WIT Life #172: Global Justice
Academic, Earthquake Tsunami, Translating/Interpreting, WIT Life, Writers 
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WITLife is a periodic series written by professional Writer/Interpreter/Translator Stacy Smith (Kumamoto-ken CIR, 2000-03). She starts her day by watching Fujisankei’s newscast in Japanese, and here she shares some of the interesting tidbits and trends together with her own observations.
Last week New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman profiled the Harvard University political philosopher Michael J. Sandel. This professor’s classes were picked up by PBS and made into a television program that has attracted worldwide attention. Last year, Japan’s NHK TV broadcast a translated version of the series, which sparked a philosophy craze in Japan and prompted the University of Tokyo to create a course based on Sandel’s.
As Friedman details, the PBS series is now available at http://www.justiceharvard.org, and here you can find a thought-provoking discussion of the ethical and global implications of the 2011 Japanese earthquake and nuclear disaster among students in Tokyo, Shanghai, and at Harvard.
It is interesting to see Japanese students voicing their opinions in a proactive way, and I am curious to see what kind of feedback the university course has received since being introduced.
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