Rylan Sekiguchi has been selected as a cohort fellow for the Movers and Shakas program (M&S)—an initiative to attract remote workers, especially returning kamaʻāina (Hawaiʻi residents), to create a more innovative, resilient, and sustainable Hawaiʻi. The rationale for the establishment of M&S is based on the following.

“Brain drain” is an enduring challenge for Hawaiʻi as we lose key talent and family members to economic opportunities on the continent. M&S focuses on “brain gain” to grow and diversify Hawaiʻi’s economy so that local folks can come home and never have to leave in the first place.

A recent article, “Hawaiʻi’s Population Drain Outpaces Most States—Again,” in Honolulu Civil Beat features comments by M&S Director Nicole Lim. In the article, she notes, “The overall goal is really brain gain. How to tie people into Hawaiʻi for the good of Hawaiʻi.”

Selected from thousands of applicants, Sekiguchi is one of 50 in the second M&S cohort contributing to the community through volunteer projects and developing personal and professional relationships with people from diverse backgrounds. Sekiguchi is working primarily with the PA‘I Foundation, which is led by Executive Director Vicky Holt Takamine, a respected kumu hula (master teacher of hula), well-known Native Hawaiian advocate, and valuable proponent of M&S in the local community.

The Movers and Shakas program is based on three key pillars.

• Learn: Cultural education helps cohort fellows understand the historical and current context of Hawaiʻi, allowing them to build stronger personal relationships and connect more deeply with Hawaiʻi.
• Contribute: Volunteering allows cohort fellows to contribute their unique professional skillsets and experiences to local nonprofits and startups while learning about Hawaiʻi from community leaders in a reciprocal relationship.
• Connect: Community building centers around the two-way sharing of knowledge, ideas, and culture to foster strong bonds between individuals, within the cohort, with volunteer partner orgs, and with the general public.
   

Following a recent visit to the Bishop Museum, designated as the Hawaiʻi State Museum of Natural and Cultural History, Sekiguchi reflected on his experience. “Though I was born and raised in Hawaiʻi, it wasn’t until I moved to the continent as a student at Stanford University that I began to truly recognize my connection to this place. After being away for 19 years, M&S has been an incredibly meaningful experience for me and an extraordinary opportunity to reconnect with Hawaiʻi. It’s also been inspiring to connect with my M&S cohort mates, many of whom also have personal connections to the state. Someday, I hope to connect my SPICE work more closely with the M&S community.”

December 7, 2021 marked the 80th anniversary of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. On the occasion of the anniversary, Professor Yujin Yaguchi, Graduate School of Interdisciplinary Information Studies, University of Tokyo, gave a lecture on Pearl Harbor to high school students enrolled in SPICE’s Stanford e-Japan, which is taught by Instructor Meiko Kotani. Yaguchi has been an advisor to both Stanford e-Japan and SPICE’s Reischauer Scholars Program (RSP), an online course about Japan and U.S.–Japan relations that is offered to high school students in the United States and is taught by Instructor Naomi Funahashi. From 2004 to 2009, I worked with Yaguchi during the “Pearl Harbor: History, Memory, and Memorial” summer institutes for American and Japanese teachers that were hosted by the AsiaPacificEd Program for Schools, East-West Center, Honolulu.

Prior to Yaguchi’s lecture, Kotani compiled questions from her students to share with Yaguchi, and he used them to conceptualize his lecture. The students were also required to view a lecture by Stanford Emeritus Professor Peter Duus on the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. Yaguchi informed the students that he would be introducing diverse perspectives on the Pearl Harbor attack and also encouraged students to think about the questions that they had written while he delivered his lecture. He encouraged them to consider two questions that he devised based on the students’ questions: “Why do you ask such questions?” and “What do the questions tell you about how you think of the past and today?” Yaguchi noted, “I am kind of spinning the table around.”

Yaguchi set the context for his talk by giving a brief geographic and historical background of Pearl Harbor. He pointed out that for ancient Hawaiians, the name of the harbor now known as Pearl Harbor was Puʻuloa, regarded as the home of the shark goddess, Kaʻahupāhau. Following the overthrow of the Hawaiian Kingdom, the U.S. Navy established a base on the island in 1899. Over the years, Pearl Harbor, along with the Naval Base San Diego, remained a main base for the U.S. Pacific Fleet after World War II. He also noted that Pearl Harbor is the most popular destination in Hawaii for American visitors.

