GLOBAL: International student security

The promise of education is that it advances the human subject by conferring on each person a greater measure of ability, sociability, dignity and agency, greater power to form themselves and make their own lives in their time on Earth.

The promise of higher education and research is that we might find ways to better order the world so as to universalise ability, dignity and agency, and work together to solve our problems collaboratively. I am struck by the gravity of the issues at stake in this messy and unresolved debate about international student security.

International student security is not just about higher education or the global knowledge economy. It concerns the future world society and civil culture. It is about giving meaning to every life, not just the lives of those born in our own country, who might look like us, speak like us or share a religion.

We all want our lives to have meaning. If Nitin Garg's death helps to focus world attention on the problems of mobile persons, the gaps in their human security and the need for a workable global regime of human security, his life has achieved a greater meaning. Give him that honour. That way, he still lives.

Excerpts from "GLOBAL: International student security" by Simon Marginson, Professor of higher education in the centre for the study of higher education at the University of Melbourne. This is an edited version of a keynote address he gave last week at the World Universities Forum in Davos, Switzerland.