On May 17 and 18, JICUF co-hosted a conference titled “Expanding Refugee Education Pathways” at Sophia University with the Global Task Force on Third Country Education Pathways (GTF), Pathways Japan, and Sophia University. About 60 participants from 20 countries gathered to discuss how to increase educational opportunities for refugee students to provide a safe pathway to a third country.
From March 30 to April 1, third-year undergraduate student at ICU Hikari Hirata, PhD candidate at Waseda University Suzan Housseini, and JICUF Vice President Aki Takada attended a conference titled “Students as Partners: Equipping Student Leaders as Partners for Sustainable Humanitarian Action” at Wilfrid Laurier University in Waterloo, Canada.
In July, JICUF launched a series of online meetings with UNHCR to discuss higher education initiatives for refugees in Asia and the Pacific with institutions across the region. Two sessions have already been held, with about 80 participants representing close to 20 countries across the region. Two more sessions will be held in September.
Earlier this month, JICUF Executive Director Paul Hastings was invited by the Institute of International Education to speak at a workshop in Vietnam on the topic of refugee higher education. JICUF’s scholarship program for Syrian students, the Syrian Scholars Initiative, is the only private sponsorship program hosted by a university in Japan and has garnered much interest among the international community. ICU Professor Osamu Arakaki also participated in the workshop.
On December 1st and 2nd, JICUF and UNHCR Japan co-hosted a symposium at the International House of Japan in Tokyo entitled “Supporting Refugees in Higher Education: Japanese Models and Next Steps.” Close to 80 participants including representatives of Japanese universities, NPOs and government agencies participated to discuss existing programs for supporting refugee students and to explore ways to strengthen collaboration among institutions.
On September 20th, a Rethinking Peace Studies seminar was held on the ICU campus. It was hosted by the Rotary Peace Center and was organized by ICU Professors Giorgio Shani and Jeremiah Alberg. Professor Hartmut Behr of Newcastle University was invited to present a paper titled “Peace Through Dialogue Across Differences.”
JICUF awarded Associate Professor of Linguistics Seunghun Lee a grant of ¥300,000 this fall to host the Asian Junior Linguists (AJL) Conference at ICU. Professor Lee organized the conference with Professor Tomoyuki Yoshida, the current chair of ICU’s psychology and linguistics department, to provide a forum for pre-doctoral linguistics students to present their work. The conference took place from December 2nd (Friday) to 4th (Sunday) in ICU’s Dialogue House.
From June 2nd to 4th, the Japan ICU Foundation and ICU’s Social Science Research Institute hosted the Rethinking Peace Studies (RPS) conference in the Kiyoshi Togasaki Memorial Dialogue House on the ICU campus.