Yaguchi pointed out that the excellent questions from the students were primarily about the United States and Japan. He posed the question, “But is Pearl Harbor really only about the U.S. and Japan?” and encouraged students to critically consider the following points, which were the five key points of his lecture.

1. We need to see history in a longer and wider perspective.
2. History is not only about powerful nation states.
3. History is not only about (mostly male) politicians and leaders making decisions.
4. Pearl Harbor means different things to many people.
5. We need to see Pearl Harbor from multiple angles—especially from the perspectives of race and gender (non-white, non-Japanese, non-male)—those who have been making/writing history.
    

He followed up each point with specific questions. For example, “What does Pearl Harbor mean to the indigenous people of Hawaii or the Native Hawaiians?”; and “Was Pearl Harbor an attack on the United States” or “Was Pearl Harbor an attack on Native Hawaiians as well?” were follow-up questions to point number four. Yaguchi pointed out that he was born and raised in Hokkaido, the northern-most main island of Japan, and to his surprise one of the students mentioned that he lives in Kushiro, a city in Hokkaido that is Yaguchi’s ancestral hometown. Since the Ainu are an indigenous people from the northern region of Japan, particularly Hokkaido, Yaguchi’s questions prompted some students to think about parallels between the Ainu and Native Hawaiians.

The five key points of his lecture led to many questions during the question-and-answer period. One student asked, “Is there anything that you keep in mind when teaching Japanese about American history or specific events such as Pearl Harbor?” Yaguchi replied, “At the University of Tokyo, I really encourage students to think about why you learn history in specific ways. Who decides what you need to study? I also encourage students to be critical of the education that you receive. University years are a time for you to reassess what you learn… We living in Japan or educating in Japan tend to connect Pearl Harbor as the beginning and the atomic bombs as the ending… or the cause and the effect. And this is a very common way of framing history. People in the United States do not necessarily think so.”

While listening to Yaguchi’s lecture, I reflected upon UTokyo Compass, which is the University of Tokyo President Teruo Fujii’s statement of the guiding principles of the University of Tokyo—the ideals to which the university should aspire and the direction it should take, under the title “Into a Sea of Diversity: Creating the Future through Dialogue.” In his lecture, Yaguchi extended the reach of UTokyo Compass to Stanford e-Japan high school students throughout Japan. Kotani and I were most appreciative the ripple effect of UTokyo Compass that he provided through his lecture. Kotani stated, “I am so grateful to Professor Yaguchi for introducing my students to not only diverse perspectives on Pearl Harbor but also for engaging them in questions related to epistemology.”

UTokyo Compass prompted me think about the importance of one’s “moral compass,” or a person’s ability to judge what is right and wrong and to act accordingly. Through Stanford e-Japan and the RSP, Kotani, Funahashi, and I hope to encourage high school students to remember to navigate their academic and professional careers with their own moral compass. In addition, as a compass always follows true north, I think that leaders should follow a set of unwavering personal values, including integrity. The students in Stanford e-Japan and the RSP are among the best and brightest in Japan and the United States and future leaders. I encourage them to singlehandedly change the world, to be changemakers.

SPICE recommends the use of a 13-minute lecture—titled “Civil and Human Rights: The Martin Luther King, Jr. Legacy” by Dr. Clayborne Carson—for use at the high school and college levels. Dr. Carson is the Martin Luther King, Jr. Centennial Professor Emeritus at the Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law, FSI, at Stanford University. In the video lecture, Professor Carson not only discusses Martin Luther King, Jr. as a civil rights leader but also examines his larger vision of seeing the African American struggle as a worldwide struggle for citizenship rights and human rights.

A free classroom-friendly discussion guide for this video is available for download on the website above. The organizing questions that are listed in the guide are:

• What are civil and human rights?
• What were the significant achievements of the Civil Rights Movement?
• What is Martin Luther King, Jr.’s legacy in terms of civil and human rights?
• How are Martin Luther King, Jr.’s vision, ideas, and leadership still relevant today?
• How is the American Civil Rights Movement similar and different from other rights-related movements?

SPICE also recommends the resources on the following websites for use in classrooms.

• The Martin Luther King, Jr. Research and Education Institute supports a broad range of educational activities illuminating Dr. King’s life and the movements he inspired. Dr. Carson is the founding director of the Institute.

