Is decline in Japanese studies risking US relations with key Indo-Pacific ally?
Academics bemoan the myopic approach after a recent report calls dropping Japan-focused subjects a ‘looming crisis in US-Japan relations’
Funding for liberal arts courses at US universities has been under pressure for some years, but observers say the pace of the decline appears to be accelerating as greater emphasis is placed on science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) programmes.
The report by Adam Liff, a leading scholar of Japanese politics and foreign policy at Indiana University and a non-resident senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, found a “precipitous drop-off in the value of America’s ‘top 100’ universities on teaching and research about contemporary US-Japan relations and Japanese foreign and security policy”.
Liff warned in the report, published in November, by the United States-Japan Foundation, that neglecting a country repeatedly described by successive administrations as Washington’s “most important Indo-Pacific partner and ally” would have repercussions far beyond academia.
US research universities were not only the “training grounds” for future leaders across government, business and civil society, but also “the key” to giving many young Americans exposure to Japan and an understanding of its significance to the US, he wrote – an awareness they might otherwise never acquire.