Director, 1974-2001
Asia Fellowships Program
Mission and History
A fellowships program for mid-career journalists was established at the University of Hawaiʻi in 1974 so that the profession of journalism broaden and deepen its understanding of Asian civilizations and affairs. It was none too soon, as it was already thirty-plus years after Pearl Harbor and twenty years after the Korean War. Vietnam was still raging and Nixon had just been to China. The fellowships program began with the view that Asia’s significance in world affairs would grow with the twenty-first century. This has continued to the present, many years beyond the close of the program in 2001. The waves of economic crises are, at least and as well, crises in cultural understanding East and West. Graduates of the program can be found on many major US newspapers and virtually every US news bureau in East Asia. There are 160 alumni. The fellowships were first funded by the Gannett Foundation and in 1991 became The Freedom Forum Asia Fellowships. From Fall 1999 until 2001, the program was known as The Asia Fellowships Program for Journalists at the University of Hawaiʻi.
The Setting
The considerable resources (over three hundred faculty and courses in the humanities and social sciences with Asian specialization) at the University of Hawaiʻi, were made available to journalists in the program. Then, too, Hawaiʻi as a modern meeting place of many cultures affords a special milieu for both academic and cultural enrichment. Since statehood, it has been repeatedly demonstrated that Hawaiʻi is unusually suited to exchanges East and West, whether they are dialogues in civilizations or conferences in diplomacy.
The Program
The program engaged the journalists in an academic year’s study of an Asian language and an individually planned course of study, including a field study. In addition, a weekly colloquium featured faculty and other resource persons who make Honolulu an entrepôt of national and international ideas and interests. The fellowships program also underwrote memberships in such organizations as the Honolulu Academy of Arts, the Pacific and Asian Affairs Council and the Japan-America Society. Admission was based on a fundamental admissibility for graduate study, with a certificate awarded upon satisfactory completion of at least 18 credits over the year. The experience of studying an Asian language was indispensable to opening the student to new worlds of cultural and professional advancement. David Jackson of CBS has stated that, because he knew “two more Chinese words than the nearest competitor (a 100% advantage),” he gained the CBS assignment in Beijing shortly after his fellowship year. Kendall Wills, formerly of the New York Times, AP, Tokyo/Knight-Ridder, and Thomson Reuters Asia/China had a similar commitment to language study.
In the mid-1980s, a new feature of the program was introduced by which a journalist each from Japan and China were included through nomination by the Press Institute of Japan and China’s Xinhua and China Daily in alternation. The condition for this inclusion was that these Asian journalists were to study their own countries and societies alongside the Americans. This measure had a salutary effect upon not only the perspectives of the journalists involved, but also on the texture of the learning process of the Americans. Moreover, it led to fruitful and enduring professional associations. Also since the mid-1980s, increasing numbers of Asian-American journalists had applied successfully to the program. This last tendency not only resonates with concerns for diversity at home, but also demonstrates the vital importance of the international aspects of this diversity.
Over the twenty-six years, the program had distinguished itself as the first and only program on Asia in the country, centered not on journalism education but on academic study for journalists. For this reason, the director of the program had always been a professor of the humanities or the social sciences dealing with Asia. Among the fellows, the program was known as the “Asia Niemans.”
Shortly after the end of the Asia Fellowships Program for Journalists, the UH Journalism Department (now the School of Communications) started a new program designed to train journalists from China — the Parvin Fellowship Program in Journalism Studies. Over 170 Chinese journalists, mainly from China Daily and Xinhua News Agency, have gone through the program.
For over a quarter century through the Asia Fellowships Program for Journalists, the University of Hawaiʻi demonstrated devotion to journalism, education, and the humanities through a commitment of faculty, curriculum, and venue to the idea of affecting a change in the professional lives of journalists in regards to the Asia world area, a major international focus for the twenty-first century.
Fellows
1975-1991 – Gannett Fellows
1991-1999 – Freedom Forum Fellows
1999-2001 – UH Asia Fellows
With affiliations at appointment.
1975-1976
1976-1977
1977-1978
1978-1979
1979-1980
1980-1981
1981-1982
1982-1983
1983-1984
1984-1985
1985-1986
1986-1987
1987-1988
1988-1989
1989-1990
1990-1991
1991-1992
1992-1993
1993-1994
1994-1995
1995-1996
1996-1997
1997-1998
1998-1999
1999-2000
2000-2001
