Notes from the President

Congratulatory Message

First, I would like to congratulate all the students of APS, APM, GSA, and GSM on your graduation. You have made it to this day thanks to the support and guidance of many people, including your faculty members, classmates, sempais and kohais, staff members, the people you met on off-campus programs and during study abroad, and your bosses and co-workers at your places of employment.

You were exposed to many cultures on APU’s global campus, and you overcame obstacles and doubts as you pursued learning that you could only experience at APU. I would also like to take this opportunity to thank the guardians and families of today’s graduating class for supporting them in their learning. Please accept my most sincere congratulations on behalf of everyone at APU.

Next month, in April 2025, APU will celebrate its 25th anniversary. Twenty-five years ago, APU was designed as a new kind of international university where half of the students and half of the faculty members were non-Japanese, which was unthinkable at the time. APU began by welcoming 718 enrollees (472 domestic students and 246 international students) in that first year, and it has since grown to a university with over 6,000 students. The university was established with the tremendous support of Oita Prefecture, Beppu City, and industrial partners. Since then, the citizens of Oita Prefecture and Beppu City have treated us very well. I believe they have kindly welcomed all of you in your part-time jobs, extracurricular activities, and off-campus study programs. Many graduates call Beppu and Oita their second home, and they visit APU with their partners and children many years after graduation. Of course, APU will continue to pursue diversity in terms of our students' home countries and regions. Still, we will also tackle the challenge of creating a new university that brings in students of all ages with a wide array of social experiences. I hope you will all look forward to what APU has in store for the future.

Now, on the occasion of your graduation, I have two requests for all of you.

First, I would like you to live life well. To do this, you need character, which you create yourself. In the life ahead of you, your character will be determined by what you think and feel and the actions you decide to take every day. Please consider whether your words, actions, and attitudes are decent. You must not lead lives where you think it is okay to break the law or rules or it is OK to do something wrong as long as you don’t get caught. To have courage, face your troubles head-on, be honest, be loyal, and empathize with others—it is truly meaningful to keep putting these things into practice.

Second, I would like you to value everyone you meet. APU has developed one of the most diverse university campuses in the world. Students from many countries and regions with different cultures, customs, and religions come to study at APU. Based on the premise that APU students have different cultural backgrounds and ways of thinking, the experience you have had here of learning to accept each other as individuals and belonging to the university community anticipates the future of human society. At APU, we refer to this as inclusiveness, forming the basis of our university development. I hope you will make the most of this inclusive experience you gained at APU and value all the people you meet in your lives going forward. At the same time, I hope you will value the friendships you made at APU with your classmates, upperclassmen, and underclassmen.

In many countries around the world today, political parties that attract supporters by demonizing and excluding OTHERS who are different from US are gaining strength. In the United States, Donald Trump, who has repeatedly made discriminatory remarks against women and minorities and has publicly stated that he intends to destroy the social mechanisms that guarantee equality, has won the presidency again. Even in Germany, which perpetrated the historic genocide of six million Jews during World War II and where the entire country has taken great pains to rectify their collective failure to prevent the actions of the Nazis, the political party Alternative for Germany (AfD), which clearly takes an anti-immigration and anti-Islamic stance and whose leadership has publicly expressed sympathy for the Nazi regime, has become the second largest party in Bundestag. Alarmingly similar phenomena can also be seen in Italy, France, Sweden, and many other countries, where forces advocating ‘my country first,’ anti-foreigner, and anti-gender equality and diversity ideologies are trying to turn the clock back by pushing for global division and favoritism for the powered majority in their societies.

I have a request for all of you who have studied at APU. APU is a university that believes that each and every one of us, as human beings in pursuit of freedom and peace, must, above all, have a deep respect for human dignity. I am sure that in the long life ahead of you, you will encounter arguments such as the one I mentioned earlier, namely, that some people are the root of all evil and that eliminating them would be beneficial to society. If you find yourself in such a situation, I want you to remember the feeling of respecting and accepting each other, which you experienced at APU. Having studied at APU, you have the power to save the world.

Today is the day when you stop being APU students and become APU alums. Your activities as alumni will serve to enrich APU as a university, and this process of enrichment will, in turn, support your career development. In this sense, you will all remain members of the APU family.

Human society will have to solve many global issues in the future, such as international conflicts, poverty, climate change, and environmental pollution. Every one of you will use the expertise you have acquired at APU, the power of your mutually supportive networks of friends around the world, and the resilience you have developed in overcoming the COVID-19 pandemic to demonstrate leadership in solving these problems.

In closing, may your lives be filled with happiness, and once again, congratulations on your graduation.

YONEYAMA Hiroshi
President
Ritsumeikan Asia Pacific University
March 14, 2025