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South Africa, Japan focus of two David M. Kennedy Center lectures Oct. 27

South Africa and Japan will be the focus of two lectures Friday, Oct. 27, in 238 Herald R. Clark Building sponsored by the David M. Kennedy Center for International Studies at Brigham Young University:

  • “South Africa Field Studies: Learning That Transcends Boundaries” will be presented by Tanya Fetui Tolman on Friday, Oct. 27 at noon. Tolman is the founder of InnoVision Consulting, which offers coaching on culture and leadership and provides training and development.

    She participated in South Africa field studies in 1999 and 2000, with her research focusing on gender stratification, literacy and street children. She was the field program facilitator in 2000 and office coordinator for the South Africa program for the next three years.

    A BYU alumna, Tolman received a bachelor’s degree in data analysis in 2001 and a master’s degree organizational behavior in 2003.

  • “Securing Japan in a Dangerous Neighborhood” will be the topic presented by Richard J. Samuels at 2 p.m. Samuels is the Ford International Professor of Political Science, a department he chaired for five years, and director of the Center for International Studies at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He served as vice chairman of the Committee on Japan of the National Research Council until 1996 and is founding director of MIT’s Japan program. Grants from the Fulbright Commission, the Abe Fellowship Fund, the National Science Foundation and the Smith Richardson Foundation have supported his nine years of field research in Japan.

    In 2005, he was elected a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and in 2001, he became chairman of the Japan-U.S. Friendship Commission, an independent federal grant-making agency that supports Japanese studies and policy-oriented research in the United States.

    His latest book, “Securing Japan,” will be released next year by Cornell University Press.

    Most lectures are archived online. For more information on David M. Kennedy Center

    events, see the calendar online at kennedy.byu.edu.

    Writer: Lee Simons

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