NEWS

The following article was written by Japan ICU Foundation trustee Bill Lesher. Bill will be completing his term as a trustee at the end of this month. His support and guidance over the years has been invaluable, particularly in the area he is most passionate about, interreligious understanding.

Emiko Imori is an ICU student spending her junior year studying abroad at the University of California, Berkley. She is also one of four students to receive the JICUF’s Study Abroad Scholarship, which was inaugurated this year.

The Japan ICU Foundation conducted a recent interview with Kosinara Sok, a recipient of the jointly funded Japan ICU Foundation/ICU/United Board Peace Studies Scholarship. He is a graduate student in Peace Studies at ICU.

Thomas John Hastings, JICUF Senior Research Fellow in Science & Religion, has been busy this past year organizing an academic conference and completing a book on Kagawa Toyohiko.

Anatolii Yonathan Ast studied East Asian Studies at University of Virginia and spent one summer at ICU’s Summer Courses in Japanese program. Anatolii now lives in NYC where he is focusing his studies on classical Japanese, translates Japanese to English for Japan Today and tutors Japanese language students via Skype. In this interview he tells us more about his passion for the Japanese language and what ICU means to him.

Yuki Nakao is an ICU student spending her junior year studying abroad at the University of Pennsylvania. She is also one of four students to receive the JICUF’s Study Abroad Scholarship, which was inaugurated this year.

ICU President Junko Hibiya was recently quoted in an article by Devin Stewart in Foreign Affairs, a publication of the Council on Foreign Relations. President Hibiya was interviewed late last year by Stewart, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs, as part of his research into the changing role of women within Japanese society.

US Ambassador to Japan Caroline Kennedy visited ICU on Tuesday, January 27 to meet with ICU students and to plant a dogwood tree as part of the “Friendship Blossoms: Dogwood Tree Initiative,” which was initiated in 2012 during a visit by then Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda to President Obama.

The 34th Joint ICU-Sophia International Symposium was held on the ICU campus on December 20. This annual event, co-sponsored by ICU and Sophia University, brings together an international group of noted scholars to discuss specific interdisciplinary themes related to peace and conflict resolution. This year’s symposium was titled “Beyond Nationalism? Peacebuilding and Religion in Asia.”

ICU graduate Ariana King (June ’14) spent four years at ICU and was very involved on campus, both in the classroom and in the Global House dormitory. SInce then, she has maintained an active connection to both ICU and the Japan ICU Foundation.