[New President Dialogue] Toward the Practice of "The Mission of Keio University"

Congratulations on your appointment as President.

Thank you very much.

As President, you oversee everything from the elementary school to the university and graduate school. You are both the university president and the chairman of the board in terms of management. I didn't realize it was a position that combined so many roles. It is a heavy responsibility.

Mr. Itoh, you have been raised with the goals of Keio University permeating your body since childhood, and some people describe you as a "pure Keio person."

An educational institution that integrates everything from elementary school to university and graduate school is rare in the world. Students who have pursued what they love at Yochisha or Keio Yokohama Elementary School enter junior high school and meet students who have been trained through entrance exam studies. In this way, those who have worked with a sense of freedom and those who have studied hard repeatedly merge as they progress toward university. While valuing this tradition, I believe that integrated education must always possess the freshness to lead society.

Society will clearly change in the next 10 or 20 years, and the goal of Keio University is to lead that change. The conclusion of "The Mission of Keio University" is "to be a leader of all society." This "The Mission of Keio University" consists of the concluding words of a speech given by Yukichi Fukuzawa in 1896, which he then wrote as a calligraphy scroll.

"Keio University is not satisfied with being a mere place of learning. Its purpose is to be a source of honorable character and a paragon of intellect and morals for the entire nation, and by making this a reality, to clarify the essence of home, society, and nation, not just in words but through practice, and to be a leader of all society."

The phrases "source of honorable character" and "a paragon of intellect and morals," which the Keio family loves, stand out, but the conclusion of the mission of Keio University is to lead all of society. For that purpose, we must work with people all over the world and move things forward with the right partners. Naturally, leadership comes with obligations. It is not enough for just ourselves to become better; we must realize a good society by working with various people in various ways in the true sense of the word.

I believe that all members of the Keio University community, by working hard with various senses of purpose, will become leaders as a whole, with the power to lead something and improve society coming together as one, even if their ways of thinking differ. There might even be forces pulling in the opposite direction. But there is meaning in that reaction as well, and the idea is to improve things democratically to the end.

As Ms. Kuniya mentioned, the President is both the university president and the chairman of the board of the corporation, but in terms of mindset, I understand it as being more of a servant—not so much about leadership, but rather a position to create an environment where everyone can work well and practice "The Mission of Keio University."

The crisis of democracy is being talked about now, but since a university is a place to pursue ideals, I want to show that things can be improved through democratic thinking.

That is a major mission. You will be leading Keio University, which aims to be a leader of all society. You are taking over the baton from President Akira Haseyama; what are your thoughts right now?

I think it would have been easier if it were a university with slightly lower goals (laughs). However, we cannot lower those goals now. Therefore, I want to be enthusiastic and say, "Let's all work hard together to achieve that goal." It's like having a sacred text like the Bible or the Quran. Since we have this purpose, let's do it—I believe that will allow everyone to move forward with conviction.

Why did you decide to become President now?

As a system, it is not a clear candidacy system. Candidates are selected through recommendation by others, a vote is held, and then there is a selection committee where the choice is made and approved by the Board of Councillors. So, from the moment I became one of the candidates, I made up my mind and prepared for what I would do if selected. If you don't think about it seriously, there is only one month from being selected to the start.

Mr. Itoh, your specialty is quantum computers. Quantum computers are attracting a lot of attention as the next generation of supercomputers. You have led the field of quantum computing. While there is currently great global competition, led by the United States and China, I imagine there was some conflict about becoming President and sacrificing time for scholarship and research.

I started research on quantum computers in 1998. That was 23 years ago, and the number of people working on quantum computer research since then is limited. It was just when quantum computers were becoming a topic in a very small circle, and physicist colleagues in the West who noticed it began their research. Some said it couldn't possibly work, but I thought being able to calculate using quantum mechanics was a dream for us physicists.

Ordinary computers calculate using binary numbers of 0 or 1, but quantum computers calculate using the uncertainty of quantum mechanics—being both 0 and 1—which makes it possible to calculate some problems that are considered impossible for current computers.

