In 2000, the Donald Keene Center of Japanese Culture established, with the financial support of the U.S.-Japan Foundation, a major new exchange program for distinguished visiting Japanese intellectuals at Columbia University. This program invites leading Japanese writers, scholars in the humanities and social sciences, journalists, and creative artists to spend a significant period of time at Columbia University each year.  The principal objectives of this Donald Keene Center Visiting Fellows Program are as follows:

 

a) To foster regular exchanges of ideas and opinions between leading Japanese and American intellectuals; b) To develop a major venue for leading Japanese scholars, writers, and intellectuals to make their views better known in the United States; younger individuals of great promise will also be invited to participate; c) To introduce Columbia University faculty members, graduate students and undergraduates to leading Japanese scholars, writers, intellectuals, and artists, and provide them with first-hand access to current Japanese ideas and opinion on a broad variety of subjects; d) To provide an opportunity for Visiting Fellows to travel to universities and other institutions of cultural or intellectual exchange throughout the United States.

This program was made possible by a grant from the United States-Japan Foundation.  The U.S.-Japan Foundation, incorporated in 1980, was established to improve the understanding between Japan and the U.S. It is the only private independent American grantmaking foundation dedicated to the mutual interests of the American and Japanese people.