My Next Thought

Right now, millions of high school students around the world are hunched over keyboards, writing what they’ve been told might define their futures. And on the other side of this annual ritual, thousands of universities are preparing to read those essays - some carefully, some casually, and some with the quiet help of AI. It’s…

I’m not a religious guy, but every once in a while, I come across something in scripture that feels less like dogma and more like truth. This verse from the Bhagavad Gita is one of them: कर्मण्येवाधिकारस्ते मा फलेषु कदाचन। मा कर्मफलहेतुर्भूर्मा ते सङ्गोऽस्त्वकर्मणि॥ Karmanye vadhikaraste ma phaleshu kadachana. Ma karmaphalaheturbhurma te sango’stvakarmani. You have the right…

Seventeen years is a strange period of time. It’s long enough that the sharp edges of grief soften, but short enough that the memory of a voice, a laugh, or a familiar phrase can still arrive uninvited, as clear as yesterday. Next week will mark seventeen years since my father passed away. I don’t write…

The sound of feet against stone, moving in unison. The crack of sticks meeting in rhythm. A circle widening, tightening, spinning faster with every beat. Pure exhilaration! When I was younger, Navratri nights meant joining that rhythm — garba with its flowing steps, dandia with its clashing sticks. I used to wonder why it was…

“Where is your presence of mind?” When I was growing up, my dad would ask me this question whenever I seemed distracted or careless. It wasn’t a gentle question. It carried weight — the sense that I wasn’t paying attention, that I was missing something right in front of me. Sometimes it was about…

This week, I’ve been in Gothenburg, where thousands of international educators are gathered for the EAIE annual conference. The days here have been filled with conversations about mobility, belonging, and building bridges across borders. And as I wrapped up another day of meetings, my phone buzzed with news that made those conversations feel both urgent…

Universities in the U.S. are bracing for the headline everyone has been expecting - a significant decline in international student enrollments. But the numbers are only the surface. Behind the drop are policy shocks, an employer market reshaped by AI, and a student pipeline that no longer guarantees mobility. If institutions treat falling yields as…

At our g2 experience last week, a counselor was telling me about what many are seeing this year. Students feed the same prompt into an AI, and out comes the same essay in slightly different clothes. Her instinct was to stop them from using AI. Mine was different: don’t deny the tool - change how…

Last Friday, I was sitting at Changi Airport in Singapore, ready to fly to Bangalore — a flight I was looking forward to, because it was taking me “home”. Everything was as planned. I arrived early to the airport to check out the famed butterfly garden and waterfall. Check in was smooth. Immigration, smoother. My…

On August 6, eighty years to the day since Hiroshima, I found myself espousing the values of being radically human in the age of AI to a room full of international educators gathered in Kyoto. The conversation inside was about the future, but outside that hall, the date itself carried the weight of history that…

Mujun no naka ni, shinjitsu ga aru. Translation: There is truth in contradiction. Two days ago, I began a keynote at an international education conference in Kyoto with this Japanese phrase - because it felt like the only way to name the moment we’re in. I was standing in a city where a thousand-year-old…

Last week I wrote about humanness in the age of AI - the truth that our adaptability, empathy, and imagination will matter even more as technology accelerates. But if that’s our edge, here’s the next question we need to ask: who is truly preparing us to sharpen it? I find myself thinking a lot about the…