The convenor introduced the two commentators, Prof. Leovino Ma. Garcia and Prof. David Newman; their prepared comments follow:

　

　

 Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Dr. Jose M. Cruz, Dean of the School of Social Sciences of the Ateneo de Manila University, conveys his sincere apologies for not being able to attend this joyful celebration of SYLFF's 20th anniversary. He has kindly requested me to take his place. I, therefore, thank the officials of the Nippon Foundation, Dr. Hemmingsen of the University of Copenhagen, and the Officials of the Tokyo Foundation for welcoming me.

　

 Distinguished guests and colleagues, in fairy tales, folk tales and legends, often there are protagonists who, though seeming to possess no extraordinary powers, nevertheless take on extraordinary tasks. These are ordinary people of ordinary circumstances. How do they overcome the enormous obstacles that stand in their way? Often there is a kindly wizard, a mighty wind or an enchanted creature that takes up their cause and provides the assistance to realize heroic, almost impossible, dreams.

　

 In fairy tales or folk tales, it is the ordinary people with a great heart who end up saving failing kingdoms, their heroism made possible by the benevolence of things greater than themselves. In real life, too, great tasks are often placed on the shoulders of people of goodwill. When faced with the question of those who rid the world of its violence, of poverty, of bigotry, of injustice and of greed, we often find ordinary people with extraordinary daring and magnanimity. In this afternoon's panel are two such gifted people.

　

 We have Goran Svilanovic whom I had the pleasure of discovering this noon at lunch that we share the same passion for the Japanese novelist Haruki Murakami and the Turkish novelist Orhan Pamuk. From this, I have concluded that Goran is a politician you can trust because he has a passion for clean politics and for literature. Goran faced the terrible visage of oppression and war, rising to a position of leadership in government. With SYLFF support, he finished his studies in law which, in turn, allowed him to intensify his struggle for human rights, democratization, and the opening of his nation to the world community.

　

 And we have Egla Martinez-Salazar. We witnessed her passion, her ethical passion. I agree with her that we should close the gap between theory and practice in our discourses on democratization and human rights. In a world marked by discrimination and by the indiscriminate violence against a voiceless minority, she rose to become a scholar for justice, a sociologist warrior. She is a warrior for peace defending the powerless.

　

 Our two speakers lived in situations of violence − a fertile soil for extremism and hatred. Growing up in or working amidst those circumstances, they could have become people consumed by hatred and preoccupied by the desire to destroy. By choice and by grace, they have become instead builders of a better world for all.

　

 In their quest, could they have been aided perhaps by a kindly wizard, a mighty wind, an enchanted creature that goes by the name of SYLFF? If the two speakers represent to a meaningful degree the kind of emerging young leaders that the program engages, then a strong case can be made for SYLFF to continue on its mission. SYLFF must continue this work of finding those rare spirits who remain intact despite living in or working amidst strife and misery. It must continue to encourage them to seek out the best schools. It must continue to assist them in obtaining a deep and realistic understanding of the world and the strategies and resources that transform it for the better. It must continue to place before them its agenda for hope and its view that dedicated study and courageous action are required to bring about prosperity and dignity for all.

　

 SYLFF must continue its work because those who dream of changing the world may need to equip themselves with the discipline of mind and the audacity of heart, qualities nurtured in the best schools. Beyond developing individuals, SYLFF has the opportunity to link kindred spirits in a network that facilitates collaborative endeavors. With so many problems transcending national borders, or whose remedies require international support, SYLFF can be a network of contacts, a structure for concerted study and support, a community of people with shared commitments. The international composition of the SYLFF fellows points to its recruitment policy but, more importantly, to its view that broad perspectives and common action are needed to transform the world.

　

 SYLFF has decided to work with the academically prepared with the potential for leadership. The challenge in our times is to see how leadership can be exercised beyond national boundaries. The exercise of leadership in local settings is admirable and is often what is called for and what is possible. We may wish to reflect how the international character of SYLFF can be made more robust, manifest in the scale of leadership and vision. We might wish to ask, too, how SYLFF as a community connects with other communities with similar purposes and how the study and experience of the fellows is shared with others.

