On February 1, 2012, the Reischauer Scholars Program (RSP) embarked on its ninth year with a new class of 27 exceptional high school students from across the United States. Named in honor of former Ambassador to Japan Edwin O. Reischauer, the RSP is an online course about Japan and U.S.–Japan relations for high school sophomores, juniors, and seniors that is supported by a grant from the Center for Global Partnership, The Japan Foundation, and the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies. The primary instructor of the RSP is Naomi Funahashi, Stanford Program on International and Cross-Cultural Education (SPICE). The RSP was established in 2002 with a grant from the United States–Japan Foundation.

The RSP is a rigorous, college-level course that provides students with a broad overview of Japanese history, literature, religion, art, politics, economics, and contemporary society, with a special focus on the U.S.–Japan relationship. Ambassadors, top scholars, and experts throughout the United States and Japan provide online lectures and engage students in live discussion sessions. Students also complete readings and weekly assignments, with the coursework culminating in an independent research project.

Students were welcomed to the course with recently videotaped remarks by Ambassador Ichiro Fujisaki, Japanese ambassador to the United States, and Ambassador John Roos, U.S. ambassador to Japan. Ambassador Roos commented, “The relationship between the United States and Japan today is closer than it has ever been. As strong as our ties are, though, they are not self-sustaining. I encourage all of you to become the ‘Reischauers’ of your time, guiding the way to an even stronger friendship between our two great countries.”

The 2012 Reischauer Scholars are deeply engaged in the course, and have been active participants in meaningful dialogue about a variety of Japan-related topics. Topics discussed thus far in 2012 include Shinto and Buddhism in Japanese society, feudal Japan, the modernization of the Meiji era, Japanese colonial legacies, World War Two and war memory, and the impact of the 3.11.11 earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear disaster in northeastern Japan. Concerning 3.11.11, Ambassador Fujisaki commented, “The tremendous goodwill and support from American friends and people around the world… we will never forget it. We count on you to be a future bridge between Americans and the Japanese.”

The 2012 RSP class is comprised of students from the following 14 states: California, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Jersey, New York, South Dakota, Texas, Virginia, Washington, and Wisconsin. Upon completion of the RSP in June 2012, students will earn Stanford Continuing Studies Program credit and a Certificate of Completion from SPICE, Stanford University. The RSP has the goal of equipping participants with a rare degree of expertise about Japan that may have a significant impact on their choice of study and future career. Since SPICE started offering the RSP in 2003, Funahashi has noticed that many RSP students have continued to pursue Japan-related academic and extracurricular interests in college and beyond.

The advisory committee members are Consul General Hiroshi Inomata, Consulate General of Japan in San Francisco; Ambassador Michael H. Armacost, Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center, Stanford University; Professor Emeritus Daniel I. Okimoto, Stanford University; Professor Emeritus Nisuke Ando, Doshisha University; Professor Phillip Lipscy, Stanford University; and Gary Mukai, Director, SPICE, Stanford University.

The 2012 SPICE catalog is now available.  SPICE developed five new curriculum units in 2011.

Nuclear Tipping Point: A Teacher's Guide

The documentary Nuclear Tipping Point tells the story of how four Cold War-era leaders—former Secretary of State George Shultz, former Secretary of Defense Bill Perry, former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, and former Senator Sam Nunn—came together to address the threat of nuclear power falling into the wrong hands. Produced by the Nuclear Threat Initiative (NTI), the film is narrated by actor Michael Douglas and earned wide media attention when it came out in 2010. 

Now, through a partnership between SPICE and NTI, the film is accompanied by a new teacher’s guide for classroom use of the documentary. The guide underscores the importance of teaching for critical literacy and addresses specific connections to the National Standards for History in the Schools. Student activities include multiple choice quizzes, persuasive writing and analysis, and ideas for creative projects. 

China in Transition: Economic Development, Migration, and Education

China in Transition introduces students to modern China as a case study of economic development. What are the characteristics of the development process, and why does it occur? How is development experienced by the people who live through it, and how are their lives impacted? How do traditional cultural values—such as China’s emphasis on education—contribute to and/or evolve as a result of modernization? Students examine these questions and others as they investigate the roles that migration, urbanization, wealth, poverty, and education play in a country in transition.

Legacies of the Vietnam War

The 20-year war in Vietnam was a prolonged and devastating conflict. In its aftermath, South Vietnamese civilians fled from the Communist takeover on perilous boat journeys that led to the formation of diasporic communities. Others faced lengthy detention in post-war re-education camps. This unit aims to help students learn and appreciate these and other important legacies that have shaped Vietnam and the world at large.

Angel Island: The Chinese-American Experience

Angel Island: The Chinese-American Experience is a graphic novel that tells the story of Chinese immigrants detained at Angel Island Immigration Station in San Francisco Bay between 1910 and 1940. It offers a stark contrast to the more celebrated stories of European immigrants arriving at Ellis Island on the East Coast and poses important questions about U.S. immigration policy, both past and present.

An Introduction to Ukraine

As the second-largest country in Europe, Ukraine has always stood at a crossroads of cultural influences. It is a key part of Europe–and the management of its relationships with other countries (in particular, Russia) is key to the future of the whole of eastern Europe. This unit seeks to provide high school teachers and students with a broad introduction to Ukrainian history with activities that touch upon Ukrainian culture.

"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 (SPICE), 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.

Stanford helps bring human rights to community college classrooms

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 (SPICE) and the Division of International Comparative and Area Studies (ICA) to develop human rights curricula, plan human rights conferences and develop the initiative's website. 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 SPICE 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.

On June 4, 2011, SPICE co-sponsored a conference, “Teaching Human Rights in a Global Context,” with the Program on Human Rights (Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law, FSI), the Division of International Comparative and Area Studies (ICA), and the Stanford Humanities Center. Fifty community college and high school faculty attended a full day of lectures, panel discussions, and small-group work. Dr. Helen Stacy, Director of the Program on Human Rights, set the context for the conference, and her remarks were followed by a lecture on “The Globalization of Human Rights Education” by Professor Francisco Ramirez, Stanford School of Education. 

Educators discussed, shared, and learned about each other’s experiences of teaching human rights in a wide range of world areas, academic disciplines, and classroom settings. The rudiments of syllabus construction, methods of incorporating a human rights component into traditional courses, sample lesson plans, best ways to make use of interdisciplinary pedagogic resources and materials, and strategies for reaching diverse student populations were topics of discussion. One panel, “Incorporating Human Rights into Your Syllabus,” was facilitated by SPICE’s Jonas Edman. Jonas, Michael Lopez of the Program on Human Rights, and Dr. Robert Wessling, Center for Russian, East European & Eurasian Studies, ICA, served as the primary organizers of the conference, and Dr. Laura Hubbard, Center for African Studies, ICA, served as the emcee. Megan Gorman, Center for Latin American Studies, ICA, and John Groschwitz, Center for East Asian Studies, ICA, also contributed to the organization and promotion of the conference.

As a follow-up to the conference, ICA and the Program on Human Rights will sponsor a limited number of year-long Human Rights Curricular Fellows in the coming 2011–12 academic year. Fellows must teach at an accredited California community college. Also, Jonas will be developing curricular lessons in consultation with some of the educators who attended the conference.

The conference was funded primarily by the Department of Education (Title VI) and ICA.