Over the past decade, we have seen a dramatic increase in the forced mobility of people, as a result of political, religious, economic and environmental crises all over the world. The refugee crises in the Middle East and Africa – as well as Venezuela in Latin America, and Myanmar in Asia, to mention just two of the most important – are widespread and numerous, now involving millions. In 2015, two of us wrote a commentary for University World News about the lack of response to the Syrian refugee crisis by European higher education institutions and leaders (de Wit & Altbach, 18 September 2015). Fortunately, that has changed. Over the past five years the number of initiatives and actions by student organizations, institutions of higher education around the world, as well as (inter)national entities such as the European Universities Association (EUA), the German DAAD and other national agencies, World Education Services in the U.S. and Canada, and many others, has increased significantly. In addition, the study of how higher education can contribute to address the challenges of the refugee crises, depriving whole young generations of (higher) education, has come more to the forefront.
This book is a manifestation of the diverse initiatives by higher education to respond to the forced movement of people, of the global dimension of this massive problem, and how researchers contribute to its analysis and to the search for answers. It is also a manifestation of how we can overcome the fragmentation and lack of cooperation in analyzing the role of (higher) education in the refugee crisis. The Center for International Higher Education, through recent Ph.D. graduate Lisa Unangst and Ph.D. student Tessa DeLaquil, one of its master’s graduates, Araz Khajarian, and visiting scholar, Hakan Ergin, together with its director, Hans de Wit, worked together to study the role of higher education in addressing the refugee crises around the world. Several other doctoral and master’s students in international higher education at the Center for International Higher Education, Natalie Borg, Hannah Cazetta, Kelber Tozini, and Ayenachew Woldegiyorgis joined in this research. It became clear that others at Boston College were also involved in refugee related activities. From this, the initiative developed to write this book, bringing together students and scholars from or related to Boston College in analyzing the role of higher and K-12 education from a diverse geographic and thematic perspective. It has resulted in an impressive comprehensive overview of diverse trends and actions by higher education around the world with respect to refugees.
We are grateful to Lisa Unangst, who has taken the lead for this publication building on her doctoral research and several publications, and to Hakan Ergin for his valuable role during his one year visiting scholarship at the Center for International Higher Education (2018–2019) in putting the issue on our agenda and broadening the scope from a European and North American perspective to the developing world, which is not only where most refugees come from but also where the large majority are finding refuge. We also would like to thank Araz Khajarian, who with her background from an Armenian family in Syria, has made it a mission to volunteer in supporting refugees and students from her country and write about it, and Tessa DeLaquil, who not only did most of the editing work on the book but made a valuable contribution on Arendt and the Myanmar refugees in Asia. And we thank all the other contributors to this book, that in its own scholarly way illustrates how a university like Boston College is addressing one of the most serious contemporary crises in the world.
Hans de Wit, Philip G. Altbach and Rebecca Schendel
Editors, Global Perspectives in Higher Education Book Series