91³Ô¹Ï is a program of the
FSI researchers work to understand continuity and change in societies as they confront their problems and opportunities. This includes the implications of and . What happens to a society when young girls exit the ? How do groups moving between locations impact societies,, self-identity and citizenship? What are the faced by an increasingly diverse European Union? From a policy perspective, scholars also work to investigate the consequences of security-related measures for society and its .
The reflects much of FSI’s agenda of investigating societies, serving as a forum for experts to research the cultures, religions and people of Europe. The Center sponsors several seminars and lectures, as well as .
Societal research also addresses issues of demography and aging, such as the social and economic challenges of providing health care for an . How do , and what societal tools need to be in place to ensure the resulting decisions are well-informed? FSI regularly brings in international scholars to look at these issues. They discuss how adults care for their in rural China as well as the economic aspects of in China and India.
In this lecture, Professor Okimoto discusses how Japan’s geography and geological factors have influenced its economics, society, and culture. In addition, he explores issues pertaining to the March 11, 2011 earthquake and tsunami.
2012 marks the 70th anniversary of a momentous event in American history: the signing of Executive Order 9066, which resulted in the forcible removal of more than 110,000 people of Japanese descent to concentration camps. Approximately two-thirds of them were U.S. citizens.
By way of commemoration, a distinguished group of panelists will discuss what the Japanese American experience of World War II has meant to them, how it has affected their work as historians and artists, and the strategies they have developed for integrating the Japanese American past with the American present and future as a whole.
Registration begins at 6 p.m. The first 50 registrants will receive complimentary copies of the following materials:
Donald Hata's Japanese Americans and World War II, From Our Side of the Fence featuring writings and art by Ruth Okimoto and choice of either Steven Okazaki's All We Could Carry or gayle yamada's Uncommon Courage.
Oksenberg Conference Room
"The Stanford Report" covered the recently launched Stanford Human Rights Education Initiative, which brings human rights curriculum into the classrooms of California community colleges to transform students into globally-conscious citizens. Piloted in partnership with the Program on Human Rights, the Stanford Program on International and Cross-Cultural Education (91³Ô¹Ï), and the Division of International Comparative and Area Studies, the Initiative appoints human rights fellows to develop new curriculum for broader application in California and beyond.
Globalization has meant that the whole world is connected to the whole world's problems. Yet most of today's students live in a world no bigger than a cell phone keypad.
So how do you explain to them that the clothes on their backs may be sewn by slave labor in Asia, or how international human trafficking may be behind an Internet porn site?
Tim Maxwell, an award-winning poet who teaches at the College of San Mateo, said the basic task of reading is becoming harder each year for the Facebook generation. "To bring unpleasant and challenging ideas into their world is really difficult," he said. He described "young people's increasing use of social media and other technologies that, rather [than] widening their worlds, effectively narrows them" to what is pleasurably entertaining.
The remedy? In an unusual move, Stanford is linking arms with educators in California community colleges for a four-year project called Stanford Human Rights Education Initiative. Following a conference last June on "Teaching Human Rights in an International Context," which launched the project, Stanford has named eight new "Human Rights Fellows" from California's community colleges. Maxwell is one of them.
For more than 12.4 million young Americans, teaching takes place in one of the nearly 1,200 community colleges across the nation – and about a quarter of those community colleges are in California. But few major universities have engaged these institutions.
The new initiative will train students to be engaged as global citizens, said William Hanson, another fellow, who holds a law degree from Columbia and teaches at Chabot College. "We have to find a way to wriggle in."
With a stipend and "visiting scholar" status, the human rights fellows will work with the Stanford Program on International and Cross-Cultural Education (91³Ô¹Ï) and the Division of International Comparative and Area Studies (ICA) to develop human rights curricula, plan human rights conferences and develop the . The human rights curriculum they design could, they hope, seed similar programs across the country and the world.
My hope is that human rights will form a central part of every college curriculum – not only as a topic, but as a lens through which to see all topics. Helen Stacy
"My hope is that human rights will form a central part of every college curriculum" – not only as a topic, but as a lens through which to see all topics, said Helen Stacy, director of the program on human rights at the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law at Stanford's Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies.
She said that human rights is typically pigeonholed as a "soft subject" in the social sciences or humanities, but such funneling "misses engineering students and IT students and math students."
For example, she said, students of computer science or statistics could be engaged in mapping human trafficking or drug smuggling. Young economists could study the supply-and-demand dynamics of crime.
