Toward a postcolonial securities critique of higher education leadership: globalization as a recolonization in developing countries like the UAE

This article examines the intersection of three concepts in education–cultural security, globalization and the postcolonial critique–are related in order to advance the application of cultural security studies in educational administration and leadership. The first section discusses constructivist security studies as they apply to socio-cultural and political aspects of educational values, identity formation and cultural norms in non-Western contexts can be viewed as securitized. The second section presents connections between security studies and globalized education by demonstrating how the latter can be defined as a cultural security problem. The next section shows similarities between cultural security and postcolonial critiques as they relate to foreign curriculum and pedagogy for educational leadership as a form of re-colonization that can undermine the integrity of other cultures, using the United Arab Emirates as an example. The final section discusses this critique in relation to an illustrative country, the United Arab Emirates. The conclusion discusses the implications for educational administration as a field of study, research and practice.