　

 And so I look with interest at the proposals for regional centers and the use of new tools of communication to create virtual networks and communities. In a clear and an unmistakable way, SYLFF has been something of a mighty wind that carries forward the dreams and efforts of people of goodwill. The testimonies of our two speakers this afternoon convey this fact. The challenge is to see how SYLFF can more effectively locate the best candidates for fellowships and how to link more effectively the scholars after they complete their studies.

　

 Thank you for your kind attention.

　

　

 Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. Like everybody else I wish to express my gratitude to The Nippon Foundation and The Tokyo Foundation, which are very important to our joint endeavors and, of course, to the University of Copenhagen for their hospitality.

　

 I obviously want to thank all three recipients of the prize. I listened to both of you here this afternoon and I had the pleasure of reading all three of your presentations which were given in 2004. I want to thank you for bringing back the humanity and the ethics into scientific endeavor in an era when everything, even in the academic world, seems to be judged by profit margins and by efficiency. Somehow we are forgetting about the fact that there are values, particularly in the social sciences, and it is important to remind ourselves of the essential humanity of the humanities and the ethics of the social sciences, and this came through very clearly in all of the presentations. One presentation was a micro analysis of Latin American issues, one was a macro analysis of the Balkans, while the third presentation, which wasn't heard today, concerns my own backyard, Israel-Palestine, albeit looking at it from the other side of the fence from where I am located but, nevertheless, with a great deal of common values and common positions.

　

 I am a scholar of geopolitics and borders and I wish to use notions of borders as a metaphor for understanding the importance of the SYLLF Program. What are the contemporary significance and role of boundaries and borders in a world which, so the globalist purists tell us, is a borderless world? My own position is to reject this idea and to write a counter narrative to that of the borderless world. Borders remain very important in the contemporary world, even if they are not always fences and physical walls, although of course I come from a region where one side has recently unilaterally imposed a physical barrier, the separation Fence / Wall between Israel and Palestine, a border which doesn't do a great deal to contribute to the role of peace and cooperation in the region.

　

 The study of borders has undergone a tremendous renaissance in the past 10 or 15 years and it has partly undergone a renaissance, ironically, because of the borderless world discourse. And suddenly for many, many different disciplines − geographers, political scientists, sociologists, anthropologists, historians and international legal experts − have come together to try and discuss the contemporary role and significance of borders. Borders are still there but their functions and significance have changed, they are not the same as they used to be. Their functions have changed. Globalization may not have driven them away altogether but they have impacted them in many senses.

　

 Borders have two contrasting functions. One is the function we always think about. Borders are barriers. They prevent people from communicating. They create barriers and walls and fences between different peoples and different cultures and different countries. But we often forget that the borders, or the location of borders, the place where borders are located can equally be the place of the bridge rather than the barrier, the place where different peoples make contact and cooperate across the border, precisely because that is where the traditional line of separation has been which, when opened, is where people come together.

　

 I'm currently running a project for the United States Institute of Peace which is looking at the future of the Israeli and Palestinian borders as potential points of contact rather than potential barriers. Of course, I think you will all agree with me, ladies and gentlemen, that first and foremost we require a border which is an accepted barrier by both sides, before we can move on to thinking about how they become bridges 10 or 20 years down the road.

　

 Of course, one of the things we're interested in examining borders is how do we cross borders. Are they always closed? Are they always sealed? What is the process through which borders are opened, so that people and ideas can cross from one side to the other?

　

 Scientific research and academics cross borders. Much of the background to the Oslo Agreements between Israel and the Palestinian Authority which took place 10-15 years ago, was partly due to the meeting of academics at conferences and in off-the-record meetings, at second and third track levels, where it was more acceptable for people with similar educational experiences, who could talk and dialogue with each other, in a fairly civilized manner, creating the infrastructure around which the Oslo Agreements were negotiated and signed in the 1990s.

