ASIAN PERSPECTIVES ON 21st CENTURY ISSUES
November 13th and 14th 2009
St. Mary’s College of Maryland

Contact: Prof. Bradley Park, bdpark@smcm.edu

A free, public two-day symposium and town-hall examining global issues of our century—Human Rights, Democracy, Women, Development & the Environment—from the perspective of four Asian traditions—Chinese, Japanese, Buddhist, and Islamic thought. The goal of the program is to engage these critical issues from within a multicultural context in order to learn from Asia and not just about Asia.

The symposium, which begins at 7:30 PM, Friday, November 13 in St. Mary’s Hall (Auerbach Auditorium), will feature four distinguished panelists from across the country:

Professor Henry Rosemont, Jr., Brown University
Dr. Peter Hershock, East-West Center
Professor Nelly van Doorn-Harder, Wake Forest University
Professor William LaFleur, University of Pennsylvania

The Asian Perspectives on 21st Century Issues symposium is part of the Asian Studies Development Program of the East-West Center and the Asian Symposium on Democracy, Rights and Development supported by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. College sponsors of the event include the Lecture and Fine Arts Council, Asian Studies, and the Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies.

FORMAT AND SCHEDULE (subject to change)

Friday, November 13, 2009 (Auerbach Auditorium / St. Mary’s Hall)

7:30 PM Role Ethics: A Confucian Moral Vision for the Global 21st Century
Henry Rosemont, Jr

Abstract: Although over 160 nations have ratified the U.N. International Covenant on Social, Economic and Cultural Rights, the United States has not. In significant measure this is due to grounding the concept of human rights in a view of human beings as essentially free, autonomous individuals. In this way civil and political rights may be straightforwardly championed and legally defended, but so can a “blame the victim” view for explaining stark social and economic injustice despite its manifest falsity. Social, economic and cultural rights will have little place in a conceptual framework based on foundational individualism in a capitalist society. Grounding the concept of human beings in their interrelatedness, however, Confucians can easily champion both sets of rights, giving their role ethics – as distinguished from all Western theories of ethics -- a claim on our attention today as the gap between the super-rich and the impoverished continues to widen both at home and abroad.

Saturday, November 14, 2009 (Auerbach Auditorium / St. Mary’s Hall)

9:00 AM – 10:30 PM Women and Politics in Indonesia: the Power to Confront or Conform.
Nelly Van Doorn-Harder

Abstract: By examining the development of democracy in Indonesia, Prof. Doorn-Harder will discuss how Islamist political parties have strategically placed women in high political positions in order to resist the activities of Muslim feminists and other groups against the national application of Islamic law.

11:00 AM - 12:30 PM Bio-Lust: America's Biotech Juggernaut and its Japanese Critics
William LaFleur

Abstract: This talk, illustrated with graphics, looks at why Japanese bioethicists have focused on an organ recipient’s desire for another person’s organs as an aperture for analyzing how our rapidly emerging new biotechnologies exacerbate our lust for a longer life, thus making our societies as societies, in some sense, less well. The growing gap between organs desired and organs available has led to serious proposals that body parts be legally bought and sold. In the view of many Japanese, any readiness to commodify ourselves to such a degree is itself a symptom of serious social illness.


12:30 PM - 1:45 PM Lunch Break

2:00 PM - 3:30 PM Environments, Diversity and Equity: A Buddhist Perspective, Peter Hershock

Abstract: In this talk, Dr Hershock will make use of Buddhist conceptual resources to consider how the processes of modernization, globalization, industrialization and marketization affect our lived environments. One of the insights afforded by this approach is that the issues of diversity loss that are at the center of concerns about human impacts on natural environmental systems are inseparable from issues of eroding diversity and equity in the social, economic, political and cultural spheres. Responding to such challenges as the looming crisis of climate change require a coordinated approach that is sensitive to the interdependence of the natural and the human and how climate change forces confrontation with an ongoing collision among globally dominant values that cannot sustainably addressed through techno-bureaucratic solutions alone.

The principal lectures will be followed by (1) a student respondent and (2) a town-hall discussion involving the complete panel.

