HONOLULU (October 22, 2019) -- The East-West Center community has been saddened to learn of the passing on October 20 of former Dean of Students and longtime Center supporter Sumi Makey. Generations of EWC alumni carry warm memories of Sumi as a caring mentor over the course of her several decades leading the Center’s student and Open Grants programs, which she helped to establish, and later as an active supporter and donor. (Read Sumi’s EWC oral history.)

HONOLULU (Aug. 28, 2019) -- Journalism students from Jamia Millia Islamia university in New Delhi and the Institute of Business Administration in Karachi met recently in Nepal for a two-day dialogue about cross-border media collaboration. The six Indian and Pakistani students were joined by three Nepali journalism students for the dialogue in Kathmandu, which was moderated by EWC media alumnus Kunda Dixit, Editor and Publisher of the Nepali Times.

HONOLULU (July 23, 2019) -- The East-West Center community was saddened by the passing on July 14 of former EWC Vice President Wesley T. Park, who was in his eighties. A well-known Honolulu business leader and supporter of the arts, he served as the Center’s VP of Administration between 1982 and 1989.

Longtime EWC Director of Administration Ricky Kubota, who was first hired at the Center by Park as a budget analyst, remembers him as “a ‘no-nonsense’ type of guy who expected the work he assigned to be completed — no excuses. While that meant a ton of evening and weekend hours, Wesley led by example because he was in the office too.”

On May 14, 1960, US President Dwight Eisenhower signed into law the act of Congress that established the East-West Center as a place “where scholars and students in various fields from the nations of the East and West may study, give and receive training, (and) exchange ideas and views.”

In early 2017, staff from the East-West Center’s Asia Pacific Leadership Program partnered with the U.S. Army to help provide instruction for the Army’s Young Alaka‘i leadership development initiative, which prepares high-potential mid-career officers from across the Indo-Asia-Pacific area of operations for senior leadership positions. The program assists participants as they move from the operational outlook needed in their current roles to the more strategic mindsets required in senior ranks.

HONOLULU (July 5, 2017) -- The East-West Center played host to several women's leadership programs in the last week of June, bringing together participants from around the world to meet and collaborate on issues of women's advancement and equality.

With millions of people who live in “peri-urban” areas at the edges of cities in Asia suffering from enormous deficits in basic urban services, spillover environmental impacts and weak local governments, policymakers in the region recognize the urgent need for solutions to cope with the range of issues impacting residents of these areas.

Leadership fellows from the 2016-17 cohort of East-West Center’s Asia-Pacific Leadership Program, spent a week recently volunteering their technical assistance for the Parinaama Development Foundation in India's Odisha state.

Name in the News

New Head of the East-West Center Returns to Hawaii

By Maureen O’Connell
The Honolulu Star-Advertiser, Jan. 27, 2017

When Richard R. Vuylsteke left his post as president of the American Chamber of Commerce in Hong Kong to become the East-West Center’s 11th top executive at the start of the new year, he was eager to begin work at his Honolulu alma mater of sorts.

The East-West Center, in partnership with Yale University and the Pacific Basin Research Center, launched the new book The Evolution of Development Thinking: Governance, Economics, Assistance, and Security at the United Nations on December 15, 2016. (Watch video of the book launch.)

Remarks of East-West Center President Charles E. Morrison

Friends of the East-West Center Annual Meeting
Nov. 9, 2016

Thank you Puongpun, for a generous introduction. I also want to thank the Friends of the East-West Center for inviting me to speak and all of you for coming.

WASHINGTON, D.C. (March 4, 2016) -- In the Philippines Supreme Court’s recent ruling that the nation’s new Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement (EDCA) with the United States is constitutional, the court cited the policy brief “Implications of the US-Philippines Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement” from the East-West Center’s Asia Pacific Bulletin series. The analysis, authored in 2014 by Dr. Aileen S.P.

Honolulu (October 12, 2015) – Wyatt Gordon, a current EWC degree fellow in in urban and regional planning, recently returned from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, where he competed in Pidato Antarabangsa Bahasa Melayu , or International Malay Language Speech Championship. The first American to ever to reach the final round of this competition since it was started nearly a decade ago, he took third place overall and won a prize of $3,000 after delivering a speech in Malay on how he found his heritage through language.  The speech contest was broadcast live in front of a studio audience of several thousand people, including the Prime Minister, and was viewed by a television audience of several million viewers across Southeast Asia.

HONOLULU (Aug. 3, 2015) -- With the Hawaiian Voyaging Canoe Hokule‘a now sailing out of the Pacific for the very first time and currently in Bali, Indonesia, for the canoe’s only scheduled Asian stop on its unprecedented worldwide voyage, a number of East-West Center participants, alumni and community members are in Bali with the canoe, or helped plan the visit.