　

 I myself take part in many Track 2 negotiations in which academics and diplomats and politicians come together across borders and beyond borders in order to try and discover the way in which we can use our own education and our own scientific endeavor to contribute to peace making. This sort of dialogue often contributes to the raising of the quality of life, those areas which are common to all, regardless of their political or national loyalties, such as education, environment, poverty, welfare and health. The mosquitoes don't know where the fence is. They bite you on both sides of the line, but if you can come together on both sides of the border and say, "We want to use our side to resolve the environmental problem, the mosquito problems," it's not a political problem, it's a problem that everyone wants to resolve equally, and by coming together you communicate, cooperate, and from zero trust you build up the first 5 percent of trust between peoples by looking at those areas which, in a sense, are a long way away, detached, from the hard political conflict issues. In that way you start to create places, in a sense, borderlands or trans-boundary regions in which people meet. To a certain extent, this is what many of the SYLFF contacts and student programs, even this meeting of administrators are creating, a trans-boundary region, a borderland space where we come together despite our differences because we have other common goods relating to humanity and ethics which are important. We, in a sense, create spaces of hybridity where, on the one hand, we don't throw away our own particular uniqueness, whether they be national or religious or cultural, characteristics, but we find a way of both maintaining and retaining them and, at the same time, understanding and listening to the problems and the issues which are of concern to the other.

　

 At these meetings, it is not always the formal presentations which are significant. Often the most important thing is in the evening when you are sitting around the table having dinner or having coffee together and then you suddenly find that the other person on the other side of the fence is just as crazy a sports supporter as you are, and you are able to break the ice and create a contact over mundane and banal topics, from which you can move on to far more important things because you have discovered the essential humanity and sameness of someone that you have always perceived as being different, and perhaps even an enemy. Something which is different, on the other side of a barrier type border, is often invisible, and something which is invisible is often feared, even though the reason for the fear is perceived rather than real. By meeting with each other, you are able to remove the invisibility and the ignorance, and eventually the mutually perceived fear and threat.

　

 I would like to move beyond what the presentation about Serbia and the idea of creating regional interaction of students in and around the Balkans. A similar idea could be proposed for a regional meeting of Israeli and Palestinian and Jordanian and Egyptian students. Some meeting places do exist, but they are not sufficient. It is necessary to create some sort of neutral environment in which Israeli, Palestinian and Jordanian and Egyptian students can come together not just for a week and not just for 10 days but maybe for a few months and share human experiences. Many of these globalized students will be tomorrow's leaders. They recognize that to be part of a globalized world, it is necessary to resolve the ethnic, territorial and religious conflicts that have plagued conflict regions, such as Israel-Palestine where I live, for such a long time.

　

 So what I'm basically saying is that SYLFF and other programs like SYLFF, the Partnership for Peace programs of the EU in which Israeli and Palestinian research or scientific partners join in the same project. Projects such as these contribute to the common raising of the quality of life and bring people together who understand the essential humanity and the sameness, rather than the difference, which exists on the other side of the fence. They recognize that everybody is a parent, a brother or a sister, everybody has children they wish to educate, and everybody wishes to have a quality of life which includes the security of employment and a wage to bring home. Most of them don't want to fight and to be part if violent and insecure societies.

　

 In concluding, what I'm basically arguing, using my own metaphor of borders and listening to these essential humanistic presentations, is to see SYLFF as a sort of trans-border experience and space, where people come together. It enables us to transform barrier borders into bridge borders, places of contact and meeting. I believe the scientific endeavor and contact that organizations such as SYLFF can encourage are the creation of these sorts of borders whereby we create shared spaces and contribute towards our common human experience.

　

 Thank you.

　

David Leyton-Brown: Let me pose a question related to Egla's presentation on conceptual rights and positive/negative liberty. What is needed beyond the kind of human understanding that you were conveying today, for those women of Guatemala to enjoy the rights they ought to possess?

　

Egla Martinez-Salazar: To have rights, we need to be committed to another view of social justice. First we all need to remind ourselves, including persons who have enjoyed a good life for centuries, that a basic right − the right to have rights − is needed. For that to happen, we need to reorganize the world in a different way − what we do in our daily lives and introduce some compassion and charity (in Spanish, compassion means charity) but thus far this has been limited to the privileged. Many women have said that they need our true solidarity; longstanding models of development and enlightened thinking have contributed to their exclusion and sometimes their termination. They added, if you wish to contribute to our struggle, do not give to our development corporation; if you really want to help us in learning, bring the means to us − we have our own culture, history and brains; we have families, local and national governments, it is a long chain. The women I have researched need a different kind of solidarity with us.

