COMMENTARY
Alumni gathering in '03 reaffirmed hopes, mission of East-West Center

By Dan Berman

Dan Berman is president of the East-West Center Association, the center's alumni organization.

More than 200 people from 21 countries gathered in late 2003 to celebrate and evaluate their East-West Center experience of the 1960s. More than a nostalgic celebration, the gathering focused on the impact of the East-West Center's mission to build an Asia-Pacific community.

East-West Center President Charles E. Morrison reaffirmed during the reunion that the core of the center's mission rested upon programs that continue to promote cultural tolerance and understanding. These were the values that bonded alumni to each other and to the center and motivated them to join this reunion.

Perhaps most importantly, Morrison placed the alumni experience in the context of Asia-Pacific community building. "As 1960s alumni, you are the East-West Center's first participants — the pioneers in interchange. You collectively have led new countries to independence. You have created businesses and NGOs. You have served as mayors, governors, legislators and Cabinet ministers. As diplomats, you represented your nations and negotiated agreements. You have created great and enduring works of art — buildings, sculptures and paintings and literature."

On a personal level, the reunion was an opportunity for alumni to test whether their memories of times past were as significant as they had thought. Old friends exchanged vignettes about the past 40 years of their lives. They reunited with Hawai'i host families, many still active in The Friends of the East-West Center.

Tears flowed as they heard and identified with speakers who described their life-changing experiences as a result of being a part of the East-West Center.

People described the impact on their childhoods and emerging adulthood of having parents who attended the center. "I never questioned whether the aunties and uncles were blood relatives or from the East-West Center," said Robert Reynolds, son of Hawai'i residents Jack Reynolds and Tin Myaing Thein, both 1960s alumni. "You all were my family."

The center's real-world connection was brought home by keynote speaker Patricia Harrison, assistant secretary of state for education and cultural affairs at the Department of State, representing Secretary Colin Powell. She stressed the importance of cultural and educational links on a people-to-people level, which she believed would, in the long run, surmount current international difficulties.

Her explanation of U.S. policy — its reconstructive initiatives as well as it military policies — posed an interesting juxtaposition to the views expressed by alumni in a panel discussion entitled "Images of the United States." A former member of the Indonesian Parliament, a businessman from Karachi, a Filipina professor from Brazil, and a college president from Malaysia felt torn in their response to this same American foreign policy in Iraq and the Middle East. The positive experiences they personally shared with Americans, especially during their time at the East-West Center, stood in contrast to their opposition to U.S. foreign policy, which they feared could destroy the positive people-to-people feelings most Asians and Latinos feel for individual Americans. They also feared that U.S. policies have fueled a radical element that is taking advantage of an inflamed economic situation.

In short, all at the reunion agreed that disagreements on policy should not undermine the long-range goal of promoting mutual respect, and that students studying at the center are in the vanguard of such a mission.

The East-West Center also maintains strong Hawai'i connections, reinforced by alumnus Galen Fox, minority leader of the state House of Representatives, who represented the Legislature. He read a proclamation by Gov. Linda Lingle recognizing the importance of the East-West Center for Hawai'i and the region.

Roland Lagareta, newly elected chairman of the center's board of governors, pledged a renewed effort by the board to promote East-West Center and Hawai'i-Asia-Pacific initiatives by helping to better communicate center programs to the public and to deepen its financial base.

The emotional dynamics reverberating throughout the conference were centered on the alumni's gratitude for their East-West Center experience and their desire to "give back" to the center. Some of the means for doing so are straightforward.

The 1960s alumni raised close to a quarter of a million dollars for an endowment fund to support student scholarships. Forty international East-West Center chapters pledged to renew their efforts to support the center, to become more active in the recruitment of students and to provide money that would enable scholars from their country to accept center awards.

Further, they agreed to undertake new initiatives to use the skills of an increasingly large number of alumni retirees. Under consideration are proposals to develop an in-country East-West Center Peace Corps, with retirees helping their own countries. Another proposal would create a structure in which an international panel of consultants would offer their expertise throughout the region.

Even after 40 years, we reaffirmed the threads that bind alumni to the East-West Center and to the hopes for a better world. We recognized that the center experience is unique, that it continues to have relevance and that its location in Hawai'i is special.

As Assistant Secretary Harrison said, "If the East-West Center did not exist, we would have to invent it."