• The World House Project works to realize Martin Luther King, Jr.’s vision of the world as a large house in which “we must learn somehow to live with each other in peace.” Dr. Carson is the director of the Project.

Moving from Tokyo to California in second grade, I knew very little about my home country. I may have looked and spoken Japanese, but the more time I spent in the United States, the more I felt like my identity strayed away from my Japanese cultural roots. For most of my life, I was hesitant to proudly call myself a Japanese American simply due to the lack of knowledge I had about my home country.

That was until I stumbled upon Stanford’s Reischauer Scholars Program (RSP), an online program that introduced Japanese history, society, culture, and the U.S.–Japan relationship. With its focus on deepening cross-cultural knowledge, this was the perfect opportunity to reconnect with my cultural roots.

On the first day of the RSP, I was astounded by the diversity of the students that were present. Students in the program were from all around the country, each showing unique individual interests and strengths that they added to the class. Alongside these friendly and committed students led by our brilliant instructor Ms. Naomi Funahashi, the RSP provided a motivated and collaborative environment to learn about my home country. The activities in our virtual classes included not only the review of insightful readings that we were assigned, but also the once-in-a-lifetime opportunities to meet top scholars and experts in U.S.–Japan relations and ambassadors. Having had the chance to converse with these speakers, we were introduced to significant ideas and insights about the U.S.–Japan relationship that developed my diverse perspective on the topic.

Throughout the course of the program, the inclusive environment of the virtual classrooms allowed us to comfortably share and challenge ideas we would bring up. With each of us from very different backgrounds, we were able to have insightful conversations about the cause of isolationism in Japan, the effect of industrialization on the Japanese economy, and many other concepts about Japanese history and culture.

To me, the most memorable days of the RSP were the joint virtual classrooms with the Stanford e-Japan program. Through these joint classrooms, we had the opportunity to converse with Japanese high school students, where we were able to deepen our mutual cross-cultural understanding. From the bunkasai, to the undokai, to juku, these joint classrooms gave us the opportunity to learn more about the exciting Japanese culture and contemporary society from a primary source. With nearly no opportunity to speak with Japanese students outside of my family during my time in the United States, I was able to take away many valuable insights I keep to this day thanks to the unique opportunity given by the RSP. With each meeting with these students, I was given a clearer image of what it truly meant to be “Japanese.”

SPICE and Stanford Global Studies are pleased to announce an upcoming Education Partnership for Internationalizing Curriculum (EPIC) workshop for community college instructors that will feature a talk by Dr. Herbert Lin on his latest book, Cyber Threats and Nuclear Weapons. This free virtual workshop will take place on Tuesday, January 25, 4:00pm–6:00pm (Pacific Time). All attendees will receive a copy of Dr. Lin’s book after the workshop. Please see the workshop description below for more information as well as the registration link.

The Stanford Program on International and Cross-Cultural Education (SPICE) and Stanford Global Studies (SGS) are continuing their partnership to offer engaging professional development opportunities for community college instructors who wish to internationalize their curriculum. This two-hour workshop is presented by SPICE and SGS as part of the Education Partnership for Internationalizing Curriculum (EPIC) and is supported by Department of Education Title VI funding.

This workshop will feature a talk by Dr. Herbert Lin on his latest book, Cyber Threats and Nuclear Weapons. Participants will have the opportunity to ask questions and discuss with Dr. Lin the cyber threat across the U.S. nuclear enterprise.

As noted by Stanford University Press, the publisher of Cyber Threats and Nuclear Weapons, “The technology controlling United States nuclear weapons predates the Internet. Updating the technology for the digital era is necessary, but it comes with the risk that anything digital can be hacked. Moreover, using new systems for both nuclear and non-nuclear operations will lead to levels of nuclear risk hardly imagined before. This book is the first to confront these risks comprehensively.” (https://www.sup.org/books/title/?id=34611)

Dr. Herbert Lin is Senior Research Scholar at the Center for International Security and Cooperation, FSI, and Hank J. Holland Fellow in Cyber Policy and Security, Hoover Institution.

Please register here at your earliest convenience and before January 21, 2022.

The following is Part 6 of a multiple-part series. To read previous installments in this series, please visit the following articles: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, and Part 5.