The effort "to speak a language that speaks to all of the disciplines" could result in a human rights curriculum that extends into the high school and even the elementary school level, Stacy said. Moreover, the planned website with an online curriculum could help educators the world over – even an isolated educator sitting in Uzbekistan, she said.
For the Stanford faculty and staff who created the course, the beginnings go back a long way and are the fruition of years of experience, research and thought.
Gary Mukai's experience of human rights violations was firsthand: the director of 91³Ô¹Ï recalls a childhood as a farm worker whose Japanese-American parents, also farm workers, had been detained by their country during World War II. "I grew up puzzled about many of their stories, and their stories certainly influenced my interest in developing educational materials about civil and human rights for young students," he said.
For instance, he recalled uncles and other relatives who volunteered or were drafted by the U.S. Army from behind barbed wire. Or stories about his relatives who received posthumous medals for their sons' service while they still lived behind barbed wire.
Richard Roberts, a Stanford professor of history, remembered reading William Hinton's Fanshen: A Documentary of Revolution in a Chinese Village, years ago. The questions it raised fascinated him: "Who will teach the teacher? Where do we learn? Who do we learn from? Who has the power to teach?"
He said universities typically teach an "isolated, really small segment" of the general population. Roberts, who studies domestic violence and human trafficking in Africa, said that when it comes to human rights, "That's not enough. We have to go beyond the rarefied segment."
One of the people on this frontline of teaching is Enrique Luna, a history instructor at Gilroy's Gavilan College. For him, Stanford represents something of a return: his father had been a cook at the university's dorms. Now Luna is an educator who looks for opportunities for students to participate with direct aid in their local communities and also with groups such as the Zapatistas of Chiapas and the Tarahumara of northern Mexico.
To reach his students, he said, he creates loops "back and forth between reading and doing." When students are doing, they have a reason to read, and when they read, they are able to fix their understandings through application. "They do their best work when they're doing something. That's where the other disciplines pour in," he said.
A lunchtime session last summer was popping with ideas: Hanson was enthusiastic about possibly broadcasting Stanford lectures on human rights on his college's television station.
Another human rights fellow, Sadie Reynolds from Cabrillo College in Aptos, was just happy for the time to think and reflect. "It's hard to articulate hopes this early in the planning. I have a selfish hope of learning about this model so I can apply it in the classroom." She said she will present what she's learned at Stanford to a workshop at Cabrillo.
Those on the frontline of teaching don't get such opportunities very often: "It's difficult to find time to develop this at community colleges," she said.
The arrival of Buddhism in Korea led to the fundamental transformation of local society and a blossoming of Korean civilization. Situated at the end of a long trade route spanning the Eurasian continent, the three Korean kingdoms of Koguryo (37 BCE-668), Paekche (18 BCE-663), and Silla (57 BCE-935) not only benefited from the intellectual sophistication of the Buddhist thought system, but also absorbed the numerous continental cultural products and ideas carried by Buddhist monks. It was the beginning of a golden age on the peninsula.
The Stanford Program on International and Cross-Cultural Education (91³Ô¹Ï) honored two of the top students of the 2011 at a Japan Day event at 91³Ô¹Ï on August 19, 2011. The RSP, an online course on Japan and U.S.–Japan relations that is offered to high school sophomores, juniors, and seniors across the United States, recognized the students based on their coursework and exceptional research essays.
Japan Day featured welcoming comments by Professor Coit D. Blacker, FSI Director; an overview of the RSP by Naomi Funahashi, RSP Coordinator and Instructor; opening remarks on Japan and U.S.–Japan relations by Consul General Hiroshi Inomata, Consulate General of Japan in San Francisco; and a lecture on post-earthquake Japan by Professor Emeritus Nisuke Ando, Kyoto University and Doshisha University. The program was highlighted by presentations by student honorees Lindsey Henderson and Mathieu Rolfo, who wrote research essays on Japan’s use of stories to construct a national identity, and on Okinawa’s role post-World War II, respectively. Professor Emeritus and Professor Phillip Lipscy commented on the students’ essays. Gary Mukai, 91³Ô¹Ï Director, facilitated the event.
