The challenge of difference is slightly different in international collaboration, however. Responsibilities of citizenship oblige us to take up the most challenging differences in America, but the success of international collaboration can rest on minimizing those obstacles posed by difference in order to focus on the particular variations disciplined partnerships are prepared to address. Where difference is too great, collaborations can be sought elsewhere, with other partners in that nation, or in other nations altogether. Nevertheless, through enduring collaborations, it becomes more possible to articulate those initially inadmissible differences within the global form of expertise organizing inquiry. Thus, the values of contextual expertise are more likely to become embedded in global partnerships when institutional and individual collaborations endure.
International collaborations become more grounded as ties endure.
This is important to recall as we consider collaboration across cultures of international inquiry within the university. Investments in interdisciplinary understandings of particular regions of the world are more likely to produce collaborations directed by questions that emerge from the scholarly and broader cultural complex of that world region. This deep internationalization of scholarship thus helps us appreciate not only the generality of our theories, but also the limits of our questions. Area studies should contribute the contextual expertise necessary for helping outsiders to that region recognize that context's challenge of difference. When that contextual expertise remains within its own frame of reference, however, outsiders have greater difficult appreciating the significance of its challenge.