Academics are bemoaning the decline in programmes focused on Japanese language, culture, history, art and other social science subjects at universities in the United States, warning that a “short-sighted approach” could threaten future trade and business opportunities as well as the critical diplomatic relationship.
Funding for liberal arts courses at US universities has been under pressure for some years, they point out, but that appears to be accelerating as greater emphasis is placed on science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) programmes.
The situation has become so serious that a recent report has described universities’ withdrawal from Japan-focused subjects as “a quiet but looming crisis in US-Japan relations”.
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The report by Adam Liff, a leading scholar on Japanese politics and foreign policy at Indiana University and a non-resident senior fellow at the Brookings Institute, states that there has been 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 cautioned in the report, published in November by the United States-Japan Foundation, that the cost of failing to address this drift away from a nation that the current and previous administrations had named as Washington’s “most important Indo-Pacific partner and ally” would quickly extend beyond academia.
US research universities were “not only the education and training grounds for a disproportionate share of future scholars and leaders across all levels of government, industry and civil society, they are also the key to giving many young Americans … exposure to and familiarity with Japan and its importance for America that most would otherwise lack,” he wrote.