, an intrusion on their academic freedom and/or as a guise for Westernization – a tension that some cite, along with language barriers and system misalignment, as a challenge to internationalization.Originality/valueNumerous scholars discuss the internationalization of higher education in Japan. The originality of this paper is in the comparison of Japan's higher education internationalization efforts to the movement to achieve the SDGs – both in Japan and as a global effort.

This paper unpacks the concepts of allyship, solidarity, accompliceship, and coconspiratorship, and applies them to religious identity. It reviews the literature that describes the processes, aims,...

Current literature about religion in higher education typically emphasizes belief as a central component of religious identity. Through framing this discourse with a critical social justice lens, I argue that there needs to be a purposeful distinction between religious/spiritual belief and religious identity/culture in order to acknowledge the socio-cultural nature of religion and to more clearly understand the privilege/oppression dynamic associated with it. By describing the way Christian privilege and religious oppression are often independent of individuals’ religious or spiritual beliefs, I discuss implications of this over-emphasis on belief for religious minorities and explain how focusing instead on religious culture can help make campus-based interfaith initiatives more social justice oriented.

1. Introduction: Contesting Globalization and its Discourses2. Internationalization, Globalization and Institutional Roles in the Face of Rising Nationalisms3. Understanding the Internationalization of Higher Education in South Korea with Different Theories of Development4.The Cultural Experiment at East Asian Universities5. The Third Road beyond Nationalism and Globalization? China's Belt and Road Initiative and Its Implications for Higher Education6. The Dialectics between "Race to the Top" and "Back to Basics": Metaphors on Taiwan Higher Education Reforms between 2006 and 20177. Globalization or Regionalization? Implications of the Reform of Japanese Higher Education in the 21st Century8. Changes to Internationalization of Japan's Higher Education? An analysis of findings from two national surveys in 2008 and 20179. Excellence VS. Equity: How Taiwan Higher Education Caught in a Trap for 'World Class' Status10. How 'Internationalism' and 'Nationalism' Get Along in Higher Education: A Thai Provincial University's Perspectives11. Knowledge Diplomacy and Worldview Diversity Education: Applications for an Internationalized Higher Education Sector12. Institutional Social Capital and Chinese International Branch Campus: A Case Study from Students' Perspectives13. Conclusion

The rise of nationalist movements over the past several years in numerous countries affects a variety of strategies and practices nations are pursuing within their higher education systems to this phenomenon. This chapter provides a brief introduction to the variety of country-specific responses to these changing dimensions of higher education.

This chapter presents a new angle of analysis on the phenomenon of rapidly increasing student mobility by applying the lenses of “knowledge diplomacy” (Knight in International Higher Education 80: 8–9, 2015) and “worldview diversity education” (Ilisko in Re-Enchanting Education and Spiritual Wellbeing: Fostering Belonging and Meaning-Making for Global Citizens. Routledge, New York, 2017; Mayhew et al. in The Journal of Higher Education 85 (2): 219–245, 2014). In current discourse around the internationalization of higher education, the concepts of soft power and global market competitiveness have become predominant reasons for pursuing increased student mobility (Knight in International Higher Education 80: 8–9, 2015). As an alternative, this chapter will discuss the potential and the responsibility of higher education, through internationalization efforts, to promote understanding of differences in worldview and to temper the recent resurgence of nationalism and xenophobia we are witnessing across the globe.

Resolving cultural and political conflicts, building peace around the world, and reorienting our societies towards harmony and justice are goals that scholars and practitioners across many fields seek to attain. When faced with challenges such as these, education serves as a promising tool for helping the next generation of global citizens and leaders to develop skills in peaceful cross-cultural communication. This chapter explores one such education initiative — the Jewish-Muslim Women’s Leadership Initiative (WLI) — which brought together graduate and undergraduate women from Jewish and Muslim backgrounds to collaboratively explore the possibility for mutual understanding and inter-cultural cooperation. Set in the context of US higher education, the processes and outcomes of the WLI point to several interesting implications for those engaged in peacebuilding and conflict resolution, both within and beyond the field of education. Using qualitative research methods and analyses, this chapter describes the WLI, discusses the theoretical foundations of this type of pedagogical approach, and explores both difficulties and successes of the program with regard to its goals of fostering intercultural communication and collaborative action.

I engage in a reflective self-narrative of my experience attempting to maintain a diet free of genetically modified organisms. Social tension over the genetically modified organism industry in Hawai‘i, United States, has led to public debates over jobs and social identities. Drawing on local media sources, grassroots organizations, and blog posts, I describe the way this tension has shaped my experience with food, eating, and being with others as a genetically modified organism avoider. I utilize discursive positioning to make sense of my experiences by locating them within the ongoing public conversations that give structure to the daily lives of Hawai‘i’s residents.

Scholars from around the world have asserted that the revitalization of indigenous cultures and languages cannot effectively occur independently of one another (Dixon, 1980; McKinley, 2005). If we want genuine cultural revival – recognition of, and justice for, indigenous communities – we cannot simply ‘talk the indigenous talk,’ we must also ‘walk the indigenous walk’ by understanding, cultivating, and valuing indigenous cultural practices.