On December 8, 2020, January 19, 2021, March 16, 2021, May 18, 2021, and July 20, 2021, SPICE posted five articles that highlight reflections from 41 students on the question, “What does it mean to be an American?” Part 6 features eight additional reflections.

The free educational website “What Does It Mean to Be an American?” offers six lessons on immigration, civic engagement, leadership, civil liberties & equity, justice & reconciliation, and U.S.–Japan relations. The lessons encourage critical thinking through class activities and discussions. On March 24, 2021, SPICE’s Rylan Sekiguchi was honored by the Association for Asian Studies for his authorship of the lessons that are featured on the website, which was developed by the Mineta Legacy Project in partnership with SPICE.

Since the website launched in September 2020, SPICE has invited students to review and share their reflections on the lessons. Below are the reflections of eight students. The reflections below do not necessarily reflect those of the SPICE staff.

Aime Chao, California
The American Dream is a set of ideals: democracy, liberty, opportunity, and equality. These ideals are not necessarily the reality; for example, my Japanese American grandmother was unconstitutionally incarcerated during WWII. Yet, the same ideals made it possible for my family from East Asia to build a life in the United States. The juxtaposition of the American Dream and the facts on the ground unveils the characteristic of America that distinguishes what it means to be American—that everyone has a voice. I am growing up in a time when my country is increasingly polarized, and it can be challenging to identify or be identified with being American. However, the perseverance involved in bettering our future by bridging our reality with our ideals makes me proud of my identity as an American.

Jiahao Guo, Ohio
America is divided. And the division breeds inequality. But there is an often-ignored divide, a geographical one: Rural America vs. Urban America. As an Ohioan, the stark differences between the two Americas are apparent, encompassing all aspects of life, regardless of race or culture. Compared with urban America, the average income is much lower. Infrastructure is ignored. Education opportunities are far less accessible. And rural America is often forgotten or even dismissed by the rest of the country. There’s even a term for this: Flyover States. States so unimportant you can just fly over them. I am constantly reminded of this divide. Some say that this is just a fact to be accepted. But in the land of opportunity, we must do our best to bring about a more equal landscape.

Noah Kurima, California
America is a unique experiment. Our founding fathers concocted a country not based on race but on the unfathomable-at-the-time ideals of freedom, equality, and opportunity. To me, to be an American means to aspire for these ideals during smooth sailing, but also when faced with adversity. There is so much noise right now—the pandemic, school shootings, the recent rise of racial hate and violence. But we must look around and observe the appalling abuses of authoritarian regimes around the world. We must acknowledge the immense power of our rights and freedoms, as well as their vulnerability. We must be willing to spend the long nights in the laboratory that is our democracy, avoiding corrosive missteps and working to perfect the seemingly volatile formula for liberty and justice for all.

Riya Narayan, Tennessee
The American Dream is the idea that our country fosters equality, peaceful opportunity, and the freedom to pursue life. It is through this simple notion that millions of people immigrate to the United States every single year, and it’s why my family immigrated here in 2011. What does this American Dream stand for? For me, it symbolizes the peaceful unity of people from different cultures, backgrounds, and identities. It represents the sharing of ideas and a drive for positive change. For my family, it represents a world of opportunity. My parents and I became American citizens in May 2019, and ever since, we have worked to uphold this purpose: to be a vessel for the innovation, creativity, and equality our country brings for the betterment of others. This, for me, is what it means to be an American.

Jack Pelster-Wiebe, Minnesota
I have a complicated relationship with America and American-ness. I am not legally a citizen, but I am a white person who’s lived in the United States for the majority of my life. I also speak English with an American-adjacent Canadian accent, and so I’ve rarely been treated as though I don’t belong here. But still, I am not an American. When I think about what divides my American friends from me, I find largely nebulous contradictions that can’t apply to everyone. Then maybe there is no one defining characteristic of an American, nothing that makes them any more or less citizen than the neighbors around them. It’s up to each person to define themselves what makes them American, decide whether they want to tie themselves to the land, border, culture, or whatever feels like “America” to them.

Kevin Phan, Hawaii
I believe it is the cultural practices of every nation that make them distinct. It is what makes the German people German. It is what makes the Chinese people Chinese. Our culture is what makes us American. One doesn’t need to enjoy every single tenant of American culture, but rather enough of it to where it has a strong influence in our lives. People around the world can enjoy things like the NBA, the Kardashians, and Taylor Swift, however, it is only Americans who are able to enjoy those things and more. Thus, it is not an appreciation of our history, nor our citizenship that make us American. It is the love and interests that we culminate through exposure and experience that makes us a part of this nation.

