UCSD’s New School 1st in U.S. to Focus on Pacific Rim

Recognizing the importance of booming economies in nations ringing the Pacific Ocean, the University of California Board of Regents on Friday approved the creation of a Graduate School of International Relations and Pacific Studies at UC San Diego.

The school, the first in the United States to focus primarily on Pacific Rim nations, will train students for business, government and academic careers that require knowledge of the culture and politics of nations as diverse as Chile, Japan and Australia.

When it opens in the fall of 1987, the school will be the first with the international relations specialty in the UC system and the first graduate school created by the university since 1967.

“Nearly all of the schools of international relations in this country are on the East Coast . . . and are Atlantic Ocean-oriented,” UC President David P. Gardner said Friday after the regents’ meeting at UC San Francisco’s Laurel Heights facility. “For a public university in the West to put such a school into being is a major move.”

On the West Coast, only the University of Southern California and the University of Washington have international relations schools, neither of which focuses primarily on the Pacific, said Prof. Peter Gourevitch, head of the UCSD committee that planned the graduate school. The Pacific Rim nations include countries on the west coast of South America as well as Central America, Mexico, the United States, Canada, the Soviet Union, Japan, both Koreas, China, Southeast Asia, the Philippines, Australia and New Zealand.

UC San Diego was chosen because, by proposing a graduate school in that field, it was the first UC campus to act on Gardner’s urgings for increased emphasis on Pacific nation studies.

Although it will educate its students in the culture, politics and strategic importance of Pacific Rim nations, the graduate school also will emphasize business management skills required for international commerce.

“Our students are going to have a lot more of the economic, management and quantitative and analytical skills than other students are,” Gourevitch said.

Pacific Rim countries have become vitally important to the California as well as the national economy. Since 1980, total U.S. trade with those nations has exceeded trade with other regions of the world, including Western Europe. Asia’s 7.5% growth rate has led the world for the last two decades, continuing to boom while Western economies sagged during the recession of 1980-81.

Eighty-two percent of California’s $80-billion annual trade is with Pacific Rim countries, which provide almost 85% of the state’s imports and take 78% of its exports.

“I can’t think of a better region to place my bets on for future growth,” said Mark Van Fleet, director of Asia-Pacific affairs for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. “The past performance is there. The long-term prospects are there.”

The only “clouds on the horizon” are continued pressure in Congress for protectionist legislation and the possibility that investment capital may dry up for nations such as the Philippines, Thailand, Singapore and Indonesia, Van Fleet said.

Nevertheless, “we need people who understand the cultural aspects of business” in the Far East, he said. “In Asia, you don’t do business without establishing relationships.”

Donald Stokes, dean of the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University, said that future international relations experts should have the facilities to work in both the public and private sectors.

“The boundary lines that once upon a time looked so clear between government and the private sector are not so sharp and clear, for reasons that are not limited to the enthusiasm of the Reagan Administration. That’s the way the world has turned,” he said.

Gardner also said he hopes the graduate school will stimulate Pacific Rim studies in elementary and secondary schools. Plans call for the school to serve as a research and information center about “events and trends in the Pacific region.”

“The Japanese, for instance, know a great deal about us and we know very little about them,” said Regent Frank Hope Jr. of San Diego. “In fact, we know a lot less than we think we do.”

The school will open in the fall of 1987 with about nine faculty members and a few students, Gourevitch said. By 1992, the school will be at full strength with 35 full-time faculty members, 400 students, and a budget of $5 million to $6 million, Gourevitch said. UCSD is planning to erect a 10,000-square foot building to house the new graduate school for $9 million to $10 million.

About 250 students will be working toward a two-year master’s degree, 130 will be in an “advanced career-training program” and 20 will be in a doctoral program. A nationwide search is being conducted for faculty members and a dean.

Gov. George Deukmejian has included $480,000 for planning in his 1986-87 budget for the school. No other funds have been budgeted. The school also is hoping to receive private endowment funds.