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The COVID-19 pandemic is as much a process of globalization as it is its outcome. In the wake of the death, socio-economic devastation, and radical uncertainties it has unleashed, this paper re-examines globalization anew. This paper's focus is on the role that neoliberalism has played in precipitating the COVID-19 disaster, especially in the wealthiest nations of the West. Re-visiting history, the paper takes issue with the rhetoric of globalization that had been sold as a project ushering in an interconnected global village exalting culture and community. Against such exuberance, the paper recalls that globalization was a post-Cold War project celebrating liberal-capitalism's 'triumph' over state-socialism. It reveals globalization to be foremost about economic accumulation, not community edification. Moreover, in the realm of ideology and policymaking, the past four decades have seen liberalism devolving into neoliberalism, and many national states becoming financialized corporate states. Especially in the West, the liberal state has been captured and financialized. Austerity--not redistributive growth--has reigned, engendering historically unprecedented social polarization which COVID-19 has exposed and exacerbated. Globalization, I argue, has served as rhetorical cover for the social destructiveness of 'neoliberalism'. The approaches and outcomes of pandemic management in much of the West are a further indictment of neoliberalism. Whereas 'herd immunity' had been the early de facto pandemic strategy of many neoliberal Western governments, most of East Asia a state-led commitment to 'zero transmission' and minimum casualties, leading to vastly different health outcomes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The COVID pandemic has hit every person and organization by storm. In international education, stakeholders are diverse, bringing complex needs and considerations. Institutional responses to the pandemic are not amenable to broad replicability due to the contextualized nature in which international schools are situated, yet they are nonetheless of interest, particularly regarding the development of effective practices in times of pandemic. This paper explores some reflections of educators and leaders at international schools in south, southeast, and east Asia, in some of the first geographic areas to be affected by COVID-19, as they continue to face this crisis from personal and professional standpoints. The effects include higher levels of acculturative stress, but also the presence of hope and resilience. One education hub organization provides a medium-term visionary response, which is practical and potentially beneficial to multiple stakeholders in international education, as educational organizations consider best practices in terms of adaptive leadership in response to a pandemic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]