Kasha Tyranski, Florida
“The frog is almost five hundred million years old. Could you really say... that America… will last as long as... the frog?” I can respond to Catch-22’s question with one word: yes. Perhaps not a physical America—but the essence of what it means to be American will outlive the frog. To be American is to be a quilt—a patchwork of struggles, triumphs, and dreams that transcend time. America is my ancestors joining za chlebem with whispers of hope hidden in their coat folds. America is speaking in Tajiki to Dushanbean students, describing the skyscrapers of the place I call home. America is opportunity, dynamism, reflectiveness, and reconciling the past and present. It means being part of a story greater than myself—one that will continue being woven, with or without frogs.

Andy Wattanaskolpant, Tennessee
The concept of being American is rooted in complexity, curiosity, and change. It is based on the notion that our uniqueness and individuality help to unite us. Indeed, our country has been marred by a history of injustice that still impacts us today, however, the fundamental idea of being American is the eagerness to push for change. Over the years, I have noticed the dynamic change happening in America—within the police system, the political environment, the food industry. There is no doubt that the rudimentary attitude of change is continuing to perpetuate inside the minds of Americans. I find myself realizing that utilizing love as the drive for change makes the fight all the more worth it. To love is what makes me most American.

SPICE has been working with the Navajo Nation for ten years. SPICE featured Dr. Harold Begay in a webinar called “Indigenous Voices: Educational Perspectives from Navajo, Native Hawaiian, and Ainu Scholars in the Diaspora” on June 18, 2021. On the occasion of National Native American Heritage Day, November 26, 2021, SPICE invited him to share reflections on his life.

The Journey from a Community Trash Dump Scavenger to U.C. Berkeley

There was a youngster, a scavenger at an early age who had to rummage through the community trash dump for winter firewood and other discarded household items. This youngster from a single-parent home living on a traditional livestock economy on the Navajo Reservation, speaking only his Navajo language, entered school in his elementary school years and was able to attain nationally normed test scores on the Iowa Test of Basic Skills in the upper 80s and 90s. He initially spent his kindergarten and first grade years as a student running away along with other local school kids from a U.S. government boarding school. He was transferred to the local state public school, and beginning in second grade, his homeroom teacher stayed with him grade-to-grade (looping) through his high school years. He dropped out of high school but came back, graduated, and was recommended by an Arizona State Senator, as required for admission, and by his high school teachers, counselors, and principal, to attend the U.S. Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs, Colorado. He instead enrolled at Arizona State University with “Honors at Entrance.” He dropped out of pre-med, enlisted in the U.S. Marine Corps, and spent time in the Vietnam War before being medevacked out of Vietnam during the Tet Offensive in 1968. He spent some four weeks in the Naval Hospital in Guam, another month in the Naval Hospital in San Diego, and was honorably discharged from the U.S. Marine Corps Recruit Depot Casualty Company and is a disabled veteran.

After Vietnam and work in construction as an iron worker, he returned to college, graduated in three years with a B.A. in psychology and earned an M.A. in counseling the following year from Northern Arizona University. He then earned a Ph.D. in school finance and education administration from the University of Arizona.

He began work at the University of Arizona for four years, then moved out to the most disenfranchised under-resourced rural school sites—school sites with the most persistent student academic underachievement state-wide. He began the local community college branch, then Navajo Community College, now Diné College, for his community and surrounding area wherein he taught for a couple years. He worked at the lowest achieving district with the second lowest per pupil wealth in the county. Within the past five years, in concert with Stanford University, his district high school exceeded all the eight school districts’ math achievement in the county, including the school district with the highest per pupil wealth.

He has been appointed as a Visiting Scholar at the University of California, Berkeley. He has published in refereed journals, and contributed chapters to two scholarly books. He has been honored by the Arizona State Department of Education with the “Certificate of Distinction Award” and “Stars of Arizona Education”; by the Arizona Gifted Education Association as “Gifted Administrator of the Year”; and by the North Central Association of Elementary and Secondary Schools with the “National Innovative Award.” He has turned down speaking engagements from several state education departments, school board organizations, and universities in countries including China, England, New Zealand, and Ecuador.

