Free Japan’s universities so they can flourish

By Noah Smith. Here is the good news: Japan’s national universities are not, in fact, getting rid of social sciences and humanities. Earlier last year, it looked as if Japan’s Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology told public schools to cease education in these areas. When I spoke to ministry officials this past fall in Tokyo, they were eager to clarify that this wasn’t what they had ordered. They blamed misinterpretation by the Japanese press and mistranslation by the Western press for the misunderstanding. More...