Table Speech


¡ÈRotary Foundation Month¡É Meeting
¡ÈRotary International Program at ICU: Responsibility and Awareness as One of the World Seven Universities¡É

November 1, 2006

Mr. Norihiko Suzuki,
President, International Christian University

A History of ICU Rotary Peace Center
International Christian University (ICU) was established in 1953 with the founder¡Çs strong hope for world peace and Japan¡Çs revitalization. ICU opened the Division of Public Administration (Graduate School) in 1963. The ICU Peace Research Institute and the Division of International Studies (a faculty of the ICU¡Çs Liberal Arts) were introduced in 1991. Additionally, the ICU Rotary Peace Center was formed in 1999, in which about ten RI World Peace Fellows have been accepted each year since 2002.

Establishment of RI World Peace Fellows Program
For more than 10 years from late in 1980, the Rotary International Foundation pursued the peace education plan for graduate students. Consequently, the Foundation selected seven universities in the world, establishing a ¡ÈRotary Peace Center,¡É and materializing the system to commission the program of peace education on the master level.

Other member universities are: University of California, Berkeley; Union of The University of North Carolina and Duke University; University of Queensland, Australia; University of Bradford, England; Institut d'Etudes Politiques de Paris; and Del Salvador University, Argentina. Unfortunately, however, the Institut d'Etudes Politiques de Paris was dropped from the list last year because it was no longer able to maintain the curriculum. So the six universities other than Paris¡Ç currently participate in the program.

Peace Education Program at ICU
To study world affairs on peace and conflict resolution, each university has its own curriculum for the ¡ÈRotary Peace Center.¡É

Fellows at ICU are usually registered in the Division of Public Administration of ICU Graduate School, but are actively taking courses of other divisions. Their compulsory subjects include Peace Research (No.1 and 2), Pacifist Thought, Human Rights, Security and Conflict Resolution, Psychology of Peace and Conflict Resolution. The Fellows must also attend special extension lectures sponsored by the Center and report their study at the RC¡Çs annual seminar. The field trip to Hiroshima and Okinawa and NGO internship program are additionally planned. The Peace Research No.2, for instance, is planned to provide a pragmatical lecture by a Japanese leader who has worked at the United Nations Integrated Mission in Timor-Leste.

The No. of Fellows, and Their Achievement and Nationalities
In September 2002, ICU hosted seven fellows for the first time; nine in 2003, seven in 2004, six in 2005, and nine in 2006 (38 fellows in total), and until the third program all 23 fellows had finished the master course and graduated from the school.

Their nationalities are: 17 from the U.S., four from Australia, four from South Korea, two from Canada, two from England, two from Taiwan, two from Thailand, and one each out of Malaysia, Austria, Philippines, Kyrgyzstan, Zambia, Holland, and a Japanese American. The ratio of male to female is: 30: 70.
Future Development of ICU Rotary Peace Center
ICU Rotary Peace Center held the ¡ÈInternational Workshop on Educating Peacebuilding: In Pursuit of a Global Network,¡É jointly with United Nations University, Aoyama, on March 9 and 10, in 2006. The six world universities came together for this opportunity for the first time. There, each university emphasized the importance of information exchange, requesting ICU to take the leadership, and making more cross-border opportunities. Thanks to the project, it was recognized that they have entered the second phase, and a ¡Ènetworking¡É between the six universities was formed.

By coincidence, Rotary International announced the establishment of a 95 million dollar fund, to make the ¡ÈRotary World Peace Fellows Program¡É eternal. The establishment is a result of RI¡Çs vision for the level of achievement that the six universities have made.

I, too, promise to help them out, so I would like to ask everybody for your further support. Lastly, I would like to extend my sincere gratitude to Rotarians in Tokyo and Japan.