On June 4, 2024, Noah Pickus and I gave a book talk on our book, The New Global Universities, at the UC Berkeley Center for Studies in Higher Education (CSHE). The talk was moderated by John Douglass, a friend and collaborator, who has been a gracious host for my visits to CSHE as a visiting scholar, and who is a co-author with me in several pieces about higher education in Singapore and Hong Kong, including a chapter in his book on Envisioning the Asian New Flagship Universities.

The talk included many thoughtful questions from John Douglass, who helped us clarify how these small schools in our book are not to be dismissed as “boutique” institutions, but rather have had a transformative effect already on reshaping higher education globally. Examples include the transformation in engineering education sparked by Olin College, the new model of ethical entrepreneurial leaders being fostered by Ashesi University in Ghana, and the new types of regional studies courses developed at NYU Abu Dhabi and Fulbright University Vietnam, which are helping reshape how we interpret the Arab World, and Vietnam’s role in the world, respectively.

We are grateful to John Douglass and Shanshan Jiang for helping organize the meeting and helping us have this great discussion about these important issues.