This semester, for the second time in the last couple of years, the author is leading a graduate seminar on histories of rhetoric. Little scholarship traces the development of multilingual composition in antiquity (with Brian Ray's article as a clear and excellent exception), so the author typically feels like students hit a rich but untapped archival vein when they read Quintilian on early language acquisition and "Asiatic" styles, or when they confront Isocrates' simultaneous welcome of those they would now call "international students" and his proud defense of Athenian hegemony. Such encounters remind the author and students that the "global turn," like many other turns, is not new. Thinking about the role that cultural and linguistic diversity play in rhetorical education has a history that significantly predates current discussions of "translingualism" or older discussions of "multiculturalism" or longstanding scholarship on "second language" writing. In this article, the author discusses the global turn and how it is not new, but it is, as it has always been, a contradictory and important opportunity.