The past twenty years have witnessed a significant and sustained global turn in American higher education, with many US colleges and universities pursuing curricular and institutional programs that prepare students for lives of global engagement. Many institutions have redefined their civic and ethical institutional goals to foster not only national citizenship but global citizenship. While global education has consistently been attacked by the right for many years, the scope and virulence of attacks on global higher education have been amplified in the lead-up to the 2016 presidential campaign and following the election of Donald Trump. Portrayals of global education as a global conspiracy have circulated across a range of fake-news, alt-right, and hard right publications, as have calls for nationalist visions of civic education that instill an appreciation for American exceptionalism. This article maps out how global higher education is constructed in the populist rhetoric of the political right, both in accounts from fake news sources and hard right news sources and in the educational policy discourse of conservative organizations like the National Association of Scholars. It then explores the consequences of anti-global education rhetoric for the global turn in rhetoric and composition studies and maps out both a critical and political response.

In this interview, Paula Mathieu explores the rhetorical tactics and contemplative practices necessary to cultivate hope in a period of political tumult. Drawing on her scholarship on the “public turn” in Composition Studies, a term she gave us in her vital Tactics of Hope: The Public Turn in English Composition , Mathieu discusses tactics and strategies for teaching public writing and supporting the work of public writing teachers at a time when community partnerships and service learning are more susceptible to critique in political discourse. Mathieu traces out a synthesis between mindfulness and public engagement and underlines the importance of seeing the contemplative as productive and reflective of public engagement.

In this interview, Susan Wells discusses the teaching of public writing and the work of public rhetoric as they respond to both shifting and recurring political and social contexts. Drawing on insights from her extensive and current work on public rhetoric, including her foundational essay “Rogue Cops and Health Care: What Do We Want from Public Writing?,” Wells discusses the possibilities public writing instruction holds for cultivating students’ public agency, while also exploring the boundaries between what can and cannot be accomplished in the public writing classroom.