HONOLULU (July 21, 2015) -- The East-West Center has received a second Green Business Award from the state of Hawai‘i, which recognizes organizations for outstanding effort in improving their environmental footprint. In 2011, the Center became the first educational institution to receive the award.

WASHINGTON, D.C. (June 25, 2015) – Nine college students from the Pacific Islands and Timor-Leste who are studying in Hawai‘i on East-West Center-administered scholarships are wrapping up six-week internships in Washington, D.C. designed to offer them professional experience and help expand their understanding of American society.

The 2014-2015 Pacific Islands Women in Leadership (WIL) Program held its capstone workshop in Suva, Fiji, May 17-23, 2015.  The weeklong program allowed the participants to reconnect with each other as well as make new connections within the Pacific Region.

The group reported on the status of the projects they started upon returning home after the initial program workshop held in Honolulu in October 2015.  Two of the participants from Fiji shared their projects with the WIL group with site visits.

The East-West Center community has been saddened to learn of the sudden passing of former Education Director and longtime community supporter Larry Smith, who suffered a fatal heart attack over the weekend, shortly after arriving in New Delhi to attend a conference.

Navigating a Future for the East-West Center

By Charles E. Morrison

Keynote address at the EWC/EWCA International Conference

Naha, Okinawa
17 September 2014

The East-West Center community is saddened by news of the recent passing of the Center’s first leader, Murray Turnbull, and longtime arts and exhibits coordinator Jeanette "Benji" Bennington.

"Murray Turnbull was the father of the concept of bringing the young people of the Asia Pacific region together, and the East-West Center was established because of him," said EWC President Charles E. Morrison. "And Benji was an incredible, invaluable resource during her decades of service at the Center. She embodied the EWC spirit, and her legacy remains with us all.”

APIA, SAMOA (Aug. 29, 2014) -- Youth leaders from 18 Pacific nations have converged in Samoa this week for the second ‘Future Leaders of the Pacific’ conference, organized by the U.S. embassies in New Zealand and Samoa in partnership with the East-West Center and held in connection with next week’s International Conference on Small Island Developing States.

Photo: US Embassy New ZealandThe youth delegates are meeting with more a dozen of the region’s top dignitaries to discuss regional issues such as non-communicable diseases, gender equality, climate change and sustainable development in the Pacific.

The East-West Center community is saddened by the death of former EWC Board of Governors member Thomas S. Foley, a U.S. congressman from Washington State for three decades, speaker of the House from 1989 to 1995, and later Ambassador to Japan.  Foley, who passed away Oct. 18 at age 84, served on the EWC board from 1995 to 1997. 

By Charles E. Morrison, EWC President

(Note: This commentary first appeared in the Honolulu Star-Advertiser on Oct. 13, 2013.)

When I arrived in Bali last week for this year’s APEC summit, my van driver asked where I was from. When I told him, his face broke into a huge smile. “Say hello to my brother,” he said enthusiastically, referring to President Barack Obama, who remains enormously popular in Indonesia where he spent several years as a child.

Two days later, the U.S. budget stalemate forced Obama to cancel his trip to the APEC meeting and the subsequent East Asia Summit in Brunei, along with scheduled stops in Malaysia and the Philippines that had already been called off.

The East-West Center community is saddened by the death former EWC President Victor Hao Li, who passed away on Sept. 18 in Oakland, California, at the age of 72.

Born in Hong Kong, Dr. Li taught Chinese and international law at the University of Michigan, Columbia and Stanford before serving as President of EWC from 1981-1989.

EWC environment researchers Melissa Finucane and Victoria Keener gave a congressional briefing on Capitol Hill Sept. 17 on the findings of the recent Center-led Pacific Islands Regional Climate Assessment, which will be included as regional input to the federal government’s upcoming National Climate Assessment. Hawai‘i Sen. Brian Schatz, who co-hosted the briefing, said that “In Hawai‘i and throughout the Pacific, climate change is not an abstract concept –it is already having very real consequences.”

Sen. Schatz speaks at the climate briefing.

Among the major concerns for Hawai‘i and the Pacific Islands that Finucane and Keener discussed are:

HONOLULU (Sept. 4, 2103) -- Graduate students from India and Pakistan participated in a two-way video conference last week as part of a cross-border East-West Center project, funded by the U.S. State Department, that brings together experts, scholars, young professionals and university students from both countries to explore development issues in critical ‘peri-urban’ areas that lie between cities and the countryside.

Through June, the McInerny Foundation will match your gift up to $100 per donor: 

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EWC Emeritus Scholar Lee-Jay Cho has been awarded Japan’s prestigious Order of the Rising Sun (Gold Rays with Rosette), for his contributions to “the enhancement of economic relations between Asian countries, including Japan, and the U.S., and the promotion of research exchanges in the field of demography."

