U.S. – Japan Diplomacy Academy for University Students in Northern Japan
One-Week Diplomatic Academy Taught by U.S. and Japanese Professors
sponsored by the U.S. Embassy-Tokyo
About the Academy
The U.S. -Japan Diplomacy Academy (the Academy) is designed to offer Japanese university students across various academic disciplines from universities in Northern Japan a better understanding of the workings of diplomacy and defense dealing with regional and international security threats. Students in the Academy will learn how the U.S. -Japan alliance is critical to help deter and counter regional threats, including North Korea, territorial and maritime disputes in the East China Sea and the Northern Territories, and increasing threats and use of hybrid warfare tactics by Russia and China.
Part interactive learning experience and part competitive scenario exercise, the Diplomacy Academy allows students interested in international security to interact with fellow students, mentors, expert faculty, and military officials while developing valuable skills in policy analysis and presentation.
Why should you enroll?
The deteriorating global security architecture finds powers like China and Russia and smaller states like North Korea increasingly using hybrid warfare tactics that range from cyber-attacks to propaganda and subversion, economic blackmail, sponsorship of proxy forces, and military expansionism. Such powers rely on ambiguity, strategic surprise, and deception to accomplish their objectives of replacing the liberal, rules-based international order with a Chinese-Russian-led international order based on power and hierarchy.
Students from Northern Japan have fewer opportunities to learn about those challenges than their peers elsewhere in Japan. This Academy is an innovative academic program that fosters experiential and engagement-based teaching, enhanced by contributions from the government, including the military. It equips future leaders of Northern Japan with the knowledge, skills, and professional networks to pursue careers in national and international security and defense.
What are the benefits to student participants?
Understand multidimensional security threats that influence the security of Japan, the U.S., and their allies; Build awareness of strategic stability challenges facing Japan; Promote novel thinking about current strategies regarding security challenges; Learn how to choose the most effective policy responses to hybrid threats; Analyze the role of government actors in decision making; Develop critical thinking skills; Reinforce connections across technical, policy, and security disciplines; Build networks with diplomacy and security experts in government.
How is the Academy structured?
It consists of 4 modules over five days. In the Experiential Knowledge module,students will gain knowledge about (1) hybrid warfare threats to the US-Japan Alliance, (2) the importance of power politics, (3) the importance of the US-Japan Alliance, and (4) diplomacy, bargaining, and international relations. In the Professional Communication module, student participants will learn how to write policy briefs that help inform policymakers when making decisions. Students will also learn how to create a strategic communications plan to promote government policies to the public. For the Experiential Learning module, participants will interact with practitioners of diplomacy and defense through visits to Japan SDF bases in Sapporo and Miyagi prefectures and the US Consulate in Sapporo (for the Hokkaido academy).In the Simulation module, students will participate in a simulation exercise with American and Japanese professors as mentors to practice negotiation and crisis decision-making.
Academy Details
Hokkaido University
September 17 – 21, 2024
Tohoku University
September 24 – 28, 2024
Academy Attendees
Japanese university students of any academic discipline.
Thank you to our grantor, U.S. Department of State, U.S. Embassy Tokyo