Hyperpoliticised internationalisation in a pariah university: An Israeli institution in the occupied West Bank.

Highlights • We investigate the rationales for and strategies of internationalisation in Israel's only university located in the occupied West Bank. • Our analysis shows a discrepancy between the political rationales of administrators and academic rationales of researchers. • Building on these rationales, we uncover four distinctive strategies used to achieve internationalisation. • We develop important insights into the powerful impact of politics on our understanding of internationalisation in higher education. Abstract Internationalisation in higher education is often portrayed as a value-neutral intervention driven predominantly by economic motives yet advocated and prescribed for humanitarian purposes. In this study we investigate how internationalisation takes shape in an institution which is characterised by political controversy that hinders and shapes its internationalisation efforts; we explore the rationales for and enactment of internationalisation at Ariel University (AU), Israel's only university located in the West Bank, part of the occupied Palestinian territories (oPt). We challenge the dominant framing of internationalisation in higher education and shed light on the nature, purposes and forms of internationalisation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]