Prof. Akihiko Tanaka to head JICA

Foreign Minister Koichiro Gemba announced on Tuesday January 17th after a Cabinet meeting that Professor Akihiko Tanaka of International Politics, who has been Vice President of International Affairs of UTokyo and Director of FUTI since January of 2009, will become President of the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) from April 1, 2012, succeeding Dr. Sadako Ogata, who has served the position since 2003.
Prof. Tanaka earned his B.A. degree in International Relations at the University of Tokyo’s College of Arts and Sciences in 1977 and his Ph.D. degree in Political Science at Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1981. He was a Japanese member of the East Asia Vision Group, an advisory panel for the ASEAN+3 summit. He has also been a member of various government advisory panels including the Council on Security and Defense Capability and the Advisory Group on International Cooperation for Peace. He has written numerous books and articles in Japanese and English including The New Middle Ages: The World System in the 21st Century (The International House of Japan, 2002). His most recent edited volume was An East Asian Community and the United States (Center for Strategic and International Studies, Washington, D.C., 2007, co-edited with Ralph A. Cossa). In the International Master’s and Doctoral Program of ITASIA (Information, Technology and Society in Asia), Professor Tanaka has been responsible for “Introduction to Asian Studies” as well as “International Politics in East Asia.”
Concerning Prof. Tanaka’s new appointment, FUTI President Hisashi Kobayashi says, “I would like to express my heartfelt congratulations to Prof. Tanaka on this very significant and internationally highly visible appointment. I also take this opportunity to thank him for his distinguished services for FUTI. He helped FUTI get closely linked with the International Division of UTokyo who oversees GSP and other international exchange programs. He has also been chairing the UTokyo-Yale Initiative program since its inception. His new appointment with JICA will be demanding of his time and may not allow him to continue serving FUTI as regularly as he has done in the past three years. But I would like to have his continued involvement in the FUTI matters in some manner.”
Prof. Tanaka is expected to attend the FUTI Board meeting scheduled on March 8th.


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