As I accumulated basic research leading to quantum computers, students also became interested and joined in, saying, "This is interesting." By writing papers one after another, I gained attention as a pioneer on the world stage and connected with various researchers across borders. My positioning as a researcher expanded from basic to applied research.

Once it reached a certain point, semiconductor giants like Intel began developing quantum computers based on our basic research results. Since large companies were building the hardware, I thought the next step was software, so three and a half years ago I established the "Quantum Computing Center" at Keio University to research quantum computing software and algorithms. I appointed ace faculty members from Keio University as the director and deputy director, and as manager, I set up the environment to use an IBM quantum computer for the first time in Asia. Then, various Japanese companies began to participate in the center, and everyone, including corporate members, was able to conduct research together.

In this way, as a result of accumulating what needed to be done at each time, the university's Quantum Computing Center has developed, and now the next generation is leading the world admirably, and I am participating there as one researcher. Regarding what comes next, I feel it is the timing for me to work as President on creating systems for the further next generation.

Since you were quick to focus on the possibilities of the field of quantum mechanics and are firmly rooted in the world's cutting-edge community, you don't have much fear of being distanced from research.

Quantum mechanics is very difficult, and I'm embarrassed to say I only understand things like a quantum computer being able to do a calculation that would take 600 million years in three minutes (laughs). In the future you see—that is, when quantum computers become commonplace and spread through society—what will change the most in society?

If you ask whether we ourselves thought quantum computers would be realized, to be honest, we didn't know. However, the world's top researchers are amazing, and within the cycle of competition and cooperation, IBM and Google built the devices. For those of us who have been working hard together, the feeling of "has this day finally come?" was special, and it was like a dream that this day came while I was still alive.

Now, if you ask if this will cause a paradigm shift, we don't know yet. But the world's top players, including Keio University, are working hard together, so please look forward to it. While many good things will become possible with quantum computers, great progress in computers also affects social infrastructure. For example, there are concerns that internet security could be broken.

Broken?

In other words, encryption will be solved. For example, some countries are currently collecting files of other countries' secrets from various places on the internet. Those files cannot be opened now because they are encrypted, but if they can be opened with a quantum computer 20 years from now, they will be able to look back and see everything.

Since encryption built on the premise that it cannot be solved by ordinary computers will become solvable, quantum computers are sometimes called the "bad guys." However, this is simply the development of computers, and it is natural that as computers develop, problems that couldn't be solved before will become solvable. It is necessary to be at the cutting edge in order to anticipate and avoid inconveniences brought about by the development of science and technology.

I feel that in today's society, we are lagging behind in predicting how technology will affect society and how to establish ethical standards and social rules. Technology is going far ahead, and issues of ethics and humanity are not catching up.

In that sense, I think we are in an era of searching for the state of academics, research, and scholarship in order to improve all of society, as you mentioned at the beginning. What role do you think universities should play in creating a better society?

Ms. Kuniya, you are also a graduate of Brown University, and at any university in the world, faculty members think that even if the administration says such things, they will just do their own research and proceed with education according to their own ideals. They protect what must be protected democratically, and each individual has a sense of independence and self-respect. However, because the backgrounds of faculty at global universities are diverse, they have no choice but to think about all of society, and as a result, their spirit becomes high. They are constantly forced to think about what to do as scholars, as members of society, and as citizens of the Earth.

Is that spirit something like a mission or purpose?

Yes. In current Japanese universities, priority is often given to how to get operating and research funds from the government, and because it is a world with many detailed regulations where failure is not allowed, people often do administrative work while being very careful about many things. However, administrative work is a kind of drug for scholars. This is because administrative work produces immediate results, like having done this much by a certain time.

Scholarship is something that must be continued indefinitely, constantly seeking answers that are hard to find. Therefore, administrative work can sometimes become a place to escape. Administrative work must be done, but I want to avoid creating an escape there and create an environment where scholars can concentrate on education and research in the true sense.