For ASDP Participants and St. Mary’s Faculty

4:00 PM – 5:30 PM ASDP Faculty Workshop (TBD)

6:00 PM – 8:00 PM Reception Dinner (Historic State House)

PANELISTS

HENRY ROSEMONT, Jr. received his Ph.D. in philosophy from the University of Washington, pursued postdoctoral studies in linguistics for two years with Noam Chomsky at MIT, and is George B. & Willma Reeves Distinguished Professor of the Liberal Arts (Emeritus) at St. Mary’s College of Maryland. He has written A Chinese Mirror (1991), Rationality & Religious Experience (2001), and with Huston Smith, Is There a Universal Grammar of Religion? (2008). He has edited and/or translated ten other books, including Leibniz: Writings on China (with D.J. Cook, 1994), and with Roger T. Ames, The Analects of Confucius: A Philosophical Translation (1998), and The Classic of Family Reverence (Xiaojing) (2008). He has spent 3 years as Fulbright Senior Professor of Philosophy & Linguistics at Fudan University in Shanghai, a year as a Visiting Scholar at the University of London’s School of Oriental & African Studies, and has lectured at over 150 colleges and universities in the U.S., Europe, and Asia. An anthology of essays dedicated to his work was published in 2008, edited by Marthe Chandler and Ronnie Littlejohn, Polishing the Chinese Mirror: Essays in Honor of Henry Rosemont, Jr. Since 2002 he has been affiliated with the Department of Religious Studies at Brown University, currently as a Visiting Scholar.

WILLIAM R. LaFLEUR is the E. Dale Saunders Professor in Japanese Studies in the Department of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Pennsylvania. He is also a Professor in the Department of Religious Studies. He did graduate work in Comparative Literature at the University of Michigan and received the Ph.D. in the History of Religions at the University of Chicago. He has taught at Princeton, UCLA, and Sophia University in Tokyo. In 1989 he was the first non-Japanese recipient of the Watsuji Tetsurô Culture Prize for scholarship. His books include Mirror for the Moon: Poetry by Saigyō 1118-1190 (1978); The Karma of Words: Buddhism and the Literature Arts in Medieval Japan (University of California Press, 1986), Buddhism: A Cultural Perspective (Prentice-Hall, 1988); Liquid Life: Abortion and Buddhism in Japan (Princeton University Press, 1992). He edited Zen and Western Thought: Essays by Masao Abe (1985), recipient of a prize from the American Academy of Religion, and Dōgen Studies (1985), both books published by the University of Hawaii Press. A new study, Awesome Nightfall: The Life, Death, and Poetry of Saigyō, was published in 2003. He is the principal editor, along with Gernot Böhme and Susumu Shimazono, of Dark Medicine: Rationalizing Unethical Medical Research (Bioethics series of Indiana University Press, 2007), favorably reviewed in the Journal of the American Medical Association. He is currently completing work on a volume that studies Japanese critics of American biotechnology and bioethics. He is organizing an international conference to examine differences in bioethics in Japan, America, and Germany. Occasionally he publishes his own poetry.

PETER HERSHOCK is Coordinator of the Asian Studies Development Program at the East-West Center in Honolulu, Hawai’i. He has earned degrees from Yale University (B.A., Philosophy) and the University of Hawai’i (Ph.D., Asian and Comparative Philosophy) and has focused his research on the philosophical dimensions of Chan Buddhism and on using the resources of Buddhist thought and practice to address contemporary issues, including: technology and development, education, human rights, and the role of values in cultural and social change. His books include: Liberating Intimacy: Enlightenment and Social Virtuosity in Ch’an Buddhism (1996); Reinventing the Wheel: A Buddhist Response to the Information Age (1999); Technology and Cultural Values on the Edge of the Third Millennium (edited, 2004); Chan Buddhism (2005); Buddhism in the Public Sphere: Reorienting Global Interdependence (2006); Confucian Cultures of Authority (edited, 2006); Changing Education: Leadership, Innovation and Development in a Globalizing Asia Pacific (edited, 2007); and Educations and their Purposes: A Conversation among Cultures (edited, 2008).

