This essay examines how universities in non-Western, non-English-speaking countries respond to global competition in higher education, where English has become dominant due to “linguistic imperialism.” I pose critical questions about how these institutions can not only endure but thrive amid global competition, and whether intensified global competition has improved the quality of education. Focusing on Japan, I explore both successful and challenging aspects of globalization in its institutions of higher education. While Japan achieved success in adapting during the late nineteenth century, the emphasis on learning foreign languages, including English, diminished after World War II. The Japanese case illustrates the complex trade-offs between ensuring educational equity and global competitiveness, and highlights the evolving dynamics and challenges faced by universities as well as policymakers in non-English-speaking countries in the global higher-education landscape.

The U.S. Supreme Court increasingly leverages a rigid interpretation of the Free Speech Clause to strike regulations that address campaign financing, health care warnings, tax disclosures, collective bargaining agreements, and consumer protections. History has become little more than a slogan that the majority periodically invokes but seldom accurately evaluates. That lack of nuance augments the justices’ authority to articulate absolutist-sounding rules to the detriment of legislatures’ exercise of traditional governmental functions. Jurists would do better to rely on a more proportionate and less categorical approach to decide whether laws impose direct or peripheral burdens on communications. The level of safeguards enjoyed by expressions should be gauged by their value to political self-determination, personal development, or informational contribution. The degree of protections that speech enjoys should be balanced against countervailing government interests, alternatives available to speakers, fit between law and public ends, and relevant history.