With us today is Tamson Pietsch, author of a new book on the Floating University from the University of Chicago Press. Her book covers a number of facets of this story: the extraordinary journey itself to over 40 ports around the world, the students’ curriculum and on-shore activities (which included meeting an extraordinary number of world leaders), and the extraordinary shenanigans that went on between NYU and Lough that threatened to stop the voyage before it even began. It’s a multi-faceted story, concentrating to a significant extent on the politics of educational tourism: which students got to take part, what parts of the world were they shown, and how were local issues framed?

Book:
The Floating University