With doctorate degrees in economics and demography from Japanese universities and a third Ph.D. in sociology from the University of Chicago, Dr. Cho formerly served as director of EWC’s Population Institute, as well as executive vice president and president pro tem. In the 1960s and ‘70s, he was an advisor to the governments of Malaysia and the Republic of Korea on population, human resources and urban issues, and he has long served a Chairman of the Northeast Asia Economic Forum.

HONOLULU (May 3, 2013) -- East-West Center President Charles E. Morrison met yesterday with the Prime Minister of Papua New Guinea, Peter O'Neill, and U.S. Ambassador to PNG Walter North to discuss the possibility of PNG hosting the next meeting of the Pacific Islands Conference of Leaders, the only U.S.-based organization that convenes summit meetings of Pacific island heads of government. EWC serves as the administrative secretariat for the PICL summits.

HONOLULU (April 24, 2013) -- Last month in Singapore, the East-West Center realized a four-year goal to gather ASEAN-wide young environmental leaders to create collaborative project proposals in what was deemed ““an incredible, innovative, and enriching workshop” by Eric Watnik, the Public Affairs Counselor at the U.S. Embassy in Singapore. 

Fifty-seven alumni from the Study of the US Institutes (SUSI) at East-West Center and University of Montana Mansfield Center (UMT) spent three intensive days crafting proposals for the chance to win $25,000 from the U.S. State Department’s Alumni Engagement Innovation Fund. 

The EWC Participants Association held its 2013 East-West Fest cultural fair April 13 on the Jefferson Hall lanai. Themed "Colors of the World," the celebration featured cultural booths and performances from a variety of participants' home countries. View a photo gallery.

Ambassadors Thomas Armbruster (Marshall Islands) & Helen Reed-Rowe (Palau), with PIDP Co-Director Sitiveni Halapua. On April 4, 2013 the U.S. ambassadors to the Federated States of Micronesia, Palau and the Marshall Islands participated in an informal discussion at the East-West Center intended to launch a broad-ranging conversation about the future of U.S. engagement with the freely associated Pacific island nations. Participants included policymakers, Pacific island scholars and public intellectuals. Topics included the future of the freely associated states in the regional system, migration, institution building and new paradigms for engagement. 

Pakistani and American journalists discuss insights from their March 2013 Pakistan-U.S. Journalists Exchange study tours to each other's countries.

Taiwan Deputy Defense Minister Andrew Nien-Dzu Yang briefed an audience of international relations specialists at EWC on Feb. 27 on current Taiwan security issues, including cross-strait relations with mainland China, U.S. arms sales, regional territorial disputes and more.

Sen. Inouye with EWC students in 2007.

The East-West Center community is greatly saddened by the passing of Hawai‘i Senator Daniel K. Inouye, long one of the Center’s most avid supporters. EWC President Charles E. Morrison extended the EWC community’s heartfelt condolences to Senator Inouye’s family and loved ones.

“We are deeply saddened by the loss of a great patriot and statesman who served his nation and state in many different capacities,” Morrison said. “Senator Inouye has always been the staunchest supporter of the East-West Center, not just in Washington, but also frequently interacting with participants and alumni. We will sorely miss him.”

The East-West Center community was saddened to learn of the Nov. 4 passing of former EWC Board of Governors member Tai Yu-Lin (also known as Wu Yu-Lin), a pioneer in bilingual education. Serving from 1978 – 1984, she was the first Asian woman elected to the EWC Board.

Born in Northeast China in the 1920s, she was educated in Shanghai, as well as at the University of Malaya, Columbia University and later at the University of London's School of Oriental and African Studies, where she began her language career.

APLP fellows gather with the White House social media team.On the first day of their Washington, D.C. field study, EWC’s Asia Pacific Leadership Program (APLP) fellows met with the White House Office of Digital Strategy (a.k.a. the Twitter Team). They discussed how for the first time, a U.S. President is using social media platforms to amplify the Administration’s message and directly interact with the American public. “Being from Indonesia, this is very new for me,” remarked Ismail Sulaiman, APLP fellow and head lecturer of communications at the State Islamic College Cot Kala in Aceh.  “Of course we are online, but this is actively exchanging information with the U.S.

By Edward J. Shultz

(Note: This commentary originally appeared in The Honolulu Star-Advertiser on Oct. 16, 2012)

The recent eruption of protests throughout the Muslim world points once again to the stability of our globe being threatened by people with the intransigence of fundamentalists. It was fundamentalists in the United States who produced a reprehensible video vilifying the Islamic faith, and it was fundamentalists throughout the world who took to the streets to protest this affront to their faith and culture. In East Asia we are witnessing a somewhat similar escalation of tensions as fundamentalists in China, Korea and Japan push these three countries down an increasingly volatile path leading to growing animosities. And regrettably this is a verbal slugfest among U.S. allies and friends.