Everyday nationalism and elite research universities in the USA and England

Abstract

The reinvigoration of popular nationalism in the USA and UK has largely been framed as counter to the cosmopolitan globalization associated with their elite universities over the past decade. Opposing these two sets of values may be too simplistic, however, given the cultural and political ties long institutionalized between elite universities and the nation. This article endeavors to highlight these entanglements—which were present before the election of Donald Trump or the fateful vote for Brexit—by drawing on interviews conducted with personnel at four elite research universities in these two countries from 2013 to 2014. In particular, this article focuses on the way these individuals invoked symbolic boundaries drawn along national lines as common sense, natural, and enduring, seeing their universities as embodying national characteristics, and as obliged to serve national interests. In providing ontological order to the world, the presence of this “banal” or “everyday” nationalism has arguably been central to the conceptualization and enactment of internationalization in these and other universities. These findings complicate discussions of elite universities as globalizing and unmooring from the nation-state framework, or otherwise working against the forces of nationalism. The article also raises new questions about divisions between different constituents of today’s globalizing academy.