Fortunately, at Keio University, 70% of the students are in the humanities. At national universities like the University of Tokyo or Kyoto University, about 70% are in the sciences, and science people tend to do what they want to do. I also liked quantum computers and conducted research with curiosity as a priority. However, when my imagination expands to the possibility that quantum computers might be used for bad things, I think about training people at Keio University to find security holes and have them fight the bad guys.

But I think those parts related to ethics must be discussed with people in the humanities in light of social common sense and laws, so that everyone faces the right direction together.

However, in order to obtain funding, one must constantly do administrative work such as application documents. There is also the fact that this work is enormous, and I feel it is becoming more difficult to create the time and environment to concentrate on scholarship. Are universities currently able to create an environment where one can truly concentrate on scholarship?

That relates to how faculty are hired. Even if you gather star researchers who win Nobel Prizes, if you lean toward single-eyed evaluations like the number of published papers, a distribution will always occur. Therefore, the raison d'être of each person becomes important—the idea that this faculty is running thanks to that person being there. In other words, if everyone just does research without thinking, education will eventually collapse, so we must skillfully create a group of faculty members who pursue various ideals. While respecting the autonomy of each faculty, I think it is important to have them consider this point.

In an organization, there are people who are not prominent, but actually all the information gathers with them, or they act as a lubricant.

We say independence and self-respect, but this means that because it is important to be independent and think for oneself, you also respect the thoughts of others and respect each other. In other words, I think it's the idea of moving forward by looking at each other's good points.

As you mentioned earlier, society will change dramatically in the next 10 or 20 years, and there are parts where the future is unpredictable. Even so, the generation currently in charge must envision the future of what society should be, backcast from there, think seriously about what to do now, and leave a better society for future generations. The SDGs are exactly what is posing that question.

As the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere continues to rise and abnormal weather occurs around the world, many messages are being sent from the Earth, and many issues are being born that cannot be solved by the existing state of research or existing academic boundaries and classifications alone. In response to this, how can we have a sense of speed and generate creative solutions with ideas that break through conventional concepts? There are many things realistically required, such as system changes in food, the state of cities, and energy supply.

In the case of food, for example, we must quickly change the system by involving each stakeholder across the board, from production to processing, distribution, and consumption. It is said that the food system alone emits 25% of carbon dioxide, so zero emissions cannot be achieved without decarbonizing it.

For such system changes, we are in an era where we must creatively create new business models and policy models while various research themes are intertwined. Then, while it is often called interdisciplinary in academic fields, the question is how to expand transdisciplinary possibilities. That is what is being asked in order to realize the SDGs.

The SDGs are goals to be achieved by 2030. But for today's university students, 2030 is just 9 years away, something to be achieved when they are around 30 years old. If that's the case, I think it becomes necessary for students to think even further ahead.

My family loves your programs and we always watch them on TV, but what is impressive is the young people who appear there. The other day, it was introduced how university students are using IT to run a food bank that delivers food that might be discarded to where it is needed. Young people have high social awareness. Therefore, I think the key to cutting across the areas where faculty are pursuing academic ideals is, after all, the students.

Another thing is for the Vice-Presidents in charge of research, in particular, to listen to the stories of various researchers anyway. It is to thoroughly know what kind of people are among the approximately 3,000 faculty members at the university. If you don't know that, you won't know what can be done by connecting whom with whom.

On top of that, the ideal would be to involve the students and decide what Keio University should achieve by 2030. The way to decide that is very difficult, but first, for example, we could set an ideal that seems impossible, such as changing all the electricity used by Keio University to renewable energy, and think about the innovation necessary for that. Some of the ideals will be achievable.

Furthermore, since many graduates of Keio University are active in society and trying to create the future society, we can also have them participate. It is a collaboration of students, faculty, and graduates. While deciding the goals to be achieved by 2030 with the SDGs, we will think even further beyond that. I believe that if we think of a way to involve everyone, we can show a good direction.

