Newsletters and Essays

From September 16 to 23, 2025, I participated in the Waseda Institute of International Reconciliation Studies (IIRS) Summer Program. The program brought together scholars and practitioners from Japan and the United States to explore reconciliation as a field connecting theory, ethics, and practice. It included the Joint International Seminar with George Mason University’s Carter School for Peace and Conflict Resolution, along with field visits to the Japanese Embassy, the German Marshall Fund (GMF), and major museums in Washington, D.C.

The program deepened my focus on reconciliation frameworks, particularly those addressing protracted conflicts such as Myanmar’s revolutionary stalemate. It underscored education’s role in advancing moral repair and adaptive peacebuilding, reframing classrooms and academic exchanges as spaces for ethical engagement amid continuing discord.

1. Presentations and Discussions

The Carter School seminar series, led by Professors Marc Gopin, Karina Korostelina, and Daniel Rothbart, provided essential theoretical foundations for reconciliation, especially relevant to conflict-affected societies. The lectures framed reconciliation as a nonlinear, process-oriented practice and raised questions about how to integrate such perspectives into transformative education.A central thread across the sessions was reconciliation as a deeply moral and emotional transformation rather than a legal or political arrangement.

Professor Marc Gopin presented Healing the Heart of Conflict, an eight-element framework emphasizing observation, deep listening, emotional awareness, self-examination, and imagination of future relationships. His model of Compassionate Reasoning invites moral reflection guided by four questions: Is it kind? Will most people benefit? Does it build a better future? Is it right for everyone to do it? Professor Daniel Rothbart defined reconciliation as a process of moral repair after wrongdoing, involving acknowledgment of harm, acceptance of moral responsibility, forgiveness, and restoration of trust. Drawing on the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission, he showed how truth-telling restores dignity and enables societies to envision ethical futures. For educators, this suggests the power of narrative-based learning to rebuild empathy and moral understanding in divided communities. Professor Karina V. Korostelina outlined an identity-based model of reconciliation grounded in theories of protracted social conflict. She argued that reconciliation requires reconfiguring identity relations and power structures to cultivate equality, trust, empathy, and cooperative norms through apology, forgiveness, and shared environments of coexistence.

In the GMF–CIRS Seminar, I presented my working paper Reconciliation in the Midst of Revolution, with Dr. Gloria Y.A. Ayee as discussant. I argued that Myanmar’s post-2021 coup context—a fragmented civil war of “many against many,” involving ethnic armed groups, military conscription, and dual governance (e.g., the National Unity Government controlling over 60% of the territory) requires mid-conflict rather than post-conflict reconciliation models. Synthesizing Martin Leiner’s Hölderlin Perspective (reconciliation amid discord) and Roger Mac Ginty’s Everyday Peace (grassroots micro-practices of harmony), I proposed a phased “giving-voice-and-healing” approach rooted in local agency, solidarity, and narrative pluralism insulated from elite interference.

Dr. Ayee commended the framework for challenging deferred reconciliation and highlighting both horizontal ties among revolutionaries and vertical bridges between civilians and authorities. She raised important questions about scaling micro-level efforts without exclusion or co-optation. Her reflections underscored the need to examine how national ideals such as equality are contested through histories of exclusion, shaping institutional mistrust.

This exchange reaffirmed the  dimension of reconciliation: amplifying marginalized voices, including women and youth, and cultivating empathetic spaces where diverse narratives coexist. The synthesis of ethics, neuroscience, and grassroots theory opens new pedagogical possibilities for building inclusive moral communities.

2. Field Visits and Observations

The visit to the Embassy of Japan offered insight into Japan–U.S. diplomatic relations and their cultural, economic, and security cooperation. The embassy officers explained the intricate, long-term efforts that sustain peaceful bilateral relationships—an important reminder of the quiet, continuous labor behind international diplomacy.

We also visited the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, the National Museum of African American History and Culture, and several memorials and monuments in Washington, D.C., including the event commemorating 80 years since the atomic bombing of Hiroshima. The Holocaust Museum’s exhibition Burma’s Path to Genocide was particularly moving. It traces how the Rohingya community in Myanmar were stripped of citizenship and targeted for extermination. Visiting it for the second time deepened my conviction that reconciliation must begin with moral education. Many in Myanmar remain unaware of the Rohingya’s history and rights, while others, despite knowing, remain silent due to political pressure. This silence shows the moral cost of fear and complicity.

The drawings by Hiroshima survivors were equally powerful expressions of pain transformed into advocacy for peace and a nuclear-free world. Rather than nurturing resentment or blame, they embody moral courage and the redemptive potential of collective memory. Through these visits, I came to appreciate how monuments and museums serve as instruments of national reflection. They anchor collective memory, shaping how societies understand their shared past and future identity. My subsequent research revealed that Washington, D.C., hosts over a hundred monuments and memorials each contributing to the nation’s moral landscape. These sites help build the collective consciousness that underpins democratic reconciliation and civic solidarity.