International Education Week to highlight Tulane’s global footprint

The statistics are clear. Tulane University is a global university, with students representing 83 countries and international students and scholars numbering nearly 1,600. Tulane also boasts 140 study abroad programs in 40 countries, 10,000 international alumni and research taking place in 70 nations.  

The Office of Academic Affairs and Provost and the Office of International Affairs, also known as Tulane Global, are spearheading this year’s International Education Week, alongside its key partners, the Office of International Students and Scholars, the NTC Center for Global Education and over 15 schools and units across campus.

The event takes place Nov. 14-17, with an array of programming across Tulane’s uptown and downtown campuses. It includes internationally acclaimed keynote speakers, a welcome reception with musical performances, satellite events throughout campus and international culinary offerings in The Commons.  

“This year’s theme is meant to spark deeper thinking about global inequity and racism while we cultivate spaces for global awareness across borders."

Laila Hlass, associate provost for international affairs at Tulane

The theme for the week is (Re)Imagining Borderlands & Shared Cultures in Between, which aims to celebrate Tulane’s global community and spotlight the international research, collaborations and learning that Tulane students, faculty and staff are engaged in around the world. 

“International Education Week is an opportunity to celebrate Tulane’s international community and reflect upon our global footprint,” said Laila Hlass, associate provost for international affairs and clinical professor of law at Tulane Law School. “This year’s theme is meant to spark deeper thinking about global inequity and racism while we cultivate spaces for global awareness across borders, fostering an inclusive international community and encouraging impactful and responsive global learning and research.”

Among the highlights will be the inaugural lecture by noted Peruvian-American journalist and author Daniel Alarcón and a closing keynote lecture by Natalie Diaz, a Pulitzer Prize-winning Mojave American poet. 

Alarcón is a professor of journalism at Columbia University and a 2021 MacArthur Fellow. His work explores the social, cultural and linguistic ties that connect people throughout Latin America and the United States. He is the author of Lost City Radio, At Night We Walk in Circles and The King is Always Above the People. He is a contributing writer for The New Yorker and is co-founder of the podcasts Radio Ambulante and El Hilo. He will speak Tuesday, Nov. 15 at 5:30 p.m. at Freeman Auditorium in Woldenberg Art Center.  

Diaz was born and raised in the Fort Mojave Indian Village on the banks of the Colorado River and is an enrolled member of the Gila River Indian Tribe. She identifies herself as Indigenous, Latinx, and Queer. Diaz won the Pulitzer Prize in Poetry in 2021 for Postcolonial Love Poem. She is also a 2018 MacArthur Fellow, a professor in the English Department at Arizona State University and co-founder of the Center for the Imagination of the Borderlands. Her keynote lecture will take place on Wednesday, Nov. 16 at 5:30 p.m. at Freeman Auditorium.  

Sponsors for Diaz’s talk include the Altman Program for International Studies & Business, Middle American Research Institute, Newcomb Institute, Office of Academic Affairs & Provost, Office of Equity Diversity & Inclusion and Tulane Global. 

Alarcón’s multimedia lecture is this year’s School of Liberal Arts Bobby Yan Lectureship for Media & Social Change, part of the Tulane Trailblazers initiative that celebrates the contributions of people from diverse backgrounds who have made a substantial and lasting impact at the university. It is also part of the Distinguished Greenleaf Lecture Series, sponsored by the Center for Inter-American Policy and Research and the Stone Center for Latin American Studies, focusing on the importance of investigative journalism for democracy and for the creation of spaces where journalists can fulfill their mission of ensuring transparency and accountability in Latin America.

It is sponsored by the Center for Inter-American Policy & Research, the Freeman School of Business, the Fulbright Association, the School of Liberal Arts, the Stone Center for Latin American Studies, the Office of Academic Affairs & Provost and Tulane Global.  

Visit IEW's official website for the calendar of events, including keynote lectures delivered by Alarcón and Diaz, and many other ways to celebrate Tulane's global footprint.