As you say, we are in an era where comprehensive knowledge is important. To implement the SDGs, one must not only understand specialized things but also develop a bird's-eye view of what kind of impact one's research has in areas outside one's specialty.

You say students are the key, and you mentioned that as a young student in an American university dormitory, you had opportunities to discuss with students from various fields, which led you to understand the importance of comprehensive knowledge. Specifically, what kind of discussions did you have, and what realizations did you gain?

What I remember well is first meeting people of various religions in the graduate school dormitory. I am Catholic, but I went to churches of various Protestant denominations and Jewish services, and I learned that this is what religious differences are like.

Another thing was talking about modern and contemporary history in English, a common language, with colleagues from Korea and China; for example, hearing how they learned about Japan in textbooks in China or Korea was a real eye-opener. Since it was a dormitory centered on first- and second-year graduate students, while everyone talked about their future dreams, we discussed things like wanting to do this kind of research in English literature, or I learned mathematics from people in economics.

In the case of Keio University, because the campuses are separated, it is currently difficult to have an environment where students from various faculties can gather in one place to talk. When thinking about how to connect such parts horizontally, if we decide what needs to be done for the SDGs, I expect many students will be interested with the awareness that this is for themselves, for society, and for the world.

I was in charge of "Close-up Gendai" for 23 years. In the program, a problem would come up, we would analyze it, and introduce what we thought was the solution, but a few years later, I would encounter cases where a more serious problem had arisen from that solution. I was very confused about what I had actually communicated. After all, a bird's-eye view or a comprehensive response is necessary, and I realized that a solution from a single perspective for a single issue might actually make society worse.

Since encountering the SDGs in 2015, I have been doing reporting and awareness-raising activities, and as you say, it is very important for young people with very fresh sensibilities about the future to be able to think from multiple perspectives with a bird's-eye and comprehensive view from an early stage.

Particularly in Japan, globalization is required of young researchers, but I feel that what the globalization of a university actually is remains very vague. There are various indicators like the number of international students, the number of people studying abroad, and the number of international joint research projects, but what is your idea of the globalization of a university?

In a word, I think it means that the reputation of the university increases from an international perspective. Or the reputation of the students of that university increases. I think it boils down to these two things.

It's not based on indicators, but rather that "people from that university can be trusted." For example, even if a Kabuki actor cannot speak English, people all over the world respect them and want to see Kabuki. So, I think it's about whether that kind of scholarship can be developed. I think the ideal is to be in a state where people want to know about a paper even if it is written in Japanese, and want it translated into English.

There are many indicators for raising world university rankings. For example, the number of co-authored papers written with people all over the world, but if it's just for that purpose, you could just hire more and more researchers in science, engineering, or life sciences who get many citations. However, I think increasing reputation is something different from that.

I think your reputation is high not because the viewership of "Close-up Gendai" is high, but because what was undertaken in that program is valued. By showing extremely high-level interviews with various experts in the program and connecting with people around the world, your reputation increased. My feeling is that it would be good if Japanese universities could do that kind of thing as well.

I am humbled. What do you think about the saying that students' desire to study abroad has disappeared?

They definitely should go abroad.

I don't know about Keio students, but in Japan as a whole, it is said that the number of Japanese students aiming to study abroad is decreasing. Looking at the world now, students' voices are moving politics and creating big movements, but in Japan, the presence of students is not very felt, and it might be an exaggeration, but I also feel they are becoming more conservative, with selfish parts becoming stronger than altruistic ones.

You yourself have been active and gone abroad proactively since you were very young, but how do you see today's young students?

Regarding the experience at Berkeley I mentioned earlier, students were also actively discussing politics. Berkeley is a place where liberalism and human rights awareness are particularly strong. In 1989, someone in the same dormitory told me they were an HIV carrier, and I was so surprised I didn't know how to interact with them, and of course, there were LGBT people there normally.