His school district has worked in collaboration with Stanford University for some 20 years and in the process has attained unprecedented academic achievement profiles for the school district. There is much more to this, but who is this person? The person is writing this brief bio for you so that you may get to know him a little better.
~Harold G. Begay, Ph.D.

Applications opened recently for the Spring 2022 session of the Stanford University Scholars Program for Japanese High School Students (also known as “Stanford e-Japan”), which will run from mid-February through the end of June 2022. The deadline to apply is December 31, 2021.

Stanford e-Japan Program for high school students in Japan
Spring 2022 session (February to June 2022)
Application period: November 15 to December 31, 2021

All applications must be submitted at https://spicestanford.smapply.io/prog/stanford_e-japan/ via the SurveyMonkey Apply platform. Applicants and recommenders will need to create a SurveyMonkey Apply account to proceed. Students who are interested in applying to the online course are encouraged to begin their applications early.

Accepted applicants will engage in an intensive study of U.S. society and culture and U.S.–Japan relations. Ambassadors, top scholars, and experts from Stanford University and throughout the United States provide web-based lectures and engage students in live discussion sessions.

“Participating in Stanford e-Japan has been one of the highlights of my high school experience,” reflected Fall 2020 honoree Allison Lin. “Through the course, I gained the opportunity to learn from intelligent and experienced scholars which I wouldn’t have had otherwise and found myself aspiring to be like them in the future.”

Stanford e-Japan is offered by the Stanford Program on International and Cross-Cultural Education (SPICE), Stanford University. The Spring 2022 session of Stanford e-Japan is generously supported by the Yanai Tadashi Foundation, Tokyo, Japan.

For more information about Stanford e-Japan, please visit stanfordejapan.org.

To stay informed of news about Stanford e-Japan and SPICE’s other student programs, join our email list or follow us on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.

SPICE offers separate courses for U.S. high school students. For more information, please visit the Reischauer Scholars Program (on Japan), the Sejong Scholars Program (on Korea), and the China Scholars Program (on China).

On Veterans Day last week, I was reflective of my relatives and friends who are veterans of U.S. wars. My parents were migrant farmworkers and sharecroppers before and after World War II and several of my relatives are veterans of World War II. I also grew up as a farmworker, and most of my co-workers were migrant laborers from Mexico contracted through the Bracero Program. The Bracero Program was a 22-year initiative started in 1942 that allowed the United States to recruit temporary guest workers from Mexico. The laborers, called braceros, or individuals who work with their arms, were mostly concentrated in California. I attended school with many children of braceros.

Several of my classmates and family friends—including some children of my bracero co-workers—served in the Vietnam War, referred to by Vietnamese as the American War. A family friend, John Nishimura, died of wounds on April 4, 1968 sustained from hostile gunfire that left him as a quadriplegic on December 10, 1967 in the central highlands province of Kontum, Vietnam. Like other Asian Americans who served in Vietnam, he faced race-related challenges during his service. This topic is covered in the PBS series, Asian Americans, for which SPICE’s Waka Brown developed a teacher’s guide.

During my freshman year at U.C. Berkeley, 1972–73, I witnessed anti-Vietnam War protests and took a course in Chicano Studies (now Chicana/o and Latina/o Studies). Because of my childhood, I felt more Mexican than Japanese in many ways. In the Chicano Studies course, I recall a lecture on Chicano veterans of U.S. wars. The informal learning (observing the protests) and formal learning in Chicano Studies marked the first time in my life that I had been introduced to perspectives on the Vietnam War that were not included in my high school U.S. history textbook.

After graduating in 1976, I entered a teaching credential program at U.C. Berkeley’s Graduate School of Education that was called the Black-Asian-Chicano Urban Program or BAC-UP. One of the students was Charley Trujillo, a recent graduate of U.C Berkeley who majored in Chicano Studies. I felt a closeness to him because of my upbringing, and also recall how much I appreciated what we would now call “global perspectives” that he shared. We completed BAC-UP in 1977 and I went to teach in Japan and lost touch with him.