Named in honor of former U.S. Ambassador to Japan Edwin O. Reischauer, a leading educator and noted scholar of Japanese history and culture, the RSP annually selects 25–30 exceptional high school students from throughout the United States to engage in intensive study of Japan. Through Internet-based lectures and discussions, the program provides students with a broad overview of Japan, with a special focus on the U.S.–Japan relationship. Prominent scholars affiliated with 91³Ô¹Ï, the University of Tokyo, the University of Hawaii, and other institutions provide lectures and engage students in online dialogue. The RSP received funding for the first three years (2004–06) of the program from the United States-Japan Foundation. Funding for 2007 and 2008 was provided by the Center for Global Partnership, the Japan Foundation. Funding since 2009 has been provided by the Japan Fund, FSI, 91³Ô¹Ï.
The RSP is currently accepting applications for the 2012 program. For more information about the RSP, visit or contact Gary Mukai, RSP Coordinator and Instructor, at nfunahashi@stanford.edu.
616 Jane Stanford Way
Encina Hall, E005
Stanford, CA 94305-6060
Dr. HyoJung Jang is an instructor for the Sejong Korea Scholars Program at the Stanford Program on International and Cross-Cultural Education (91³Ô¹Ï). She holds a Ph.D. in Educational Theory and Policy as well as in Comparative and International Education from Penn State University, and an M.A. in East Asian Studies from 91³Ô¹Ï. Previously, HyoJung was a curriculum writer at 91³Ô¹Ï, where she co-authored curriculum units on Korea and China, including , , and .
Prior to her current appointment at 91³Ô¹Ï, HyoJung worked at the World Bank in the education sector for two years, supporting the efforts of the Ministry of Education of Laos in expanding the access to quality education for all children, particularly the most disadvantaged children in the poorest and remotest rural areas. Toward that end, she has conducted research and policy analysis on the basic education sub-sector in Laos, with a focus on gender, inclusive education, teacher professional development, and education financing, and collaborated with the Ministry and international stakeholders for policy reforms, strategy formulation, project design, implementation, and monitoring and evaluation efforts.
HyoJung’s academic research has been presented at national and international conferences, including the annual meetings of the Comparative and International Education Society in Washington D.C., Vancouver, Canada, Atlanta, Georgia, and Mexico City, Mexico, and the American Educational Research Association in Washington D.C. and New York, NY.
HyoJung’s research agenda broadly centers on the relationship between broader institutional characteristics (e.g., school-, educational system-, and national-levels) and gaps in student achievement outcomes across gender and class. For instance, one of her earlier studies examining the relationship between the national-level gender egalitarian measure and the gender gap in mathematics achievement cross-nationally was presented at the highlighted session of the Large Scale Cross National Special Interest Group at the 2015 Comparative and International Education Society. Another key area of HyoJung’s research focuses on non-cognitive skills and achievement, and how broader institutional contexts shape that relationship. Her dissertation examined the relationship between a non-cognitive skill and academic achievement, showing how that relationship varies across more than 60 countries and what would explain the cross-national variation.
HyoJung has led and presented at teacher seminars at Duke and Stanford Universities, as well as at the National Council for the Social Studies. She has also presented at the East Asia Regional Council of Schools in Thailand.
The 2011 91³Ô¹Ï catalog is now available. 91³Ô¹Ï has four curriculum units featured in this year's catalog.
Inter-Korean Relations: Rivalry, Reconciliation, and Reunification
This curriculum unit provides students with a multifaceted view of inter-Korean relations, asking them to study the relationship through the lenses of history, politics, economics, security, and socio-cultural and human dynamics. Finally, students apply their knowledge of inter-Korean relations to consider future prospects for the Korean peninsula.
Indigo: A Color That Links the World
This teacher's guide was developed specifically for teachers in the New York City Public Schools to encourage the use of Indigo: A Color That Links the World, Calliope: Exploring World History (September 2010, Volume 21, Number 1) and the study of the Silk Road in their classrooms. The indigo issue of Calliope and the teacher's guide were developed in collaboration with Yo-Yo Ma's Silk Road Project as part of its Silk Road Connect education initiative.
Early Encounters: The First Japanese Embassy to the United States, 1860
This graphic novel tells the story of the first Japanese diplomatic mission to leave Japan after over two centuries of isolation under the Tokugawa Shogunate. Chronicling encounters with foreign leaders, cross-cultural mishaps, and unlikely friendships that develop despite barriers of language and politics, the graphic novel follows the embassy's voyage to San Francisco, Washington D.C., and other cities on the East coast.
Sadako's Paper Cranes and Lessons of Peace
In collaboration with the Tribute World Trade Center Visitor Center (Tribute Center) in New York City, 91³Ô¹Ï has developed educational materials that help students to reflect upon the impact of September 11th and the humanitarian efforts that took place in the aftermath of the attack on the World Trade Center.