In the span of a few weeks, I’ve moved through three very different spaces in three different countries.
India, where I visited GIFT City, hosted Junction91, and spent time on campuses experimenting with new models of global engagement and transnational education.
At AIEA in Washington D.C., where international educators were navigating visa instability, political volatility, and a growing sense that the ground beneath them is less predictable than it once was.
And this week, at APAIE in Hong Kong, where conversations felt less centered on the United States and more oriented toward regional coordination and long-term positioning in a shifting global order.
Three spaces. One field. Different energies.
The world is reorganizing. Power is diffusing. Trust is being renegotiated in real time. In moments like this, orientation matters more than dominance.
That is why I am increasingly convinced that global exposure is no longer enrichment. It is infrastructure.
Not infrastructure for travel or prestige, but infrastructure for judgment.
Over the past decade, assumptions many of us treated as stable have fractured. Supply chains shifted. Alliances recalibrated. Artificial intelligence accelerated decisions beyond human deliberation. Democracies strained. Human rights once thought secure became openly contested.
In the United States, the erosion of basic human dignity is no longer subtle. Immigration crackdowns framed as protection. Reproductive rights stripped in the name of morality. Academic freedom politicized. Race and identity weaponized for electoral gain. The continued support for Donald Trump and the ideology surrounding him. These are not isolated political episodes. They reveal something structural.
Contraction.
A contraction of empathy. Of imagination. Of responsibility beyond one’s immediate tribe.
Contraction weakens global leadership because leadership requires trust, and trust requires moral breadth.
It would be easy to frame this as a uniquely American unraveling. But that would miss the deeper pattern. Before treating this as a singular failure, we should ask a harder question.
Why does contraction resonate at all?
Why do significant segments of the population support rhetoric that isolates rather than integrates?
Misinformation, grievance, and polarization all play a role. But they do not explain the full picture.
What drives it is a failure of exposure.
Many citizens have never meaningfully engaged alternative political systems, economic models, or cultural norms. Democracy was presented as inheritance rather than practice. Global leadership felt assumed rather than earned.
When that narrative collides with a world that no longer defers, fear fills the vacuum.
Fear of trade. Fear of migration. Fear of demographic change. Fear of losing primacy.
And once fear takes hold, even ordinary change begins to feel destabilizing. Complexity feels adversarial. Authoritarian certainty feels reassuring.
Trumpism, in that sense, becomes the politics of enclosure. And enclosure flourishes where exposure is absent. And when exposure is absent across generations, it is not merely a cultural accident. It reflects how societies choose to educate.
Education bears responsibility here.
For decades, global engagement in American education has been treated as enrichment for the few rather than literacy for the many. Study abroad remains inaccessible to large segments of students. Comparative politics has become elective rather than essential. Civic education has weakened. National narratives are taught as settled truth rather than contested evolution.
We produce graduates fluent in confidence, yet insufficiently trained in context.
When exposure is treated as optional, enclosure becomes normalized. Over time, insulation feels natural and comparison feels unnecessary.
Enclosure is one response to instability. It is not the only one.
In India, I saw a different posture emerging.
India is not flawless. It wrestles with inequality, bureaucracy, and political tension. But what struck me was posture. Institutions are experimenting. Policymakers are building. Universities are aligning with industry, inviting global partnerships, recalibrating delivery models. There is recognition that standing still carries risk.
At APAIE, that orientation was even more visible. The Asia-Pacific region is strengthening intra-regional mobility, forming new networks, expanding transnational campuses, coordinating long-term strategy. The gravitational center of global education is diffusing, not because American institutions lack excellence, but because unpredictability erodes trust.
And trust is the currency of international education.
Artificial intelligence now compounds this shift. AI accelerates influence but does not provide judgment. It amplifies whatever orientation humans bring to it.
Democracy depends on citizens who can interpret complexity without defaulting to certainty. That capacity must be cultivated. Without comparative reference points, populism mobilizes more easily. Authoritarian rhetoric feels stabilizing. Interdependence is misread as loss.
Global exposure does not guarantee democratic resilience. But its absence makes democracies brittle.
And decline rarely arrives as collapse. It appears as hesitation — a narrowing of the frame, a reluctance to recalibrate, a failure to equip citizens to understand how the world actually works.
The nations that will thrive in the coming decades will not simply be those with the largest economies or strongest militaries. They will be those that cultivate globally literate populations capable of navigating ambiguity without retreating into fear.
If global exposure now functions as infrastructure for democratic stability and global relevance, then it must be treated accordingly.
Global literacy should be considered a civic competency, not a luxury. Comparative democracy, cross-border collaboration, and international fluency belong at the core of curricula, not at the margins. They should be embedded into how students learn to reason, to debate, to build, and to lead.
Exposure must also be democratized. For too long, study abroad has functioned as a prestige layer rather than a foundational expectation. When global engagement is reserved for those with financial means, flexible schedules, or elite access, it reinforces hierarchy instead of expanding judgment. Virtual exchange, collaborative international classrooms, cross-cultural problem solving, and structured intellectual friction should not be experiments. They should be standard.
And institutions must confront their own incentives.
When internationalization is treated primarily as a marketing strategy or, worse, as a revenue center detached from educational purpose, it becomes transactional. Students become numbers. Partnerships become pipelines. Exposure becomes branding.
That is not global education. That is global commerce wearing academic clothing.
Revenue matters. Institutions need financial sustainability. But when revenue becomes the driving logic of global engagement, judgment is displaced by volume. Recruitment replaces reciprocity. Mobility replaces meaning.
Universities that reduce internationalization to enrollment targets without expanding global literacy across their entire student body are complicit in enclosure. They amplify global presence while narrowing global understanding.
True internationalization is not measured by how many students cross borders. It is measured by how deeply students learn to interpret a world beyond their own.
If democracy is to remain durable in an era of acceleration, exposure must move from optional experience to structural design.
Students must learn to interpret before they react. To compare before they conclude. To engage before they retreat.
Exposure builds that muscle.
If global conversations increasingly move without the United States at the center, it will not be conspiracy. It will be consequence.
The world IS reorganizing.
The question is whether America — and others — will expand their intellectual and moral frame quickly enough to remain relevant.
In the coming decade, nations will divide less by ideology and more by literacy.
Those that cultivate global understanding will navigate complexity.
Those that do not will mistake contraction for strength.
Global exposure is no longer optional.
It has become a condition for democratic survival.
Ex Cogitatione, Progressus
Girish