In 2014, while planning for a SPICE event that honored braceros with Dr. Ignacio Ornelas, the grandson of a bracero, Ornelas asked to introduce me to his friend, Charley Trujillo, and I immediately recalled Charley Trujillo from BAC-UP and wondered if he was the same person. I looked up his name online and was pleasantly surprised that he was the same person whom I had last seen 37 years prior. During our reunion, I learned from Trujillo that he had become a novelist, editor, publisher, and filmmaker. He is very well known for his book and documentary, Soldados: Chicanos in Viet Nam. While in BAC-UP, I didn’t know that he was a disabled Vietnam War veteran and that his father was a veteran of World War II. After hearing about his experiences in Vietnam, the global perspectives that he shared during BAC-UP became even more poignant. I also recalled how he sometimes challenged our professors—something that I could not do—on topics related to the “master narrative” of U.S. history.

Prior to my reunion with Trujillo, my former colleagues, Dr. Rennie Moon and Dr. Kenneth Koo, developed a SPICE curriculum unit, Legacies of the Vietnam War, which I encourage high school teachers to use as a supplement to the information about the Vietnam War in their U.S. history textbooks. The five lessons in the curriculum unit are described below. Someday, I would like to add Trujillo’s documentary as the foundation for a sixth lesson.

• Lesson One examines the political and economic aftermath of the Vietnam War. Students learn about the political situation following the war, Vietnamese emigrants known as the “boat people,” and post-war economic development.
• Lesson Two examines the impact of warfare on human health and the natural environment. Students learn about tools of warfare, including Agent Orange and landmines, and their harmful consequences on the ecosystem as well as on generations of civilians and veterans.
• Lesson Three combines a number of neglected and hidden themes in the Vietnamese war literature, including the experience of Vietnamese Amerasians and the involvement of non-U.S. soldiers who fought in Vietnam.
• Lesson Four gives voice to different categories of Vietnamese who have migrated abroad in the decades following the war: Vietnamese Americans, the Montagnards, and Vietnamese brides in Korea.
• Lesson Five investigates the idea of history as competing narratives. Students examine three representations of the Vietnam War—the war as depicted in American history textbooks, the war as exhibited at the War Remnants Museum in Ho Chi Minh City, and the war as represented in an effort to build a monument to the U.S.–South Vietnam alliance by the Vietnamese American community in Wichita, Kansas.

Trujillo and I are in periodic touch and he continues to expand my perspectives on the Vietnam War and its legacies by sharing his riveting and heartbreaking yet inspiring story. Most recently, we met at the San Jose Vietnam War Memorial. He is in the midst of producing a film based on his book, Dogs From Illusion, a Vietnam War novel on the Chicano war experience. Ornelas, a social studies (including ethnic studies) teacher at Willow Glen High School in San Jose, is currently enrolled in the Principal Leadership Institute at U.C. Berkeley’s Graduate School of Education. It’s very gratifying to know that Ornelas, Trujillo, and I share similar cultural histories that are not usually included in U.S. history textbooks at the high school level, and also share similar academic experiences that were only made possible by those who came before us. I am eternally grateful to Trujillo, Nishimura, and other veterans who sacrificed so much to make our lives better. I feel that it is essential for us as teachers to include their unique perspectives in the teaching of U.S. history.

My first visit to the University of Tokyo was in autumn 1977. I distinctly recall walking through Akamon and being in awe of the contrast between the autumn leaves and the red gate. I last walked through Akamon in autumn 2019. I had kindly been invited by Professor Hideto Fukudome, Director, Center for Advanced School Education and Evidence-based Research (CASEER), to give a guest lecture on “University–High School Collaboration” at the Graduate School of Education. I was scheduled to visit again in March 2020 but my trip had to be canceled due to the pandemic. Despite the pandemic, Fukudome conceptualized a lecture series that would allow SPICE staff to virtually walk through Akamon to collaborate with CASEER faculty and University of Tokyo students.

On November 1, 2021, the lecture series—SPICE/Stanford–UTokyo Partnership on International and Cross-Cultural Education and Global Citizenship—was launched. The goal of the lecture series is to provide a platform to share current research and practice. The discussions will ideally result in opportunities to collaborate between both organizations, and also opportunities for student engagement.