Those people are very enthusiastic about political activities to secure their own human rights. Having seen that, I am concerned about the political disengagement of Japanese youth. I think it is a fairly big problem that they do not make political statements or have discussions.

In Japan, I think there is a tendency that one should not talk about religion or political beliefs, but if you want to change something, politics is important, and only when the number of people with aspirations increases will the number of good politicians increase. Therefore, in order for us to change something, we must also change politics within Japan.

For example, regarding the current political situation, there are faculty members with various opinions even at Keio University, so I am thinking that showing those faculty members debating their opinions might be one way. There is a phrase by Yukichi Fukuzawa, "Taji-Soron" (encouraging a diversity of opinions), and it is exactly "Taji-Soron."

To transform society, we must implement the SDGs, and speed is also required. The direction of the SDGs will not change unless they are linked with policy at the same time as research, indicators, and rule-making. Therefore, to advance research and technology, political aspects such as what kind of incentives or regulations would be effective are also important.

To change the state of society, technology is necessary, policy is necessary, design is necessary, and humanities-based ideas are very important. Therefore, I think the role played by universities will become increasingly large.

That's right. Especially in the case of Keio University, it's not just the university; we have everything from elementary school to graduate school. Norichika Kanie, a professor at the Graduate School of Media and Governance, says that when he taught a class on SDGs at the Chutobu Junior High School, very new ideas came out and it was interesting. When an expert like Mr. Kanie teaches junior high students, they can have deep discussions. But Mr. Kanie alone is not enough. It is necessary to expand the scale in a way where students who learned from Mr. Kanie teach someone else.

Students are good at learning while teaching, teaching while learning. Actually, two years ago, we created a program called the "AI and Advanced Programming Consortium (AIC)" at the Hiyoshi Campus where students who can do AI and programming teach other students. In this program, everyone gathers at night and studies hard even though it doesn't earn them credits.

This spring semester is online, but more than 2,000 students are learning through this. It is the Tekijuku model—that is, the model of "learning while teaching, teaching while learning." It is a place of learning that fills the gap between scholarship and business.

What do you mean by that?

For university students before they start their research, academia refers to learning from compulsory and elective subjects. However, tools that are advancing by leaps and bounds, such as AI utilization, have not been systematized as academic disciplines, so it is difficult to turn them into subjects. But if you actually apply for a long-term internship at a company in Silicon Valley, you are ultimately asked, "How well can you program?" Furthermore, since the interview will be online with the US headquarters, you are no good if you cannot communicate in English.

From the students' perspective, there is still a gap between academia and business. Therefore, creating a place where students can learn from each other—things that university professors do not do—creates a synergistic effect.

At the AI Consortium, we recruit member companies to provide funding, and from that, we pay salaries to the students on the teaching side. We also pay salaries and honoraria to the students in the PR team who manage the operations. I have high hopes that we can take SDGs in that same direction.

Is that so? That is wonderful. If money is involved, it leads to a greater awareness of responsibility.

Students are assigned to be in charge of sponsor companies, and those students handle communication and planning. However, copies of their emails are always sent to faculty and staff for checking, and they receive the necessary guidance.

Hearing your story, I feel as though a kind of ecosystem for human resource development is being born. I believe it is exactly about how to draw out and develop the power of young people from an early stage. Currently, there are fields where young Japanese people are becoming lead authors for the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change).

When I asked how they were able to be entrusted as a lead author, they said that their supervising professor pushed them and encouraged them to present at international conferences. Even though they were not good at English, they made an effort to speak at least once at every meeting. As a result, they were accepted into the community and eventually asked to handle a specific field.

Earlier, you mentioned that globalization means raising the international reputation of Keio University. How can we create a system within Keio where young scholars are specifically sought out for research that has an international impact?

While people much more talented than I was during my student days at Keio University went to work for Japanese companies, for some reason I went to Berkeley and earned a PhD. I became a faculty member at Keio University because I wanted to send more talented students from Japan to graduate schools around the world. It was a simple idea of just wanting to write good letters of recommendation for them.