NELLY van DOORN-HARDER’s research straddles issues concerning women and religion and those concerning minorities, minority cultures, and human rights in Muslim countries. She has done her main fieldwork in the Middle East and Southeast Asia; specializing in indigenous Christianity of Egypt and in Muslim organizations in Indonesia. She has authored and co-authored books, papers, and book chapters in these areas, among others for Sojourn, The Muslim World, the Nordic Journal of Human Rights, The Encyclopaedia of the Qur’an, The Encyclopaedia of Religion, and the Encyclopaedia of Islam. Her latest book, Women Shaping Islam. Indonesian Muslim Women Reading the Qur’an (2006), analyzes the various religious strategies Indonesian Muslim feminists have developed to strengthen the position of women. The book argues that their use of Qur’an based texts rather than secular feminist material allows women to gain degrees of authority that in certain fields are comparable to the authority of male Muslim leaders. Her current research focuses on spiritual trends that motivate activist expressions of Islam in Indonesia. This project includes artistic expressions, visual culture, rituals, and text. She has held fellowships from Fulbright, the Ford Foundation, the American University at Cairo, and the Norwegian Institute for Human Rights Studies. Before coming to Wake Forest University as Professor of Islamic Studies in the Department of Religion, she taught at Valparaiso University where she held the Surjit Patheja Chair in World Religions and Ethics. She has also taught Islamic Studies and the Study of Religion at Leiden University, the Free University in Amsterdam, and at the Gajah Mada and Duta Wacana Universities in Indonesia.

Location: St. Mary’s College of Maryland (www.smcm.edu)
Local Tourist Information: http://tour.co.saint-marys.md.us/

Regional Airports

St. Mary's is within 2 hours by car from three major airports. From Baltimore-Washington International Airport (BWI), follow airport signs to I-97 South and the driving directions from Baltimore below. From Reagan National (DCA) and Dulles International (IAD) airports, follow the driving directions from Washington, D.C. The area surrounding St. Mary’s College of Maryland is quite rural with minimal public transportation. Visitors are strongly advised to have their own vehicle.
Directions
From the North:
Baltimore- Take I-97 South to MD Route 3 South in Bowie, Maryland. Follow Rte. 3 / 301 South to MD Route 4 South in Upper Marlboro. Take Rte. 4 South through Prince Frederick and cross the Thomas Johnson Bridge at Solomon's. (Follow detailed directions below in Italics)
Annapolis- Follow MD Rte. 2 South from Annapolis until it dead-ends with MD Rte. 4 South. Take Rte. 4 South and cross the Thomas Johnson Bridge at Solomon's. (Follow detailed directions below in Italics)
Washington, D.C.- Take the Capital Beltway (I-495/95) to Exit 11A for MD Route 4 South. Follow Rte. 4 through Prince Frederick and cross the Thomas Johnson Bridge at Solomon's. (Follow detailed directions below in Italics)
About 3 miles from the bridge turn left at the first traffic light onto MD Route 235 South. Travel 4.5 miles through Lexington Park, turning right onto Shangri La Drive at stoplight (just past the Days Inn hotel). Proceed through the next traffic light. Bear left at the fork in the road on Willows Road and drive 3 miles to the stop sign at MD Route 5 South. Turn left and continue 4 miles to the College.
From the South (Richmond): Take US Route 301 North over the Potomac River Bridge. Turn right at the second set of blinking lights onto MD Route 234. Follow Rte. 234 approximately 23 miles to where it ends at MD Route 5. Turn right (south) on Rte. 5, traveling through Leonardtown, and continue 15 miles to St. Mary's College The campus is located on Route 5. Once you see the beautiful St. Mary's River on your right, you will know you have arrived!


Warning About Online Map Services and GPS systems: Online map services and GPS systems do not always provide accurate routes to the campus. Do not rely on them without comparing their directions with ours or a road map of the area.

Accommodations
Hampton Inn Lexington Park
22211 Three Notch Road
Lexington Park, MD 20653
(301) 863-3200

For the Symposium’s Group Rate of $109 (plus taxes) per night, please use the link below (**Deadline Nov. 5**):
http://hamptoninn.hilton.com/e...20091113/index.jhtml

Dining

Very good meals (including vegetarian and vegan options) are available on campus at the Great Room, which offers a cafeteria-style buffet. (Weekdays: 7:00 -10:30 am - Breakfast $7.90; 11:00-1:30 pm - Lunch $11.40; 5:00 -7:15 pm - Dinner $15.00 / Weekends: 10:00-1:30 pm - Brunch $10.80; 4:00-6:15 pm - Dinner $15.00).
For details about the Great Room menu: http://www.smcm.edu/dining/menus.html
For more information about dining in the region: http://www.smcm.edu/visitors/dining.html