From left to right, Mitsuhide Shiraki, Junichi Hisatsuka, Aya Kudo, Nguyen Thi Phuong Thanh, Naoto Onzo, Mari Suzuki, and Yoko Kaburagi.

Two Waseda University graduate students were presented with Sylff fellowships during a ceremony held on June 18, 2014, at an administrative building named after university founder Shigenobu Okuma. The recipients for the 2014 academic year were Aya Kudo, who is in the fourth year of a doctoral program at the Graduate School of Political Science, and Nguyen Thi Phuong Thanh, a first-year doctoral student at the Graduate School of Commerce.

Naoto Onzo, the university’s executive director for research promotion, public relations, and the graduate school system and the chairman of the Sylff steering committee, congratulated the two awardees and encouraged them to demonstrate academic excellence as well as personal integrity as leaders who can make a positive contribution to global society.

Professor Mitsuhide Shiraki, chairman of the selection committee noted, “I hope that this year’s recipients will utilize their fellowships to assiduously advance their research. We look forward to hearing their progress half a year from now. At the end of the year, they will be presenting their research results to the steering committee and representatives from the Tokyo Foundation.”

Aya Kudo is undertaking an analysis of the state-run Chinese media and how it is affected by both domestic and foreign private capital. Having been enrolled in a double-degree program, she has undergraduate and master’s degrees from both Waseda University and Fudan University, a Sylff institution in China.

Nguyen Thi Phuong Thanh is studying the influence of foreign directors on corporate governance and management performance in Japan. She is from Vietnam and has an MBA from Waseda University. She hopes to return to Vietnam as a researcher in 10 years’ time and to contribute to deepening Japan-Vietnam ties in various ways.

Attending the ceremony from the Tokyo Foundation were Director for Leadership Development Mari Suzuki and Program Officer Yoko Kaburagi, who expressed the hope that the new fellows would take advantage of Sylff’s global network to advance both their academic pursuits and personal development.

Paulo, center, with the Tokyo Foundation program officers

Paulo Ravecca, who received a Sylff fellowship while at York University and was awarded a Sylff Research Abroad grant in 2011, visited the Tokyo Foundation on May 27, 2014. Ravecca was invited to Japan by the Embassy of Ecuador to work on a book with another scholar.

Ravecca is currently enrolled in a PhD program at York University and is writing his dissertation on the “politics of political science” in Chile and Uruguay. It focuses on the trajectory of political science as a discipline in the two countries, with references to Argentina and Brazil as well. Ravecca shows that the changes in political science in these Latin American countries are a product of power relations at different levels.

Ravecca’s analysis is expected to shed new light on the world of political science. We at the Tokyo Foundation wish him all the best with his dissertation.

On May 19, 2014, the University of Latvia organized a conference featuring nine Sylff fellows on the topic of “World in Change: From Consumption to Sustainability, from Competition to Collaboration, from Hierarchy to Networks, from Being Good to Doing Good.” The university joined the Sylff community in 2002.

The opening ceremony featured remarks by Rector Marcis Auzins, who reflected on the impact of the Sylff program at the university; Professor Ina Druviete, the former Latvian minister of education and science; Nippon Foundation Chairman Yohei Sasakawa, who described his work towards the eradication of leprosy and the discrimination that comes with ; and Tokyo Foundation Director for Leadership Development Takashi Suzuki, who encouraged Sylff fellows to take the initiative by referring to Latvia’s rapid economic recovery after the Lehman crisis.

Following the opening ceremony, nine Sylff fellows made presentations on the conference theme. They included six fellows from University of Latvia, two from the University of Leipzig, and one from Jagiellonian University. All presentations are available in PowerPoint at the university’s website.

The Tokyo Foundation thanks Ilona Baumane, a Sylff fellow at the University of Latvia, for organizing the conference and enabling our participation.

Roger Cliff, right, with Leadership Development Director Mari Suzuki.

Roger Cliff, who received a Sylff fellowship in 1991 while attending the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University, visited the Tokyo Foundation on April 4 to participate in a dialogue on East Asian security. The day-long workshop on extended deterrence in East Asia, organized by the Tokyo Foundation, and the Atlantic Council, was attended by security experts from Japan, the United States, and South Korea.

Roger is a nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Brent Scowcroft Center on International Security, where he is engaged in the Center’s Asia Security Initiative as a specialist on East Asian security issues. The Brent Scowcroft Center is the Atlantic Council’s flagship international security program, analyzing how global trends and emerging security challenges will impact the United States, its allies, and global partners.

It was a great joy to see a Sylff fellow working with the Tokyo Foundation’s research fellows. He noted that he regularly checks the Foundation’s website and email newsletter and finds the information helpful, especially the articles by Tsuneo Watanabe, the Foundation’s director of foreign and security policy research and senior fellow.

Sylff was endowed at Princeton University in 1989, and Roger was one of the early fellows at the university. He has focused his research on East Asian security and US foreign policy toward the region and is now an expert producing cutting-edge analyses and developing strategies for how the United States can best work with like-minded countries to shape the future. Read his articles and comments here.

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