　

Convenor: I should like to ask Leo to say something on the role of ethics and the humanities.

　

Leovino Garcia: While listening to Egla, I thought of philosophers. The whole history of Western philosophy has been of "me, my situation", so we need to go back and consider what it means that we have lost the ethical dimension. You must consider that there are other people − I have been the dean of the School of Humanities for 12 years, which is too long − in our philosophy classes. In the Philippines, the separation of the rich from the poor is obvious. We need to break down those borders, to get people to interact and to communicate. Our university is very expensive, but we try to have a social mix of students, as long as they can pass the entrance exams. We enable people to experience the "other side".

　

Convenor to Goran Svilanovic: What motivated you to stand up to the government?

　

Goran Svilanovic: In the early 90's I would have said my dream is to end up as a professor of law. I was delighted with the school and the subject; I was teaching civil procedure but there were people around me pursuing something else. The country was in a very difficult process. When the war started, I was in Saarbrücken, Germany watching on television the thousands of people on the street. My wife said she did not know what was happening. I was also an officer in the army, specializing in tanks; my unit went to Bukovar. In June 1991, of course I would have gone too but luckily I was abroad so I was not drafted. Later I saw that it was much more complex; it takes some time to understand a process. In 1998 when the government introduced an act on universities, I was fired. I had two children, 7 and 5. There was a coup in 2000, and a month later I was a minister. After six years in parliament, four years as foreign minister, I changed; I began to see things differently.

　

 In 1995 when the war really ended with the Dayton Accord, it created a monster country, Bosnia; in 2001 I was the foreign minister and had to lobby with MPs to ratify the agreement. I must admit, regarding human rights, as a politician you have two or three years in office, and if you only think of being re-elected, you will never do anything.

　

David Newman; I grew up in an environment where Zionism and the Jewish homeland were important. I think about the idea of the metaphor of nationalism. My involvement was that I wrote a weekly column for two newspapers but was thrown out because of being too left-wing, too pro-Palestinian and too pro-peace, for those newspapers. We must strengthen links between Palestinian and Jewish students but what happens is that when you have worked for six months to bring together something, a suicide bomber destroys all you have planned and worked for.

　

Tim Sullivan: I would like to address the issue of selection of fellows. There may be many like Egla among the thousands of students out there. Leadership is encouraged; you look at grades and test scores, and selection committees decide who gets in. It strikes me that the SYLFF Program might help people who would otherwise not get through the door and promote engaged scholarship as emphasized by Egla.

　

Convenor: How do we evaluate leadership?

　

Joyashree Roy: Egla says that we need a different way of thinking to regulate society. Goran establishes faith in regular politics, the regular state. SYLFF is such a strong network − so different from many other scholarship programs; it is so totally unique. If we really want to convey this, how many "Eglas" will change this world? In how many years? We need to quantify our goals. Can SYLFF be used towards a goal five years ahead? It is a big question.

　

Convenor: It is a very interesting question.

　

Egla Martinez-Salazar: I want to make a clarification. I am not against governments; I am against governments forgetting the rules of civil society. Change happens in different ways; sometimes we cannot quantify matters. The social sciences want to quantify everything and this is not always possible.

　

Caroline Yang: This has been a wonderful beginning for our conference. There is no one or two or three ways of leadership, there are many ways; we can all realize this, we are part of a huge framework and family.

　

Convenor: Thank you everyone for your contributions.

　

　

 The SYLFF 20^th anniversary dinner was held in the evening in the Festsalen. John E. Andersen and Jeanne Lee served as master and mistress of ceremonies, respectively. The program included a message of appreciation by Nippon Foundation President Takeju Ogata; presentations of a certificate of appreciation and token of appreciation to Rector Hemmingsen by Yohei Sasakawa and Hideki Kato; celebratory message by Ambassador Masaki Okada; toast by Gerard Sheehan; and performance by the University of Copenhagen choir, Lille Muko.