Fukudome delivered the first lecture, “Multiculturalism and Classical Tradition in Liberal Education: Comparative and Historical Perspectives.” Since his was the first lecture of the series, he opened by sharing important information about the University of Tokyo to help set the context for the series. This included the vision of the new president of the University of Tokyo—including an emphasis on diversity and inclusiveness—and information about University of Tokyo admissions. President Teruo Fujii’s vision is captured in UTokyo Compass, a statement of the guiding principles of the University of Tokyo that is titled “Into a Sea of Diversity: Creating the Future through Dialogue.” It focuses on the need to build a democratic society in which each individual can live with respect.

Sprinkled in his lecture were comparisons between the University of Tokyo and Stanford University. One of the comparisons—that 20 percent of undergraduates at the University of Tokyo are women, versus 51 percent of undergraduates at Stanford University—was very surprising to the SPICE staff and prompted discussion. He also noted that most students are admitted solely based upon test scores, and that only three percent are admitted through a process translated in English as “self-recommendation,” which is a more holistic review process to determine admissions. In addition, he noted that in Japan, universities do not identify students’ socio-economic background in the admissions process.

In the heart of his lecture, Fukudome shared comments on the many different ways of thinking about liberal education in the United States. He noted two major trends that form the ideological foundation of liberal education. One is the classical approach, or the idea that the cultural and spiritual foundation of the United States is to be found in Europe and that the core of liberal education is to learn about Western civilization, which originated in Greece and Rome. The second is multiculturalism, or seeing the cultural origins of the United States as diverse and made up of many races and ethnic groups. He noted, “These ideas are often viewed in opposition to each other over the undergraduate curriculum. From the perspective of how to think about the ideological basis of the curriculum, both ideas can provide suggestions for Japan. In this sense, the ideological debate over liberal education in the United States has an essential meaning for Japan as well.”

The SPICE staff is looking forward to further exchanging ideas with Fukudome and his CASEER colleagues and the University of Tokyo students on topics related to liberal education and other topics of mutual interest. The second session on December 6, 2021 will focus on SPICE’s online instruction for high school students, including Stanford e-Japan, SPICE’s first online course for high school students in Japan that is supported by the Yanai Tadashi Foundation. The following are the list of speakers and their topics for the first six session of the lecture series.

• 1st session: November 1, Hideto Fukudome, University of Tokyo, Multiculturalism and Classical Tradition in Liberal Education: Comparative and Historical Perspectives
• 2nd session: December 6, Gary Mukai, SPICE/Stanford, Online Instruction for High School Students
• 3rd session: January 10, Yuto Kitamura, University of Tokyo, Teaching and Learning Transversal Competencies Through Education for Sustainable Development (ESD): Implications from a Survey Conducted in Yokohama City
• 4th session: February 7, Rylan Sekiguchi, SPICE/Stanford, Curriculum and Instruction: What Does It Mean to Be an American?  
• 5th session: February 28, Misako Nukaga, University of Tokyo, Visibilizing the Second Generation Immigrants in Japan: Divergent Pathways of Acculturation and Educational Inequality
• 6th session: April 4, Mariko Yang-Yoshihara, SPICE/Stanford, Learning Assessment in Online Courses
   

The University of Tokyo faculty members who are participating in the lecture series all have experiences in the United States. Listed alphabetically, they are:

• Hideto Fukudome, Director & Professor (Former Visiting Scholar at U.C. Berkeley and Penn State)
• Yuto Kitamura, Deputy Director & Professor (PhD, UCLA)
• Kayoko Kurita, Professor (Former Visiting Scholar at Center for Teaching and Learning, Stanford)
• Kanako Kusanagi, Assistant Professor (BA, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill)
• Yusuke Murakami, Associate Professor (Former Visiting Scholar at U.C. Berkeley)
• Misako Nukaga, Associate Professor (PhD, UCLA)
   

SPICE’s Maiko Tamagawa Bacha is a graduate of the University of Tokyo and following the first session commented, “The lecture series brought back fond memories of my time at the University of Tokyo as an undergraduate. In particular, it was touching to see one of my fellow undergraduate students—Misako Nukaga, now an associate professor at the University of Tokyo—in attendance! I am grateful to Professor Fukudome for bringing us together again and for also bringing my academic and work institutions together.”

Since UTokyo Compass underscores (1) the importance of a university as a place where diverse people gather to discuss, share, and solve problems and (2) the importance for students to think from multiple perspectives, I hope that the collaboration with SPICE will help to support UTokyo Compass. These two points have been central pillars of SPICE since its beginning in 1976.