Mohamed Abdel-Kader: Interconnecting Internationalization

Mohamed Abdel-Kader, executive director of the Stevens Initiative at The Aspen Institute, and previously the deputy assistant secretary for International and Foreign Language Education at the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Postsecondary Education, has spent a lot of time working on the challenges of bridging nations and cultures. In this exclusive interview, International Educator sat down with Abdel-Kader to get his unique perspective on internationalization, the role of anti-intellectualism, and what exactly global competency is.

How would you define global competency and why is it especially important these days?

It’s quite simple: Global competence encompasses skills that people need to thrive in the twenty-first century. With the interconnectedness of the world today, any issue around the world—whether it is related to the environment or security, the economy, or understanding the diversity in our community—affects us locally. So the ability to collaborate and communicate is incredibly important. As is the ability to have empathy with those who have had experiences different than our own. Being able to communicate in multiple languages is also important, as so much is lost in translation. The capacity to analyze and understand and have a grasp of different global issues is also key; as is the ability and the willingness to act based on knowledge.

Just take the business world as an example: There is always a global dimension to your work. For graduates who go on to work for General Electric, or Bechtel, or Coca-Cola, Boeing, or Goldman Sachs, a currency fluctuation in one part of