However, in order to write a persuasive recommendation letter that shows how amazing a student is through the research in my lab, it comes down to a very simple point: "I myself must conduct research that resonates with the world."

So, when I work hard on my own research, the students also get excited and dive into their research, eventually heading out into the world as graduate students with good letters of recommendation. Because they perform brilliantly at overseas graduate schools, Keio University becomes known as a trustworthy university, and a virtuous cycle is created where the next students also choose the path of studying abroad.

That is because your own reputation is high, Mr. Ito.

No, rather than reputation, it is because people in the US really look at the content of recommendation letters. In short, they read to see if it is a trustworthy recommendation.

Another thing is that while teaching at Keio University, I aimed to become a professor at an American university by around age 40, and I applied to American universities periodically. To that end, I worked hard to enhance the English website of my laboratory and thought deeply about doing research that would be considered interesting overseas, rather than just to obtain Japanese KAKENHI grants.

In the end, I stayed at Keio University, but applying had an unexpected effect. My application documents were read thoroughly by people at various universities I applied to, and because they thought "Kohei is interesting," I somehow started being recommended from the US as an invited speaker for various international academic societies.

You never know what will lead to a high evaluation.

Japanese professors asked me, "What on earth happened? What did you do?" (laughs).

In any case, if good students go abroad, the reputation increases, and applying for positions myself as a faculty member is also very effective. When their peers study abroad as graduate students, the students remaining in the lab in Japan are inspired by them, so they also work hard in the Doctoral Programs in my lab. As a result, for some reason, the number of doctoral students in my lab alone kept increasing.

A pipeline is being formed. You have cultivated the field in that way.

I would like to ask about the ethics that flow beneath what you mentioned at the beginning—Keio's aim to serve the society of the entire world.

I introduced "The Mission of Keio University" earlier. When Yukichi Fukuzawa says, "It is not merely a place for academic pursuit," one wonders, "Then what kind of school is it?" Ultimately, it is to be a "leader of the entire society," but I think the way to fill in the middle part of that mission is quite free.

Perhaps Yukichi Fukuzawa created a great "hook" and a great conclusion, and wanted to say that the space in between is surprisingly free. He wanted us to be a "source of honorable character" and "a paragon of intellect and morals for the entire nation," but in the middle part, there are various individual ways of doing things and academic freedom. Even if those efforts point in different directions, if they proceed while connecting and helping each other, society will gradually move in a better direction. Over these four years, I want to continue sending that kind of message.

What supports the freedom to point in different directions is ethics and spirituality. How to nurture that essential part of spirituality is a major challenge.

When scandals involving students or faculty occur, people always ask, "What happened to being a source of honorable character?" That cannot be helped. But I must state the ideal. The spirituality of Keio University is to imagine all possibilities as a leader of the entire society and create a new society.

I once spoke with cellist Yo-Yo Ma at Tokyo University of the Arts. After graduating from Juilliard, he studied anthropology at Harvard. On the other hand, many American scientists study music. Why is it good for scientists to study music? Yo-Yo Ma said that in music, one is constantly repeating experiments and failing, thinking, "What if I play it like this?" Therefore, by playing an instrument, scientists develop a tolerance for failure. He said that if you are only excellent at science and study only that, you are prone to breaking when your research fails.

Apple's Steve Jobs always said that "innovation is born at the intersection of liberal arts and technology." I believe the fusion and contact points between the humanities and the sciences are important in the modern age.

What I find strange about Japanese universities is why department-specific entrance exams continue for so long. In the US, there are no entrance exams by department. I wonder if department-specific entrance exams are truly good for creating more fusions and cross-intersections between the humanities and the sciences.

