COMMENTARY
Diversity shines through at event
By John Griffin
In Hawai'i, we are accustomed to seeing ethnic and racial diversity on parade along our streets and beaches or on special occasions.
Still, I was especially impressed at the friendly feeling and mix of people at a graduation earlier this month of the latest executive course at the Asia-Pacific Center for Security Studies at Fort DeRussy.
Picture a hall lined with flags of 45 nations that have sent people to the center. In uniform, business dress and sometimes national costume was the largest such class in the center's nine-year history, some 105 mid-level (mostly colonels, and one-star generals and admirals) military officers and civilian officials, including 10 women.
Seated among or near them were some families with kids running around and wives shooting pictures with digital cameras, and a number of the security center's 122 staff members, civilians and some military back from Afghanistan and Iraq.
They heard a stirring graduation speech by center president Hank Stackpole. He covered a mixture of issues such as the conflict between national sovereignty and globalization and the dangers of corruption. He cited the importance of grads keeping in touch and consulting with each other, including via the Internet.
And yet what struck me most, along with the feeling of friendships, was the variety of these people who had studied, learned and played together for three months and might well meet later in different circumstances.
A sample of what I noted as they came across the stage to receive diplomas:
A woman director from India's Ministry of Defense; several from Mongolia; ambassadors from Vietnam and Comoros in the Indian Ocean; a woman senior customs officer from the Cook Islands; a commander from the Chilean Naval War College; a professor from Madagascar; a woman foreign-service officer from the Marshall Islands; an Indian air force officer in a turban; an undersecretary from the Nepal Foreign Ministry; a researcher from the Russian Foreign Ministry; a wing commander from Thailand's air force; plenty of people from South and Southeast Asia; and at the end, a woman police superintendent from Tonga wearing a lei and a traditional fine mat over a flowing skirt.
Not only that, I was reminded that the last class included the first female ambassador in the center's program (from the Philippines) and the first female general (from Sri Lanka.)
So, as this went on, I saw once again that the world is even more diverse than many of us in multiracial Hawai'i may realize, and we should learn more from such programs that deal with that larger world.
