Confirming Our Current Position and the Path Forward | Tomoki Kamo, Dean of the Faculty of Policy Management
October 5, 2021
What do we need now? We need to envision the place we want to reach and the future we want to realize on the other side of the COVID-19 pandemic, and to show what means are available to achieve that vision. To this end, we have decided to launch a book project. Its purpose is to confirm the direction we should take.
Thinking about policy. At SFC, where we develop scholarship for thinking about the future, the Faculty of Policy Management has placed "thinking about policy" at the core of its educational and research activities. Through this discipline of policy management, we have strived to cultivate students equipped with the foresight to anticipate the future, the analytical skills to grasp situations, the conceptual power to design policies, the persuasive ability to advocate for the significance of policies, the executive capacity to implement them, and the comprehensive ability to integrate all of these.
Through thirty years of practice at SFC since the faculty's founding, we have come to share a certain way of thinking. It is that social order is subject to change, and that values taken for granted are fluid.
We must recognize that many of the problems we face defy existing solutions and constantly demand new ways of thinking. The discipline of "thinking about policy" to solve real-world problems is constantly required to change. The scholarship at SFC is appealing because it possesses this mindset of adapting to change—being well-versed in individual cutting-edge academic fields while re-examining them comprehensively and venturing into interdisciplinary areas.
We are now on the trajectory of the dynamism of change over these thirty years. Based on this premise of change, we have planned the book project to show the future path for the discipline of "thinking about policy." The activities leading up to its publication will serve as a platform for us to present the present and future of policy management at SFC to the world.
Furthermore, what we are presenting to the world is the present and future of the discipline of policy management, not that of the Faculty of Policy Management. This project is not confined to the Faculty of Policy Management; it will proceed with the help of faculty members from the Faculty of Environment and Information Studies, the Graduate School of Media and Governance, the Faculty of Nursing and Medical Care, and the Graduate School of Health Management.
If policy is, in one aspect, a product of society (human activity), then thinking about policy requires an accurate understanding of the realities of politics and society. Only when we are well-versed in the realities of the policy process, the thoughts and actions of the actors who shape society, and the functions of institutions, and also understand the associated difficulties of policy evaluation, can we pursue accurate policy research. This book project will establish multiple themes necessary to approach the reality of policy, with each theme positioned as a single volume. Through the project, we will compile a five-volume series.
The discipline of "thinking about policy" that we engage in is constantly required to change. "Change" can take two forms. One is change through destruction and imagination—a revolution. The other is a gradual change, one where you only realize something is different after the fact. Whatever the change, there must be a catalyst. Someone may have created that catalyst, but it is often not well understood by that "someone" or the people around them. Yet, looking back later, one marvels at how much has changed. If "change" has these two forms, I hope that the book project we are now launching will be the latter.
Who are we? What are we trying to do? We, the faculty, will confirm this by working together to compile these books, explain the results to our students, and disseminate them to the world that supports us. This is an absolutely necessary process to confirm our own position and indicate our direction.
Following the appointment of former Dean Motohiro Tsuchiya as Vice-President, my term as dean began on August 1. And now, my two-year term officially begins on October 1. I want to make these next two years a time to solidify the foundation for the Faculty of Policy Management and Shonan Fujisawa Campus (SFC) to navigate the new world on the other side of the COVID-19 pandemic for the next five, fifteen, and thirty years.