When I was young, I once answered in a magazine interview that "department-specific entrance exams are unnecessary," but at that time my position was an assistant, so it didn't become a problem (laughs). However, taking the Faculty of Science and Technology as an example, roughly speaking, over 60% are from general selection (the so-called entrance exams), and the remaining 40% are from recommendation-based systems—with about half each from designated school recommendations and internal admissions from Keio University high schools. Furthermore, there are students from the Admissions Office (AO) exams, returnee exams, and international student exams, so I think diversity is secured to some extent. As I mentioned earlier, a characteristic of Keio University is that students who have grown up freely in the affiliated schools and those who have developed a certain discipline through entrance exams come together to form a new community.

The next step is how to develop such a model as society changes in the future. SFC has always been flexible in that regard, successfully combining AO exams and general selection exams to recruit a diverse range of students. Keio University's current situation is that each faculty is making adjustments based on their own experience and goals. While respecting the autonomy (independence and self-respect) of each faculty, we must consider how to increase the number of international students and ensure diversity, including through curriculum improvements and strengthening the university's overall appeal. The ideal is to become a Juku where high school students from the entire society think, "I want to study here." I believe it is ideal to reform the entrance exam system based on that appeal.

I would like to ask about Keio University Hospital and the School of Medicine. Today, news came out that the effectiveness of an ALS treatment drug, discovered through research using iPS cells by Professor Hideyuki Okano, has been confirmed.

Professor Okano is one of the world's top researchers, but there are many other excellent life scientists as well. Also, I once fell ill and was cured by advanced medical care at Keio University Hospital. Since then, I have spent a lot of time closely with doctors and researchers from the School of Medicine and the hospital, and I have witnessed firsthand how Keio University as a whole, including the Faculty of Pharmacy and the Faculty of Nursing and Medical Care, pursues advanced medical care at a world-class level.

In Japan, medical insurance is well-established, so anyone can receive treatment under similar circumstances. For example, the treatment I received had poor cost-effectiveness and would not be performed in the West. Therefore, I would not have survived. But the amazing thing about Keio medical care is that it is provided equally to others, not just me, as an insurance-covered treatment.

That's right. That is a good point of the Japanese medical system.

Moreover, that is also the path to pioneering advanced medical care. Keio medical care is working on such things.

On the other hand, from the standpoint of being entrusted with the management of Keio University, pursuing advanced medical care within the framework of insurance-covered medicine is very difficult financially. Therefore, if I had not experienced illness myself, I might not have understood the greatness of the medical staff on the front lines and might have mistakenly thought it was wasteful. But even if it is costly and the number of cases is small, doing it attracts great attention from the world, so that reputation is immense. In fact, we accept patients who cannot be cured elsewhere. And we do so equally for everyone! While maintaining this virtue, I want to consider measures to improve hospital management without overstraining it.

Do you have a list of things you want to tackle now that you have become President?

Second-year students have been unable to lead a normal campus life for the past year and a half due to COVID-19. One of the university's missions is to have student life serve as the starting point for a virtuous cycle in one's life. I want to make this a place where they can get a good start in life—where they can say that because they came here, they met good companions and lifelong friends, and that their learning and experiences at Keio University lead to their future.

Therefore, the challenge is whether the current second-year students can graduate feeling glad they chose Keio University. I want to somehow create an environment where they can feel glad they studied at Keio University even amidst the pandemic.

You cannot get that time back.

Exactly. No matter how much we say, "There are poor people suffering in the world, and you are privileged so you should endure it," for a student, those four years are their own student life, and they are irreplaceable. From an adult's perspective, it might look like just four years, but it is completely different.

In addition to what I can do for university and graduate students, it is my responsibility to think about what I can do for the elementary, junior high, and high school students of our affiliated schools.

It really is a heavy responsibility.

It really is. However, ten wonderful colleagues have been appointed as Vice-Presidents. They are talented, have a strong sense of responsibility, possess an international outlook, care about the students, are positive, and are people who can engage in solid discussions with each department. I have also added support for SDGs and entrepreneurship education as new missions, so I want to do my best.

I have high expectations for you as a messenger of the mission. I look forward to working with you.