K-School to Aid Research Project

The Kennedy School of Government is helping a Tokyo-based university organize a major new research project designed to investigate the relationship between security, economic, cultural and environmental policies in the Indo-Pacific Basin.

Soka University is sponsoring the program, which will eventually become a major research center at the university's California campus. Soka and the Kennedy School are organizing the program through the Kennedy School's Center for Science and International Affairs (CSIA), with Ford Foundation Professor of International Studies John D. Montgomery heading up the project.

"Many scholars are already working in these areas, but this center's contribution will come from examining what happens when these policies clash," Montgomery said. "How do investments in national defense affect the environment and international economic activity? How do industrialization decisions affect cultural values?"

Montgomery said the group is broadly defining the Pacific Basin to include China, India, Korea and Indochina.

"We want to stretch geography a little," said Montgomery. "Regional problems don't stop at the water's edge, even when the water is as big as the Pacific Ocean."

Funding for the project will come from a Buddhist group in Japan, according to Montgomery. The project will award three or four doctoral fellowships, as well as various grants to other interested scholars and researchers. The center will also sponsor conferences and publications as needed.

Last spring, Soka University officials contacted Montgomery at a Pacific Basin Conference and asked for his participation in the program. An expert on development, the environment and U.S. foreign policy, Montgomery once chaired Harvard's Department of Government. He has served as associate director of the African Studies Center at Boston University, and as dean of the faculty at Babson College.

Soka University, the program's sponsor, is a Tokyo-based college of arts and sciences. It opened its Calabasas campus, known as Soka University, Los Angeles (SULA), as a language school in 1986. A new Soka University of America will begin operations in the near future.