The Global IR Revolution Must Start in the Graduate Classroom

The Global IR literature of recent years has effectively brought greater attention to the need for transforming and globalizing the IR discipline, but there is little evidence that fundamental change has yet occurred. This work highlights this disconnect between Global IR’s aims and practice, and argues that to move beyond the rhetorical, greater emphasis should be placed on pedagogical change. The work draws on a collaborative project between a professor and four MA students, and reports the results of weekly discussions in which they explored their experiences of the challenges faced by those entering the disciplinary community, and proposed pedagogical solutions for contributing to a globalizing of IR. The findings raise warning flags of a growing ‘academic industrial complex, ’ in which students are herded into a competitive race driving them to publish at ever earlier stages. By emphasizing product over curiosity, our ‘factories’ of future IR scholars (graduate classrooms), are leading to premature assimilation, homogenization of thought, and, ultimately, to a “global” IR discipline that remains trapped in narrow Western-centric knowledge production.