This wonderfully detailed history of the Japanese people however, did not lead Dower to glorify the differences among the people of the world. His research on post-World War II Japan demonstrates the will and ingenuity of common Japanese people under American rule. And it draws mostly on visual materials provided by museums and processed by the new digital media to emphasize their core belief that wars distort human imagination about other human beings so as to justify large scale violence.Īs John Dower's research demonstrate vividly how human imaginations can be distorted it also celebrates human resilience against all adds. His ongoing work with Professor Shigeru Miyagawa, who came all the way back from Japan for this event, they working on a project titled, Visualizing Cultures. John did not give up on this innovative form of representation of social reality. Did you know that he had received an Academy Award nomination for his documentary Hellfire, A Journey from Hiroshima, which was about the devastation caused by the atomic bomb. John Dower's contribution is not limited to books however. Norman, a Canadian scholar who was driven to suicide by McCarthyism. Nonetheless, it is important to remind ourselves that what John Dower will speak this afternoon is built on more than 40 years of scholarship, which includes his Pulitzer Prize and national award-winning book, Embracing Defeat, Japan in the Wake of World War II., his earlier book, War Without Marcy, Race and Power in the Pacific War, and an even earlier work, which mourns the loss of E.H. So I'll not recite and remind you of all his past work because I am eager, almost impatient, to hear what he has to say now. I'm assuming that you are here because you're already familiar with John Dower's research. By granting this award we reaffirm and also celebrate the process by which the scholarship of this kinds is produced, deep engagement with the world and yet deep skepticism about conventional truths rigorous analysis that takes enormous human labor but culminates into astonishing insights about what Hannah Arendt called the human condition and the solitude and seclusion necessary to write elegantly so as to be able to communicate well the research findings to audiences across multiple continents.īy selecting John Dower for the Killian Faculty Achievement Award, we celebrate that we have at MIT a colleague who's intellect is more powerful than the bombs dropped in Hiroshima, whose curiosity about the other, as we say in social sciences, helps Americans to be self-reflective, and most importantly, whose scholarship, political understanding, and moral judgments have culminated to a point where our colleague John Dower can be called a scholarly public intellectual. The Killian Award represents our, the MIT faculty's, deep appreciation of and immense respect for a colleague whose scholarly contribution is an example of the very best MIT can offer to the world. Little did the committee know that by selecting John Dower as this year's Killian Award recipient they gave me the opportunity and the honor to introduce an historian whose work I've admired for some time. And other four committee members were Professor's Clark Colton, Barbara Imperiali, I don't know if she's here, Ken Manning, who I see in the audience, and also Wanda Orlikowski. And I first want to thank the faculty committee, which helped us select John Dower as this year's recipient for the award, Professor Anne Spirn, my colleague, who chaired the committee. SANYAL: Good evening and welcome to the annual lecture to be delivered by the recipient of MIT's James R.
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