Professor Ekhleif Tarawneh, president of the University of Jordan, visited the Tokyo Foundation on December 6, 2012. He met with Tokyo Foundation President Masahiro Akiyama and members of the Leadership Development team.

President Tarawneh was in Japan to participate in a forum to promote dialogue between young people from Islamic countries and Japan, hosted by the Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs. He led a group of students from the University of Jordan.

During his visit to the Tokyo Foundation, President Tarawneh offered his gratitude for the support provided by Japan, include Sylff, to his university and Jordan as a whole over the years, adding his hope that the relationship with Japan will continue to remain active.

The president is leading a drive to elevate the international stature of his university so that it not only boasts the highest research and educational standards but also nurtures young leaders capable of meeting domestic, regional, and global challenges.

President Tarawneh and the Tokyo Foundation agreed to continue collaborating on the Sylff program, such as through expanded participation in study abroad programs and future international events.

Current Sylff fellow Ekaterina Frolova, a Russian-born master's student at the University for Music and Performing Arts Vienna, was named the overall Grand Prix winner at the thirteenth Osaka International Music Competition, held in October 2012.

Ekaterina Frolova

She also received the Feurich-Klavier Galerie Special Award and won First Prize in the string instruments category for university students.

The Osaka International Music Competition was launched in 2000 in an effort to deepen international communication and understanding in the face of the many wars fought during the last century over racial, religious, and ideological differences.

Osaka, established some 1,500 years ago, is one of the earliest centers of Japanese culture. Just as water from Osaka Bay flows out to the Pacific Ocean and other seas around the world, organizers said they hope that young musicians participating in the Osaka competition will contribute to world peace, overcoming cultural and ethnic differences to touch the hearts of people in all countries.

"I'm extremely happy to win this international competition, for which I practiced very hard," Ekaterina said, adding, "The Sylff fellowship has been indispensable in enabling me to continue my studies at the university," where she is able to practice in an intensely competitive environment.

Our warmest congratulations to Ekaterina!

Visit Ekaterina's website at: http://www.ekaterina-frolova.com/

Egla Martínez Salazar, one of the first winners of the Sylff Prize, has published a new, critically acclaimed book titled, Global Coloniality of Power in Guatemala. Racism, Genocide, Citizenship.

In this critique of the geopolitics of knowledge, Martínez Salazar examines the racialized feminicide, attacks on Maya children, and other forms of state terror in Guatemala that occurred in the 1980s and 1990s with the full support of the Western colonial powers.

Drawing on a careful analysis of recently declassified state documents, thematic life histories, and compelling interviews with Maya and Mestizo men and women, Martinez Salazar, who herself was born and raised in Guatemala, shows how people resisting oppression have been pushed into the political periphery.

At the center of her book is an examination of how coloniality survives colonialism, a crucial point for understanding how contemporary hegemonic practices and ideologies—such as equality, democracy, human rights, peace, and citizenship—are deeply contested terrains, for they create nominal equality from practical social inequality.

While many in the global North continue to enjoy the benefits of such domination, millions, if not billions, in both the South and North have been persecuted, controlled, and exterminated during their struggles for a more just world.

“One of the strongest aspects of the book,” writes Walter D. Mignolo, author of The Darker Side of Western Modernity: Global Futures, Decolonial Options, is that it “shows how racism works in everyday life—in racializing proper names and clothes, entangling economic injustices, and exploiting labor. . . . Attentive to the colonial wound that she herself experienced, Martinez Salazar explains genocides and feminecides as logical consequences of coloniality, the hidden agenda of modernity.”

Purchase this book at: http://www.amazon.ca/Global-Coloniality-Power-Guatemala-Citizenship/dp/0739141228/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1344638408&sr=8-1

Itamar Zorman

Itamar Zorman, a Sylff fellow from the Juilliard School in New York, performed as a solo violinist at a Suntory Hall gala concert in Tokyo on October 6, 2012. Continue reading →

The “Together in Tohoku” Workshops and Suntory Hall concert were reported in Japan’s leading English-language daily, the Japan Times, on August 30. (Read the story here. ) Continue reading →

Otgontuya, third from left in the last row, at the International Conference on Productivity and Sustainable, Inclusive Development in the Asia-Pacific.

Ministers and senior government officials, productivity experts, business leaders, and civil society representatives gathered at Continue reading →

The Tokyo Foundation visited the University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna in late June 2012. Continue reading →

https://youtu.be/kfN9MVNsMCw

The Tokyo Foundation staff visited Austria in late June this year and met with Continue reading →

“Local Initiatives to the Global Financial Crisis: Looking for Alternatives to the Current Socio-Economic Scenario.”

DUSKE, the Sylff fellows’ association of the University of Deusto in Spain, has published a book titled, “Local Initiatives to the Global Financial Crisis: Continue reading →

Merewalesi Nailatikau © Jhing/2011 /04 Feb/UNICEF Pacific

Merewalesi “Mere” Nailatikau, who was a recipient of a Sylff fellowship for two years from February 2010 while studying toward an MA degree in Continue reading →